Northern Ireland first as local farm turns to cheese making

Northern Ireland first as local farm turns to cheese making

28 March 2012

A SAINTFIELD farm is making a name for itself in the artisan cheese market.

Leggygowan Farm is producing Northern Ireland’s first goat’s blue cheese from a herd of almost 100 goats on the 20-acre holding.

The business is run by brothers, Adam, Ryan and Jason Kelly with Jason managing the farm, which also has small herds of cattle and sheep, on a full time basis.

“The decision to set up a goat’s cheese business is the outcome of a research project that we undertook to help us to identify a new direction that would enable us to develop the small farm,” said Adam Kelly, the Director of Leggygowan Farm.

Unlike the Republic of Ireland and the rest of Britain, Northern Ireland doesn’t have a farmhouse cheese tradition and goat’s blue cheese is not readily available here, which Adam believed influenced this new development.

“We saw a gap in the market for an artisan blue cheese using milk from our mixed herd of goats and our contacts with delis, farm shops and independent grocers found a growing interest among consumers in handmade soft cheese,” he said.

The head of the Food Technology Development Branch, at the College of Agriculture, Food and Rural Enterprise (CAFRE), Joy Alexander, who worked with Leggygowan, has expressed her delight with the progress made so far and that she was eagerly anticipating the cheese going on sale.

“We are delighted to have worked with Leggygowan in this development and the programme has been very successful helping artisan food producers test their product and it will enable Leggygowan to manufacture cheese for sale,” she said.

Leggygowan is producing the cheese using an Invest NI Innovation Voucher which has enabled it to access the knowledge and expertise in cheese production at the Loughry campus of CAFRE.

The Innovation Voucher assistance for the development was announced by Olive Hill, Invest NI’s Director of Technology and Process Development, who said: “Leggygowan is developing a unique product for Northern Ireland and the vouchers are assisting the tremendous work being carried out by Loughry in promoting farmhouse cheese projects and in guidance for enterprising businesses.”