If the thought of feeding your own family on Christmas Day is slightly stressful, then spare a thought for Eoin Sharkey and Olivia Duff.

The husband and wife team behind Maperath Farm near Kells, Co Meath, reckon they will be responsible for over 12,000 Christmas dinners this year, with their slow-reared, free-range turkeys and geese feeding 10 to 12 people around every table.

“As much as Christmas Day is a sigh of relief and a family day,” admits Olivia, “Eoin and I don’t relax until Christmas night because we’re always wondering, ‘did everybody enjoy their dinner?’”

Eoin Sharkey moving geese on their farm near Kells. \ Ramona Farrelly

The couple live just outside Kells with their three daughters Anna (seven), Kate (four) and Sage (two); young poultry farmers in the making themselves. And why wouldn’t they be? After all, this young family has grown up with the business, which started on a wing and a prayer in the recession.

Wing and a prayer

Neither Eoin nor Olivia come from a poultry background. Originally from Skryne, Co Meath, Eoin wanted to train as a farrier when he was growing up, but became a carpenter instead, working in the US before returning to Ireland in the mid-noughties.

Olivia, meanwhile, is a second-generation hotelier who grew up over The Headfort Arms in Kells, but always had a love for the countryside.

In fact, it was their mutual passion for all things equine that brought the couple together – literally – after Olivia was thrown off a horse.

Eoin and Olivia Sharkey on their farm near Kells, Co Meath, with their three daughters Anna (seven), Kate (five) and Sage (two) and some of the turkeys and geese that they rear. \ Ramona Farrelly

“I was out hunting with the Meath Foxhounds and I found Olivia in the bottom of a ditch,” says Eoin. “So I went on ahead, caught her pony, went back and gave her a leg up and asked her out for dinner.”

“He was on the scent for a while now,” Olivia adds wryly, “but that’s the story he sticks with anyway!”

When they originally bought the 15-acre farm at Maperath, their idea was to build their Georgian-style dream home and breed Irish draught horses as a hobby. The recession, however, put paid to that plan when the building industry collapsed, leaving Eoin without any work.

“You could see everybody else had started to leave the country. I didn’t want to leave Ireland and there was no future in building, so we had to look at what we could do on a small amount of land.”

Not that it went down particularly well when Eoin arrived home with a box of day-old chicks in 2009, mind you.

“Eoin came home with a shoebox that I thought had about 10 turkeys – and there was 100,” Olivia says. “It was ‘picture, no sound’ for a couple of weeks.”

“She was thinking,” laughs Eoin, “she’d be swinging a handbag trying to get to the jeep in the morning with 100 turkeys!”

Logistics aside, there was also the matter of how they would rear the birds without having any previous experience – or much spare cash to pay for essentials like feed.

“It was a compulsory saving scheme,” says Eoin, who explains how they had to “scrape every penny they could” that first season, with no guarantee they would be able to sell the finished birds at the end of it.

“Nobody had any faith in ya,” he recalls.“I’d say to people: ‘Would you buy a free-range turkey?’ And they’d say: ‘No. Why would I do all that work?’ And I’d say: ‘Do all what?’ And they’d be saying: ‘I wouldn’t be able to do all that plucking and cleaning out and that.’

Eoin and Olivia Sharkey on their farm near Kells, Co Meath, with their three daughters Anna (seven), Kate (five) and Sage (two) and some of the turkeys and geese that they rear. \ Ramona Farrelly

That was the perception that people had of buying a free-range turkey direct from a farmer.”

What they did have, however, was Olivia’s experience in marketing and sales from the hotel, as well as advice from the older generation, who had reared turkeys in the past, and their local butcher.

“YouTube will only show you so much,” says Eoin. “You need to go and get advice from somebody and do it properly.”

Of the original 100 chicks, 86 turkeys made it to December after natural losses, and Eoin and Olivia actually sold out with two weeks to go before Christmas. That was not the end of the pressure, however.

“We didn’t know what they were going to taste like,” says Eoin of their initial nerves.

“I felt sick on Christmas Day that first year,” admits Olivia, “waiting for either a phone call or a text.”

An intensive start to the season

Such fears were unfounded, however, with the majority of their customers booking their turkeys again for the following year. And having grown slowly but surely since, the couple are now rearing 800 turkeys for this year’s Christmas market, along with 300 geese.

Though, as Olivia points out, their Christmas actually starts at the end of April when the goslings arrive from Sean Kent in Co Wicklow, with the day-old turkey chicks arriving in early July from Kelly’s in the UK (as they explain there is no commercial hatchery in the Republic of Ireland).

“The nursing of those birds and chicks is so intense,” says Olivia, especially in the early weeks when it is so easy to lose the vulnerable babies.

Eoin and Olivia Sharkey on their farm near Kells, Co Meath, with their three daughters Anna (seven), Kate (five) and Sage (two) and some of the turkeys and geese that they rear. \ Ramona Farrelly

Indeed, Eoin likens it to dairying as you are essentially “tied to the farm” monitoring factors like temperature, water and bedding, as well as the risk from predators, with a camera system linked to their phones so they can both check on the birds even when off-site. But once they are strong enough to venture outdoors, the turkeys and geese have the run of the farm from dawn ’til dusk, as well as enjoying a varied diet that includes grass, barley and wheat from Paul Moorehead in nearby Fordstown, foraging crop, fallen apples and carrots.

While great for flavour and the quality of life for the bird, however, free-range does pose other challenges, such as the logistics of getting the birds finished at the right weights to match orders. To this end, Eoin now farms four breeds of turkey, including roly polys and broad-breasted bronze, to have the widest range possible.

I try to promise them within a pound, plus or minus, it’s a juggling game.

While some of the turkeys are now sold for Thanksgiving and supplied to high-end retailers like Avoca, Fallon & Bryne, Dollard & Co and Hugh Maguire butchers in Ashbourne, the majority for direct sales go for slaughter to Hogan’s farm and processing plant in Kells on 19 December, and are presented oven-ready in a box with the Maperath Farm story, as well as a small gift, such as flavoured butter. A goose will generally retail at €80-€100, with an average turkey at €60-€70.

However, while some customers have asked for just the crown of turkey or to have it boned and rolled, Eoin and Olivia have stuck by selling their birds whole.

“Instead of just buying a crown and getting one Christmas dinner and nothing else, buy one of our turkeys and you will get Christmas dinner, you will get sandwiches the next day, you will get a curry and then you will get an amazing stock from the bones and a soup,” lists Olivia.

“So there’s so much more and so much more nutrition and education to pass on to kids as well by using the whole bird. Just ethically, it’s so much better.”

Festive family experience

Indeed, customer engagement is a major selling point for Maperath Farm, with events like a “Meet Your Turkey Day” at the start of December, as well as hosting the collections in a festive atmosphere on the farm from 22 December until noon on Christmas Eve.

This year, they planted 1,000 Christmas trees – a figure they plan to double next year – and hope this will help build their brand and make Maperath Farm synonymous with local families’ Christmas experiences.

“Our local accountant said to me last year: ‘It’s just a frenzy coming up to Christmas. I know that Christmas has really begun when I put my three little girls in the back of the car and we go to Maperath Farm to collect the turkey,’” smiles Olivia, who is passionate about developing “food tourism” as part of her role as a Fáilte Ireland food champion through the Headfort Arms.

“The whole thing about food tourism is about the experience being immersive and that’s what people want,” she continues. “They want to be able to touch, feel, connect – do things that they can’t normally do.”

As for their own festive celebrations, once the farm gate closes on 24 December, it’s family time. They usually cook a goose “low and slow” on Christmas Eve, while they do their turkey on Christmas Day wrapped in a piece of muslin cloth soaked in butter. And savour every bite – along with 12,000 other happy customers.

“It’s the most important meal of the year,” smiles Olivia.

For further information, visit

www.maperathfarm.ie.

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