The Fergusons of Gubbeen

While looking at the RTÉ website the other day I came across a piece on the Nationwide programme about the Ferguson family of Gubbeen, outside Schull in West Cork. Tom and Giana Ferguson have worked Gubbeen Farm for more than thirty years, starting to produce their delicious prize-winning Gubbeen Cheese in 1978.

Their son Fingal recently started The Gubbeen Smokehouse, where he produces a range of smoked bacon, rashers, sausages, salami, chorizo and lardons, as well as a smoked version of the Gubbeen Cheese. As if that wasn’t enough, his sister Clovisse grows organic herbs and vegetables and sells them to local chefs and, as far as I could gather, another daughter Rosie is also involved at the farm end of things.

With all the gloom and doom that is being talked about Irish farming recently it is very encouraging to see this second-generation of artisan food producers, all working on businesses developed from the family farm.

You can watch the clip here, read more about the Fergusons and food producers in Cork in the Observer Food Monthly and the Gubbeen Farmhouse Products website is here.