Meet the woman making Cork's first farmhouse ice cream

THE name of the game in farming is diversifying, and no farm is ready made for taking the road less travelled than those specialising in dairy. Ireland’s international reputation for quality dairy products all starts with the “white champagne” that is the lifeblood of every small, family farm.

In Cork, almost 400,000 dairy cows provide this primary source of income for farms. But where once this could be relied on entirely to sustain family generation to generation, today families are advised to look beyond just the commodity product of simply milk and ask what else can be made?

This is the question that sat inside the mind of Catherine Good for many years before she decided the time was right to turn those thoughts into action, and in 2021 established The Good Dairy Company making Cork’s first farmhouse ice cream.

The Good family farm is blessed with its location, in Nohoval, with the Atlantic Ocean and rolling grassy paddocks for a view. The farm has been in the family of Catherine’s husband, Tom, for four generation. It has always been a dairy farm, and Tom spends his days tending their herd of pedigree Friesian dairy cows and the field crops he grows to feed them.

Catherine and Tom married 17 years ago, have four children together, now aged between eight and 15 years old, and have built a life that always puts family first.

A degree in Business Management and a successful career thereafter was to be the perfect foundation for setting up her own business in August 2021.

“I was surrounded by farming life, the ins and outs and ups and downs; immersed in that and my surroundings. 

I always felt there was a little niggle in the back of my mind to do something with the milk. 

I’d say it to Tom, but he was too busy milking cows and taking care of his crops. But it stuck with me,” says Catherine.

“ Ear to the Ground is on regular here in the house and we always watch it. One time, a farm advisor said the future of farming was to diversify, encouraging all farmers to look in at their yard gate and look for opportunities. That stuck with me, too.”

As the children began to grow up and go into school full time, Catherine had a little more time on her hands. Never one to sit around and do nothing, she was encouraged to enrol in a course for female entrepreneurs at MTUs Rubicon Centre.

“At that stage, I wasn’t 100% tied on ice cream, but after doing a lot of market research, ice cream was what came to the forefront. It tied in with our surroundings, it tied in with our family life, we had our raw ingredients, and no one in our immediate location was making ice cream at home on the farm using their own milk and cream directly from their own cows. So, I got to work.”

That work entailed investing enormous time in understanding the market, the product, how to make, market and sell it. While it has always been very important to Catherine to ensure her business doesn’t overwhelm family life, there was no shortage of vision, ambition and drive to create a range of ice creams to showcase the jewels in their family’s farm business – milk and cream.

“I shadowed a few ice cream makers that were doing a similar product to me, and I travelled to the UK and met with ice cream experts and did several courses with them. I also attended the Ice Cream Science and Technology Course at UCC and organised several different production days to start learning the craft,” explains Catherine.

After the theory came the practical. Catherine researched diligently the process of making ice cream to perfect her recipe.

I worked a lot on the recipe because I wanted to bring back to the market a natural ice cream that wasn’t laden down with artificial emulsifiers and stabilisers. 

I gave back as much milk and cream as I possibly could to the recipe because we had it - 75% of my recipe is milk and cream. I really worked hard at getting it right, over and back tasting it, perfecting it and taking feedback from customers and family.”

When it came to deciding on flavours, Catherine once again took inspiration from her farming life.

“I wanted to create flavours that tied in with the farm and to bring back the visualisation behind the flavour of the farm life,” she says.

“I have heard it said that ice cream lives or dies by the vanilla ice cream, so perfecting Udderly Vanilla, “because it comes straight from the udder,” was the first challenge. Chocolate Cow’s Lick is all about the cows in the field eating the grass with their tongue; Muddy Boots because there’s no farmer out without a muddy boot, and Rocky Cow Path because of the image of cows out walking the old rocky farm paths."

These are all things when you’re fully immersed in farming life you become familiar with, and I felt I could tie in flavours with that.

Within a couple of hours of Tom milking the cows, Catherine is churning the creamy rich milk into luxuriously velvety ice cream. Because it is their farm, their cows, their milk and cream, the desire to showcase all of that in the best ice cream Catherine can make is always the most important goal.

The Good Dairy Company began trading in late summer 2021, initially at farmers’ markets in Kinsale, Carrigaline and Douglas, and on the beach at Roberts’ Cove, with her sunny pink, white and black spotted mobile ice cream parlour. Although the season was short, it gave her an opportunity to dip her toe in the water before going for it in a big way.

In 2022, with the help of her Local Enterprise Board, Catherine joined Supervalu Food Academy and launched retail tubs of Udderly Vanilla and Chocolate Cow’s Lick in Kinsale, Carrigaline and Glanmire stores.

Then, in June, The Good Dairy Company was selected from 130 hopeful applicants to take part in this years’ Grow with Aldi campaign.

“Aldi have been amazing. It’s something I didn’t expect. Like that, I saw the opportunity and said I’d apply. We had our first meeting on Zoom, and there was 130 applicants, and there was 25 picked and I was one of them. It was absolutely amazing.”

She said it was a huge learning curve.

I didn’t know what volume I’d be looking for, I didn’t know if I could fill the volume they were looking for, whether I’d succeed, but I got there.

The business was also announced as a finalised in the National Dairy Award in the Best Artisan Product (non-dairy) category - and although they didn’t win it was amazing to be recognised.

“ It’s just recognising people in the dairy community on a local and smaller scale that are tipping away in the background and getting on well. It’s a wide variety of people at the awards, and the overall winner was a farm manager and I was delighted it was a woman.”

It’s been a busy start to the summer, with markets, shows, festivals, plus keeping the shops stocked - so how does she balance work and family life?

“ I’ve taken on a small number of shops, but at the moment I wouldn’t be looking to take on any more. I’m familiar by now at this stage with how fast they turn over and know without even thinking about when they need to be stocked again.

“Time management is a key factor, family life and keeping it simple really. We’re in a lovely zone here with the family; we live on the farm, we live by the sea, they love their activities, it just all rolls together.”

Her advice to anyone thinking of diversifying the family farm is to do market research and try to find something that works around family life. She advises them to have a lot of patience, take the knocks and surround yourself with the right people.

She said meeting and talking to other entrepreneurs, male and female, meeting other food producers, is key.

“There’s always a solution to be teased out, but you need to network and you need to have the right people by your side at all times. I found that with the Facadmeu, and the Rubicon FE course, but I also was part of the ACORN Course and found that very good as well. It’s just another network, but a lot of the stumbling blocks I would have had, they would have had, just at different times.”

Keep and eye on Instagram and Facebook page The Good Dairy Company to see where they will be selling over the summer. The other shops: Leafling Ballinspittle, Ballindee Bus, SV Kinsale and Carrigaline, Allen’s of Belgooely, Excel Minane Bridge, On the Pigs Back Douglas SV Glanmire and Tower, Bradley’s Off Licence North Main Street, NF Boatyard Cobh, Douglas and Lisavaird. Alfo find them at the Beach at Roberts Cove at Garrylucas.