Revisited The Farm Fixer

Last year, I followed eight farms across Northern Ireland

as they diversified in a bid to survive.

They needed to do something different and profitable

before they went under.

It was time for some radical thinking.

There were some strong ideas and there were some very weak ones.

There were dreamers...

You're a dilettante. You dip in and out of things.

'..deadlines were broken.'

You're really making a bit of progress on this.

'There was tough talking...'

This doesn't say, "Buy me," this says, "Bury me."

'..and cage rattling.'

I think money sometimes might be a bit vulgar for you.

'And now I'm back to catch up with some of them'

to find out what happened next.

I'm on my way to Broughgammon Farm near Ballycastle in County Antrim

to meet Charlie Cole and his family.

When I first met Charlie, I found him to be a charming young man

but perhaps a bit of a dilettante, even a flibbertigibbet.

His initiative to bolster the family finances

was goat meat and harvesting seaweed.

Before that, it was bees,

and even earlier, it was a bull farm.

And I began to wonder whether it wasn't just a load of old bull.

We're very close to the north coast here which has a fantastic

seaweed resource which is under-utilised, probably,

and the idea would be to pick it, bring it back here and process it.

How many days a month can you harvest?

And so that gives you about four days at each low tide

so it's about eight days in a month.

Lying around for the rest of the time, are you?

Well, I'm not going on holiday.

One gap in the market is goats.

There's a lot of dairy farms with goats

and all the kids are surplus to that requirement.

They're sort of... These are the boys?

They're being disposed of, yes, the boys.

So the idea is to take them on and fatten them up for two months

on a milk-fed diet and that way, you get a very tasty meat,

much like veal, at the end of it.

No kidding. Exactly!

Charlie was full of enthusiasm,

but he hadn't fully researched his market.

There was a question of the seaweed licence - that took months -

but the really big issue was he had NO knowledge about rearing goats.

Let's talk about the goats. Give me a two-month cost on feeding.

Two-month cost, I think it works out as £50 a goat.

Who's buying? Who's eating kid? Who's eating goat?

Well, unfortunately, I haven't narrowed down an exact market.

I don't have a guaranteed buyer.

Quite a lot of THINKING. Yep.

"I THINK this," and "I THINK that."

Would you admit to me, be honest,

you haven't drilled down deep enough yet on this?

I've not. I've got a lot of numbers floating around my head.

Don't you DARE think you're in business

until you've researched every aspect.

I really wanted Charlie to succeed.

He had the right ingredients -

a good idea, in fact, two good ideas -

but he lacked focus.

I introduced him to some experts and, my word, after that,

my confidence REALLY soared.

Here we have some pepper dulce.

This is probably the prime product.

It only comes in very small batches and it's very difficult to find,

but it tastes delicious.

You know, the price we can get for this is far higher.

It is. Isn't that amazing?

So really, what we're looking at here is seaweed,

but to the experienced eye,

we're looking at lots of different types of seaweed.

Each one with a particular application, perhaps.

The goat meat was an easier sell.

I gathered together some chefs to give their opinion

and, after that, I knew we were on to a winner.

I'm finding the taste quite mild. I think it's delicious.

I think that it's not just an alternative to lamb.

I PREFER the texture to it than lamb.

So what do you think of the taste of it?

Very nice, yeah. It's actually quite tender too.

It's really, really hard to get goat's meat.

I've been getting it from France

which is incredibly expensive and I would use it every week.

I've given him my card and everything!

So, the goat business was up and running.

Now, we turned our attention to the seaweed,

and I arranged for Charlie to pitch to some potential buyers -

two ladies from Fortnum and Mason in London.

And one idea we've come up with is our seaweed soak bath soak. Um...

So we've got a little bit of salt falling out.

This is it, and then the bag...

You put this in the bath and it will then sort of expand.

It grows by about five times.

I'm concerned that, as we've said, it's a whole luxury market.

We're asking our customers to sort of sit in the bath

with quite a large bag of seaweed.

Charlie fared better with Dublin-based Green Angel,

a company specialising in skincare and seaweed products.

Would you be able to put it into some kind of bag?

Bagging shouldn't be a problem. We've looked at doing it ourselves.

We retail to around 500 pharmacies,

and if we start exporting, which is where we want to go...

We would be able to provide a competitive package

in comparison to a lot of the other producers,

who would literally pick it and look for the immediate sale.

So what you're saying is that

you're really going to do this more professionally?

Obviously, if we were negotiating a contract,

then we would be more sure of what our overheads are going to be

and we can then tie it down to a more competitive price.

So do you feel, sort of, once we've tied down our cost,

would you be happy for us to go forward

and discuss an actual contract and do business together, or...?

I think we may be one step away from a deal.

Thank you very much.

When I last met Charlie, he had finished the research

and was going straight into business on both fronts -

goat meat and seaweed.

Now, let's see whether he's made any real progress.

Charlie. Lovely to see you again. Great to be back.

Long time no see! Looking forward to hearing a lot!

Oh, plenty has happened. What's been going on?

We have been flat out. We've got lots of volunteers.

So it's been really good? Absolutely manic.

When I first met you just over a year ago,

you made a declaration: "I don't want to be a millionaire.

"I just want something to support the farm and the family."

Have you achieved that?

We're flying along. We are well and truly on the road.

I wouldn't say that we'd made it,

but we are now up to a 300-strong herd with the goats.

On the back of that, we're now building a butchery facility.

We've also established a good market stall,

and we are now travelling around and being invited to tender for events,

both doing fresh meat and cooked products.

That wasn't on the cards last year.

We worked out that if we can sell straight to the customer - hot food -

you get a bigger margin.

And there are lots of us,

and if we all chip in, it works.

So Broughgammon, up and running at speed.

Come on, let's go and have a look at this herd of yours.

Is it herd or flock?

I don't know. We are sort of always debating this. 300!

My word, Charlie! How times have changed!

I saw a little stable, then I saw a caravan,

now you've got two polytunnels.

This is the big one. How many have you got in here?

There's about 100 in here and they still follow you.

I can get in there and run from end to end and they will follow me.

It's not a game any more, is it?

There is probably three out of every 30 you get really attached to.

They still see you as Mum.

Don't fall in love with them, cos you've got to slaughter them!

How many are you slaughtering a week? At the moment, about six.

So this is the butchery we started there a couple of weeks ago.

It was two disused hay sheds.

The plan for in here is this is going to be the butchery workroom,

then back to about here.

And who is actually going to be doing the cutting, the butchery?

We will be doing the butchery ourselves.

So, Mum, the brothers and I.

Charlie, be careful.

Those big choppers, you could do a lot of damage to yourself.

Still got ten!

So this is the seaweed-drying polytunnel.

We built this literally just as you left last year.

We are using the solar thermal energy to dry out the seaweed.

Every two weeks, you're looking at a low tide

and you would be out picking the seaweed.

Between the tides, 14 days, we've got a down period

where this isn't being utilised.

So we found another income stream in the form of wheatgrass,

and it contains all the goodness in them,

and it's very popular at the minute in the smoothies market,

so it works very well alongside the seaweed.

Charlie, if I cast my mind back,

the original idea was get those kids for nothing,

fatten them up, slaughter them, and sell the produce to restaurants,

and now, I'm standing in YOUR restaurant.

Basically, we had a slight issue with our route to market.

When we first started up,

people weren't open-minded enough about the product,

and we had to go out and we had to prove there was a market ourselves

and give them an entrance-level product like burgers and meatballs.

Something which everyone could cook at home.

Off the back of that, now the butchers and the restaurants

are suddenly interested in the product.

Well, listen, I suppose the proof is in the eating. I'll have one.

What would you like in it? I'll leave it to you.

That looks wonderful. This tastes really good.

Really good. I'm not paying you for it. Cheeky!

So Charlie HAS secured the future of the family farm.

He started out as a dilettante,

but now with the family all around him, he's found his niche,

particularly in the goat meat market,

and I wish him and Broughgammon just the best of good fortune.

I'm off to see Phillip Brown of Phil's Farm in County Armagh.

He inherited his parents' 17-acre farm,

but needed to turn his hobby into a money-making venture.

His hobby - a small collection of animals.

His idea - to create a mobile petting farm.

And how many bookings could you do in a day?

I wouldn't want to do any more than two, to be honest.

You're not turning bookings down, are you?

At the minute, I have had to.

And pricing, what's the average sort of take, per visit?

It would be, like, from £150 till maybe £300-400.

My concern was that Phil would not be prepared to go all out

to fulfil his business potential.

I want to ask you a very simple question.

Is your Phil's Farm just for you, just to put bread on the table,

or are you a bit more ambitious? Do you want to spread your wings?

Do you want to really grow a business?

No, I want to get a business out of it.

It's not...at the minute, it's just ticking over.

Shall I tell you what my plan is?

What I'd like you to do is to rent a barn on a farm somewhere.

To open a branch office, one in Donegal, or in Dundalk,

or, I don't know, Sligo,

with you providing the livestock,

and suddenly, before you know where you are,

you've got five or six and you're running a real business.

My idea was to get Phil to rebrand.

Something more generic,

something that would lend itself to a franchising operation.

So I introduced him to graphic designer Mark Thompson,

in a bid to make Phil understand

just how broad those marketing opportunities are.

There's great creativity, certainly there is,

but we're still...Phil's still there.

Just think ahead ten years, when you might want, sort of to exit,

and I just want to make it easier to exit, you know?

There is another way which could solve the problem.

The brand name, Farmtastic.

There is the potential with a name like that

where you could start in the initial number of years

as Phil's Farmtastic,

but then as it grows, you simply just drop off "Phil's"

and it becomes Farmtastic alone.

I simply could not get Phil to move fast on anything,

and I suddenly realised it wasn't a resistance to change.

It was because he was up to here running the business,

operational matters,

and it was time for him to actually stand back,

loosen the reins off, and delegate.

I'd arranged for Phil to launch Phil's Farm

at the big St Patrick's Day parade in Monaghan,

and I fully expected to see a new truck

with Farmtastic plastered across it and bags of merchandising.

Let's have a look at the Jeep. You haven't seen it yet?

Phil's Farm. What about that global branding we were talking about?

Well, I've got it, it's in here too, I've got it in here.

Oh, you've tucked it up the front. Oh, aye.

You're beginning quietly with the Farmtastic?

We're going to break it in slowly. Look what difference that makes.

This doesn't say anything to me.

Phil had the makings of a fun little business,

and I'd like to see what he's been up to since I last saw him.

Is he now Dr Dolittle, or as I suspect, Dr Do-Nothing?

So, how are you? Great to see you. We talked about branding.

It's amazing! That's a change. I remember the little trailer.

You can't miss it now, anyway! So business is coming on?

Business is booming at the minute.

And have you released the reins a bit? Loosened your hold?

Delegated to a certain extent,

but still I have to keep an eye on things.

But managing growth is a difficult thing.

Talking about growing, have you expanded the range?

How's the zoo, the menagerie, the farm?

Going well. Do you want to have a look and see some of them?

Yeah. Love it.

No chimpanzees, I suppose?

Not yet, anyway. Crocodiles?

I've met this little chap before. The alpaca.

This is Joe. This is Joe. Brilliant. Lovely.

What else have you got? Anything new?

We've brought in two meerkats now, Itchy and Scratchy,

which are a big hit at the minute.

Then we have two new wallabies as well.

And then, of course, at Christmas time we have an extra two reindeer.

We've now got four. Seasonal, but my word,

when it's THEIR season, you make hay.

We have some fairly big news as well from the last time you were here.

Since then I have purchased a new property - a new farm.

Oh, really? So it's Phil's FARMS!

I'll take you over now to let you have a look at it yourself.

This is very good, isn't it?

So, tell me this, the original farm, all right,

the problem there was access, so you couldn't have visitors.

So you bought this place, you've got a riding facility,

you've got a big barn there. Yeah, with a big shed.

You've got access, so you can bring school buses in.

Schools, birthday parties, different fun days.

It's just to add something else that we can do.

You seem to have added quite a lot of staff, actually, Phil. We have,

we've 12 staff and myself now, to be able to run

all the units we have now we can run in one day.

All the units? We now do up to four events now in one day.

So you've got the four units going out there,

you've made an investment in this place,

and this is all funded out of trading?

The mobile farm to be honest is doing well.

We've went from being just a mobile farm in Ireland

to being the biggest mobile farm covering now the whole of Ireland.

There was I saying Phil doesn't do much,

and Phil actually quietly does quite a lot.

You've surprised me a bit.

It takes something, doesn't it, to surprise you?

It might have been a shaky start for Phil, but once he got his head round it,

once he started motoring, well, there's been no stopping him.

I reckon in a couple of years' time he'll be right across this country - Phil's Farms everywhere.

And now I'm on my way to Derrygonnelly

on the outskirts of Enniskillen in County Fermanagh,

where I'll see Gordon Fallis who was really struggling to make his family farm pay

until he came up with the idea of a microbrewery.

What really intrigued me about Gordon was his reluctance

to make lots of money - it simply wasn't his motive, he just wanted to make a living.

I've never, ever before come across a businessman who didn't want to make as much money as possible.

Gordon built a microbrewery,

and was scheduled to produce 1,000 bottles a week.

We'll be able to produce 500 litres of beer, which'll translate into a thousand bottles.

There's potential to run that three times a week, which would translate into 3,000 bottles a week.

However, that would be at the very maximum end of capacity at the minute.

3,000 bottles tells me that's not a big microbrewery.

What I want to get out of this is a living for myself

and enable me to do my farming activities at the same time.

I don't want to become the next Guinness or a millionaire really.

I haven't run into many people like you.

Most people are driving for the most they can possibly get.

They can't help themselves, they've got to keep growing.

But you've said no, that's not what I'm about.

Reluctant or not, Gordon had to make a living

and the first challenge was to come up with a brand.

I worked with a designer, and Gordon pushed on with his own scheme.

I really want this to be sold as a Fermanagh beer, we've really got to tap into that.

That, I can't read. That was an off-the-wall one. I think so.

'In the end, we had a little compromise and Gordon was happy with it.'

Now, the next stage is production.

Yes. I think it's time. And when are we going to be actually tasting some beer? Pretty soon, I hope.

It's time to fill some bottles with beer.

After many missed deadlines and many fraught telephone calls,

Gordon's new beer was ready so I took him to London to launch it

at the Porterhouse in Covent Garden

under the scrutiny of the trade press and many buyers.

I'd feel more at home in a field in Fermanagh to be honest,

and we're a long, long way from the bog lands of West Fermanagh here tonight.

I hope you enjoy the beer - if you want to chat about it

come and have a word with me, mingle, do what

we do here in London, you know? Thanks again for coming, cheers.

Well done.

It's not a crazily flavoursome beer.

It's very drinkable, very quaffable.

Distinctive stands out for that first pint - you might not order the second one.

This one's just about on the cusp.

You can imagine having a second glass of this.

He's nailed it, it's a great beer.

It's obviously led by the consumer

but there's 24 bottles in a case, there's 24 hours in a day,

so say ten cases a month - you know, something like that?

I mean, that's a nice gentle start for a fine beer.

With all the pain of getting the Inishmacsaint brewery

up and running, and with talk of a volume buyer in London,

I'm dying to see what happened next.

You've brought the weather with you. I have. I hope you haven't sold out of your beer, have you?

Cold ones in the fridge. Excellent. Come on, let's have one.

Well, here's to you. Good health.

And when we first met, you were producing about 100 bottles a week.

Now, what's the story today?

Most weeks we would be putting out 1,300 bottles.

And you could push that up to? 2,000. Really.

And you're enjoying the sales but not the distribution?

I really need to be in the brewery getting the beer out.

The distribution's taking up quite a bit of time.

So how are you going to cope with that then? We are going to have to look at the way we're operating

and I think I'm going to have to get back into the brewery

and hand over the distribution to somebody else.

And at the London launch there was a guy who was interested

in taking some product for the UK market. What happened?

I was quite keen to supply some to London,

but the demand at home here was so great that I thought to myself

it's more sensible to satisfy our local market.

And I've heard locally that you sold into the Lough Erne Hotel during the G8 summit.

Well, we supplied the hotel, and it appears that

the President of the US managed to get his hands on a bottle and tried it.

Is that right? That's right. That's amazing.

We've been in touch with his head chef.

A communication from the White House? Yeah, we've an e-mail there and my dad met him.

Isn't that brilliant? Yeah.

Well, that's fantastic. You didn't get a picture of Obama with a pint?

Unfortunately not. That would have been worth its weight in gold.

More than its weight in rubies!

How much would they sell for generally?

I think they sell it for in and around £4.50.

So call it £4. Say 2,000 bottles a week, that strikes me as being

8,000 at retail, and I hope you're getting a good slice of that?

Oh, yeah. There's a margin in it for me.

You need a partner. You stay in the brewery - I'll do the driving.

Might have a bit of work on your hands though cos we're moving further afield,

we're heading into the South of Ireland now.

Oh, really? Into the Republic? My word.

So what other things are you thinking about?

We completed an extension recently...

Let's go have a look. Come on. Let's go.

Good heavens. We're going South then?

Oh, yeah. Definitely.

So what have we got here, then? These are our fermenting vessels,

we can get 3,000 litres of beer in here.

So that's 6,000 bottles. That's right.

And next door? Through here's the brewing end of the operation.

OK. So that's fermenting and this is brewing, yeah? That's correct.

And in there you can ferment 3,000 litres, 6,000 bottles

but the production capacity in the brewing side is 2,000 bottles.

You've got to decide how fast you travel at this,

and I think possibly you're a cautious man.

You're going to eat the elephant in small pieces. Is that right?

That's right. We'll not get carried away.

Not a bad idea. My word, how you've come on though. Inishmacsaint, my goodness me.

I'm delighted that Gordon's Inishmacsaint is doing so well.

He still maintains he's a reluctant businessman, but the tide has turned.

He enjoys selling, and he enjoys bringing in the extra money to sustain the farm and the family.

He's got success, it's there - all he's got to do is reach out and seize it.

Next on my hit list is Colin Heron of Tullyveery House, Killyleagh in County Down.

He had the idea of opening up the family estate

and going into the lucrative wedding market.

Colin, good morning. Nick, welcome to Tullyveery. Thank you.

This is probably my last serious opportunity to effect radical change here for the better.

This area with this hard core that's about to be spread out and compacted

is the base area for where a marquee complex

which will take up to 250 people can be erected,

and the client can configure that tent as they wish.

And how much are you actually charging for that footprint?

In this case it's £1,850, which is rather less than, actually, some of my competitors.

£1,850. That's a flat fee? Yep.

Depends... I've only got 100 people, or I've got 250? Yeah, it's a flat fee.

It's a flat fee? It's a flat fee.

Colin needed to think about other forms of revenue

and I asked him to consider maybe American tourists, cruise ships -

and to test the water I arranged for a bus-load of WI women

to come down here to Tullyveery to be entertained and indeed enthralled by Colin.

Good morning. Welcome to Tullyveery.

I don't know how far you've travelled,

perhaps you want to come in and sort of check the house out first. Come on in!

Lunch is at 1 o'clock, so we've got a bit of time in hand.

Do you want to have a potter round outside before you take your coats off?

Sorry, I haven't brought you in, I'll take you out. Do you want to leave bags and things here?

I had a professional career away from here until I was 55 and came home,

had a hard look at it and thought it maybe has to do something to wash its face.

So it's quite an interesting, complicated world but Northern Ireland's got a lot to offer.

We're witnessing a very strange little scene here.

One company's responsible for everything that happens on shore...

This group is a sort of tour group. It's a trial tour group.

What I have not nailed down yet is how much they're going to take off...

But Colin's talking to them about almost everything he knows.

Other than the sort of talk he would give to a tour group he's talking about the margins, the chef...

"Not sure how much money the cruise liner would want

"because after all they've got their mooring fees in Belfast Harbour..."

It's a bizarre carry on. He's sort of emptying his heart to this group.

Who are not the slightest bit interested in hearing about this.

If he were to do this to a genuine tour group of Americans,

I think they'd scuttle back to their ship double-quick.

I then piled on the pressure by sending a group of corporate types

for an evening of fine dining.

No problem - Colin rose to the challenge OK.

Here, we are very close to Comber, which is the ancestral home of the Andrews family.

Americans who are interested in the whole Titanic memorabilia thing might be interested.

There's 50 to 60 Titanic societies in the states, I believe.

So there must be a market that can be tapped in for special fine dining dinners

or something to tie in with that.

So Colin had lots of potential revenue streams,

and I'm very keen to see just how many he's succeeded in exploiting.

Colin, how are you? Lovely to see you back here.

Every time you come here the sun shines.

Has Tullyveery ever looked better?

I have a big wedding tomorrow. Most of the guests tomorrow are Americans.

They've come in from Florida, Philadelphia... It's their sort of weather.

But I want to talk to you about the money. You love talking about the money.

Eventually, it's always about the money. Of course.

Now, that is what I call a marquee, my word. That's magnificent.

We've seated 160 in there for dinner quite easily, three weeks ago.

It'll take up to 200, and up to 300 when people come along afterwards. So it'll take big numbers.

Are you still sticking to the old footprint argument?

"I sell you a bit of my garden, and of course I sell you me"?

Well, we've two packages - I have a house fee which opens all doors, opens all areas,

and the marquee company offer a fantastically well-priced package,

which means you know exactly from the outset when you add those two together

what it's going to cost you for a country house wedding here in a marquee.

So we've got the wedding business,

and then I was looking through some research papers the other day

and I noticed that there were actually a lot - maybe 60 - cruise ships,

pulling into Belfast Harbour this year. Are you getting any business from them?

Yes. We're still working with a company in Dublin who control these,

I've got four bookings for later on this month.

For dinners, or...? No, afternoon teas. Country house afternoon tea.

But you don't know really until the last minute because it depends

how many will select to come and take up this land-based option.

So the teas are in-house? Teas are in house. Correct. Literally in the house, there's only up to 16.

But we may, with some expansion of the facilities...

I haven't seen this courtyard. No, this is all new since last year.

So this is the old estate courtyard. Yes, it is. What's the plan here then?

I discovered fairly early on that actually there was a gap

I couldn't actually meet the girls' needs

which was very small venues in the house and do a reception for them there.

You could... Obviously the marquee can take anyone,

but you need a certain minimum number to make a party in the marquee sing, 125 or more perhaps.

And obviously there's the cost of the marquee.

So, with some minor renovation the estate offices here,

which I used to play table tennis in as a kid, that will seat

around 60 to 70, and 20 or 30, 40 friends that come along. I think this complex'll take 125 overall.

So, big daddy weddings, mummy weddings,

baby weddings in the house. Yes. Tell me something -

all this profitable?

No wedding runs at a loss. Well done. Well done.

And it doesn't impact on the beauty of the place.

I think it's wonderful, I love it.

Just over a year ago, Colin Heron was on the cusp of starting

a wedding business. Since then he has done remarkable things -

the original objective, to secure the future of Tullyveery House.

Has he done it? And then some.

I've got no right to say this but, do you know something? I feel rather proud of Colin Heron.

It hasn't all been plain sailing but I'm happy to say

that, for these farmers, our combined efforts have paid dividends.

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