Brid and Roger Fahy are dairy farmers and their farm is right on the Wild Atlantic Way, with every field touching the sea. The majority of the land faces Ballyvaughan Bay but it also backs on to Galway Bay and the famous Flaggy shore, beloved by the many walkers who enjoy it in all sorts of weather. “So if this isn’t the Wild Atlantic Way then I don’t know what is,” laughs Brid. “When the cows are out in summer, we have to watch the tides at milking times for fear they’d get stranded and couldn’t be milked,” she adds.

Back in 2006, diversification was the buzzword in farming. With three young children and a fragmented farm, the Fahys looked to see what added value their farm might produce. Ice cream made from the milk of their own cows seemed like a no-brainer. They had the cows and Brid was nursing so they weren’t afraid of the process but they still put two solid years of research into the business before making their first ice cream, which they called Linnalla. The Cliffs of Moher are only 40 minutes away and the visitor centre there was one of their first customers.

Brid and Roger foraged the Burren for flavourings, collecting wild blackberries, elderberries, sloes and hazelnuts to make their ice cream that bit special.

“Milk is great to absorb flavour and it was exciting to use local, wild produce to create something unique,” says Roger.

The business grew rapidly and before long they were supplying Tesco and Dunnes Stores nationwide, as well as restaurants across the country. They also opened an ice cream parlour and café on the farm, a perfect treat destination for all those walking and cycling the Flaggy shore and Wild Atlantic Way. In peak season, they employed up to 20 staff.

Scaling back

As one of the first artisan ice cream producers to get a listing with major retailers everything appeared to be flying but it was happening at great personal cost.

“Non-stop worry and sleepless nights over distribution made us rethink what we were doing. We needed to invest heavily in freezer distribution and in so doing we would lose our artisan status. We came to the conclusion that we needed to be nearer a central hub, especially for something as delicate and fragile as ice cream. There is little room for the mid-level operator. It was a case of go really big or stay artisan.”

And so Brid and Roger made the tough decision to scale back the business for lifestyle reasons. “We decided to concentrate on being an artisan producer, supplying only our own café.”

These days Brid makes between 20 and 30 flavours of ice cream every week, including marmalade, honeycomb, coffee, hazelnut, blackberry, sloe and sea buck thorn, which tastes a lot nicer than it sounds. Their son Padraig is in partnership on the farm and the plan is to build cow numbers from 70 to 100 in the long term. Tomás, their younger son is studying veterinary science while daughter Máire works with Ryanair.

“Life is much easier and we can sleep again. And business is very good thanks in part to the Wild Atlantic Way,” says Bríd as she serves me a delicious ice cream sundae.