Ballymakenny Farm Irish Heritage and Specialty Potatoes FOOD AWARD BY ALI DUNWORTH
the market for heritage potatoes to be grown in Ireland with an idea to target chefs and restaurants directly. Through a combination of Maria knocking on restaurant doors, word of mouth and savvy social media posts, Ballymakenny became the most sought-after potatoes by highend chefs and restaurateurs in Ireland and heading into 2020, Maria says things were looking good. ‘We’d just begun to relax into our new way of growing, not to mention new crops for our amazing chefs, building in confidence and sales year on year. And then Covid arrived.’ Overnight, the customer base Ballymakenny had worked so hard to cultivate came to a standstill, but fast-thinking Maria needed something to focus on. In a matter of days she had set up the Spud Shack, a drive-through shop on their farm. ‘The idea was to give me something to focus on every
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he Irish are known around the world to be quite taken with potatoes, but we’ve never known the country to collectively obsess over spuds the way we have with Ballymakenny Farm potatoes. These potatoes have developed a cult-like following in Ireland over the last few years for good reason, and despite the challenges of 2020 they continue to be the spuds everyone wants on their plates. Maria and David Flynn started out growing the usual potatoes for supermarket retail until Maria, unenthused by what they were doing, decided to literally inject a bit of colour into their farming by trying out the ‘purple spuds’ they have become best known for. They planted these purple Violetta potatoes along with Red Emmalies, Yukon Gold and of course the peculiar-shaped Pink Fir Apple potato. She had spotted a gap in
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A GARDEN SHED, OUR BEAUTIFUL POTATOES AND A LOT OF HOPE HAS TURNED INTO ANOTHER ELEMENT OF OUR BUSINESS. THERE ARE A FEW MORE PIVOTS IN THIS FARM YET.
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