Making Farming Fashionable for a New Generation

Ciara and Robert Stanley are rural entrepreneurs who have diversified their income streams in recent years and added value to their beef enterprise at Coppenagh House Farm. They were originally focused on managing a conventional commercial beef system with a 40-cow suckler herd and breeding bulls for the dairy trade. The farm receives support under the CAP Strategic Plan 2023-2027 through BISS and the Eco-Scheme.

Robert also continues to run his original business selling, installing, and servicing AGA cookers duringn the winter months. Before developing Coppenagh House Farm shop, Ciara’s embroidery business was based in a spare room in their house while working full-time. She recently participated in the ACORNS programme. During the COVID period, they started to reassess their farm business and decided to diversify. d diversify. 

“Breeding high-quality sucklers is what I really like, such as Belgian Blue and Limousin, but we weren’t really being paid for our beef, especially our heifers. This is when we started going into Wagyu beef,” says Robert.  “We wanted to take back control and get more income. We started with Wagyu beef boxes, and they proved really popular,” Ciara explains. “We decided to open a farm shop, and we moved my embroidery business up here to the farm. In between all that, I got the opportunity to buy the clothing brand, Ballybar Ireland. It was all very busy and full on at the time, but we knew that there would be a good relationship between the farm, the shop, the clothing and the embroidery. The country lifestyle market was the market that we wanted to hit. Then we finally added the coffee barn.” In 2023, they started selling Wagyu beef through the shop, and the demand for this type of succulent and flavoursome meat has continued to grow ever since.   

The Wagyu cattle are bought in as weaned calves throughout the year and raised on pasture to ensure a regular supply for sale. They soon discovered that raising Wagyu cattle for their own customers was very different from commercial beef management. “They are raised on grass and are very slow maturing,” says Robert, “They’re only picked for slaughter when they have the right fat cover. We were used to slaughtering continental bulls with a kill out fat percentage of maybe 63% and a carcass weight of 520kgs. With Wagyus, when you’re dealing with a carcass weight of 160kgs at 40% fat, you wonder what you’re doing wrong!” 

The clever synthesis of all their various income streams through the farm shop shows that they are obviously doing something right. The farm shop now hosts a small AGA showroom, which they use for cookery demonstrations using their own beef and other Irish artisanal products stocked in the shop. “It benefits everything in the business, including the food business,” says Robert, who loves the idea that the chefs are preparing beef that was grown on pasture located outside the showroom window.“You can’t get much closer than that!” he says with satisfaction.

“It’s bringing customers in that want to use good quality ingredients and see how it is cooked,” agrees Ciara, for whom quality is a watchword of the business. “The food products we sell must be Irish and of a very high standard. It’s amazing to see just how good so many Irish producers are.” The range on the shelves is very impressive with a wide selection of artisan cheeses, soda drinks, vegetables, ice creams, kimchi, sauerkrauts, and so much more. Many of these products are both national and international award winners. 

For the Stanleys, they see their farm shop as an opportunity to bring the public onto their farm and counteract negative perceptions about farming, often portrayed in the media.

“We want to show that it’s not that bad, we’re not scary people, and farming is not what it is portrayed to be. When people come here (to the shop), they ask, ‘Where is the farm?’ and we say, ‘You’re in the middle of it!’” Ciara says, laughing. “When we expanded, people asked us if we were going to have other animals, but we are not a pet farm,” says Robert,

“We are a working farm. Some of the cattle outside in the field are going to be inside in the freezers in a few months’ time. Our butcher is only a mile down the road, so we have some of the lowest food miles in the country.” Judging by the footfall through the farmgate, this commitment to authenticity is paying dividends. 

Ciara participated in the ACORNS programme in 2023. The programme is designed to support early-stage female entrepreneurs living in rural Ireland and runs over six months part-time. “When I was setting up the farm shop, it was recommended to me by a friend who had been through it. I couldn’t recommend it enough, to be honest,” says Ciara.

“I made a lot of contacts; it pushed me out of my comfort zone and helped me to look at my small business seriously and make it viable. It gave me the confidence to get up and talk in front of people and cameras. It opened a lot of doors to meet new people, to meet the right people sometimes. If I am looking to meet a particular person, I can rely on someone in ACORNS to point me in the right direction.”  

Ciara believes there is a generational shift happening in attitudes to women in agriculture. “There’s lots of girls around here who are farming, and that’s great to see. But having said that, growing up, I would have seen women farming, but there was never an official wage, and too many women never got ownership of the farm. It was the male in the family who was always thought of first and women weren't given the opportunity."

"I remember when I was younger, I told my family that I wanted to be a farmer, and they just laughed at me. I do think that it is changing, but we need more women in leadership roles for younger women to look up to. I want to see supports continue to be provided to women in farming. Given the opportunity, I think that farms would be more progressive if more women were let go to the forefront. Robert would agree that we probably wouldn’t have all these (farm diversifications) if I wasn’t driving it on.” 

The Stanleys are now where they want to be with their farm, businesses, and lifestyle, and are focused on maintaining high standards and increasing sustainability. Robert regularly measures the grass and weighs the cattle to ensure that they are thriving. They grow their own barley, which is rolled for feed, and the straw is used for bedding. The dung is composted before being spread back on the land. This makes it more available to microbes in the pastures, which is then, in turn, utilised by the grass to feed the next year’s cattle.

“Farming is a great lifestyle if you can make a living from it,” says Robert. The various income streams are helping them to achieve this goal. “I would like to see more people do what we’re doing,” says Ciara, “if there are more farms selling their own produce, it will become more normal that farms are where people go to buy their food, and neighbours support their local farms. I would like to see a national effort to educate the public to appreciate where their food comes from and appreciate the provenance and seasonality of their food and stop all the finger pointing.”

There is no better example of this to be found than at Coppenagh House Farm.