Maria Flynn is both a problem solver and an empathetic woman. If you’re having trouble with something, she will try her best to help you – that is just her nature. The wife, mother and farmer at Ballymakenny Farm Produce in Carstown, Co Louth, has made a name for herself and her family business over several years. This is likely as much due to her effervescent personality as it is to the family’s brightly coloured line of heirloom potatoes.
However, Maria says she and her husband still have a long way to go to get their farm and business to where they will be happy. This may be true, but it’s also true that many now look to Ballymakenny Farm as a textbook example of successful farm diversification in the face of financial crisis.
In 2018, Maria won the On-Farm Innovation Award at the Women & Agriculture Awards, which are run by Irish Country Living supported by FBD Insurance. This award was in recognition of the work Maria had put into saving her family’s farm. To her, winning represented the beginning of her success as a heritage vegetable grower.
Overwhelmed
“I got a phone call from a chef who’s now a friend,” Maria reminisces. “She said, ‘I saw [the Women & Agriculture Awards] advertised and I thought of you.’ I was quite overwhelmed. 
A fourth-generation tillage farmer, Maria’s husband David was growing corn and rooster potatoes when he and Maria took over in 2007. After years of market downturn and financial strain, Maria knew something drastic needed to be done. She spoke with a local vegetable grower about the possibility of growing rare or heirloom vegetables for food service before setting aside one of their fields and, in 2014, they planted their first crop of Violetta and Pink Fir Apple potatoes.
“The only thing I could grow, really, was potatoes, that’s what we knew how to do; that’s what we had the machinery for,” she laughs. “[Someone had] mentioned purple potatoes, and I remembered them from my time living in London, so I decided if we were going to do something different we might as well do very different!”
Excitement
While she was growing her first crop of heirloom potatoes, Maria also started Twitter and Instagram accounts to document her journey. In no time, chefs throughout Ireland were following her and asking when the potatoes would be available. Seeing the excitement of these chefs reassured Maria that going “very different” had been a sound decision.
“I suppose [my Instagram and Twitter accounts] were like a little blog,” she says. “I didn’t realize that’s what I was doing, but people slowly started interacting with me and I just really enjoyed it. It wasn’t really about the farm, the money, the crops – it was just something in my world.”
As the intensely purple Violettas and knobbly Pink Fir Apples became the potatoes of choice for Irish chefs, word got out about Ballymakenny Farm Produce. Maria’s story of overcoming adversity resonated with farming families throughout the country.
It was at this stage that Maria realized her friend had, in fact, already nominated her for the Women & Agriculture Award for On-Farm Innovation.
“It was the first time anyone had turned around and said, ‘Look what you’re doing,’” she says. 
Emotional
A few weeks later, Maria got a phone call asking if she was free to attend the awards. She wouldn’t know she had won the award until then. When her name was announced she admits she became emotional and, being completely unprepared, addressed the room directly from the heart. She still feels strongly about the message now, two years later – innovation, for many farmers, isn’t about doing something different; it’s about survival.
“It was so fantastic to win. I was completely and utterly blown away,” she says. “[At the awards ceremony], it was amazing to see what all of these women were doing on their farms and all across the country – but they don’t realize they’re innovating. They’re finding solutions and keeping their family above water – that’s what I was doing.”
Maria’s family business has continued to transform in positive ways since she won the Women & Agriculture Award in 2018. Though they still plant some rooster potatoes, it’s their speciality vegetables and heirloom potato varieties that continue to drive their business and increase their clientele.
They now grow seven varieties of heirloom potato as well as purple sprouting broccoli and sweet stem cauliflower. It is important to Maria to keep the vegetable offerings seasonal. It not only ensures her products are sold at their peak but also ties into the way modern Irish chefs design menus. For her chef clients, each season is a celebration of whatever fresh new vegetable she has on offer.
Although diversification has made Ballymakenny Farm Produce the success we see today, Maria maintains it took several other measures to get back on track, financially.
“Diversifying alone wouldn’t have solved our problems,” she says, emphasising that there were bigger problems at play. “We couldn’t walk away from this farm. David has never done anything else and I wouldn’t ask him to.
“Being nominated for the Women & Agriculture Award was a pivotal moment for me. It allowed me to acquire a more positive mindset, and when you start thinking more positively, you see opportunity everywhere.”
Instinct
“Look at us – this isn’t a big success story here,” she exclaims. “It’s growing into something, slowly and surely. It’s given David and myself a reason to feel good about farming again, but our problems are by no means over. 
Maria plans to continue working directly with chefs for food service, but she also has some new ideas up her sleeve. She is currently developing recipes for her potatoes (specifically, the Violettas) to sell as prepared food items. Working in collaboration with GMIT, she hopes her new product line will soon be available in fine food shops throughout the country.