Ballymore Organics ENVIRONMENTAL AWARD BY CAROLINE HENNESSY
build a mill on the farm and he started producing his own stoneground wholemeal flour in 2017. The single-varietal, single-origin flour is expensive to grow and mill, but James’s sales pitch was simple: he contacted hotels and restaurants telling the chefs about the way that he farmed and got them to try the flour. The hook was the flavour. Soon his flour was being namechecked on menus at Aimsir, Ashford Castle, Dromoland Castle and Adare Manor and James was dealing regularly with Michelin-starred chefs. With wholemeal flour selling well, James expanded his range of products to plain flour and semolina at the beginning of 2020. He also started milling the oats that he grows, becoming Ireland’s only grower and miller of both wheat flour and porridge oats. As well as selling direct to chefs, he invested in a small webshop, selling small amounts
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here were few reviews of Kildare’s two Michelin star restaurant Aimsir that didn’t mention the bread – Ballymore Organics heritage wheat soda bread, to be precise, cooked in ‘beef fat, laced with black treacle and Guinness, served with raw and heavily salted Crawford’s micro-dairy butter’. Served as one course of a tasting menu that was designed to showcase the best of Irish food, it put locally grown wheat centre stage and the critics raved about it. Ballymore Organics, set up by James Kelly, was the first mill to open in Kildare since Odlum’s 200-year-old Leinster Mills closed in 1989. After growing his first organic crop of ‘smashing wheat’ in 2015, James convinced Andrew Workman of Dunany Flour to mill 20kg of the grain. Positive responses to the flour meant that James decided to
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JAMES IS ONE OF A NEW WAVE OF IRISH CRAFT MILLERS, PEOPLE WHO GROW AND MILL THEIR OWN CEREALS. THE SYNERGY BETWEEN FLOUR WITH PROVENANCE AND OTHER QUALITY IRISH FOOD HAS NEVER BEEN SO DELICIOUS.
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