A New Life:When a married couple saw a gap in the market, they turned ice cream into the main ingredient of their career and life, writes Mick Kelly.
It can be difficult if not impossible to completely switch off from work when you're self-employed, as anyone who runs their own business will tell you. But when a married couple run a business together, there's a real risk that every conversation in the relationship can become work-related.
Nigel (28) and Carol (26) Harper started selling homemade ice cream in 2005 and readily accept that the lines between personal and professional can blur all too easily. "We were out for a meal recently," says Nigel, "and after we had eaten we saw the chef sitting at the bar having a drink and I was so tempted to go over and try to get him to take our ice cream for his restaurant. But Carol said, 'we're off tonight'. We called him a few days later though."
After studying at Greenmount Agricultural College in Co Antrim, Nigel returned to work on his father's farm just a few miles from Kilkenny city. Like all dairy farmers, they struggled with the twin difficulties of increasing costs and decreasing revenues.
"There are so many restrictions on how much you can produce and all the while costs are going up. My parents are still young so there are a lot of people to be supported from the farm."
The food science module he studied while at agricultural college offered a potential solution. "I saw real potential in ice-cream making. When you sell milk to a creamery wholesale, they make all the money on it. If you start making a product like ice cream yourself, and sell direct to the consumer you can make that little bit more."
Standing in the milking parlour one day, he mentioned the idea to his father. "He's very forward thinking and if he sees merit in something he will go for it."
At that stage Nigel was engaged to Carol who was managing a pharmacy in Kilkenny following her graduation from a legal studies course at WIT. She confesses that she had no idea what she wanted to do when she left college and more or less fell in to a job with a pharmacy, having worked there part time while studying. In the summer of 2005, she left to work on the farm for a few months.
"I'm a real townie so I'd say I wasn't much help. I was feeding calves and that sort of thing and of course the summer is a very pleasant time to be on a farm. It was very different from what I was used to but I loved it."
After their wedding the couple moved into a one-bedroom converted barn beside Nigel's family home. How did she feel about living so close to the in-laws?
"I didn't mind at all. They are very easy to live with," she says.
With Carol at a loose end and Nigel thinking about ice-cream making as a way to improve profitability, they spotted an opportunity. "We did a lot of research on the internet," says Nigel, "and then in October 2005 we went to Holland and met a lady who was doing exactly the sort of thing we wanted to do - making good quality homemade ice cream."
It would be wrong to assume that because Cramer's Grove ice cream is homemade, it's made on a stove in their kitchen.
"Before we could sell anything the department had to come and ensure the premises met regulations and take samples away to test them. It's a huge risk financially because the capital costs to get started are so high and because my father is still involved in the farm, he is taking the risk with us.
"We just thought, 'we're young, we've no kids, if we don't do it now, we never will'. We didn't want to look back in 10 years' time and regret that we hadn't tried it."
Their first customer was the Marble City Bar in Kilkenny. "We focused initially on restaurants because it's year-round trade and is not weather-dependent. We did some farmers' markets as well which was great because you get feedback straight away from customers, which is useful in deciding which flavours work.
"Only more recently we started to go retail. It is now sold in two shops in Kilkenny and one in Waterford."
Their ambitions for the product are relatively modest. "We will never compete with the big guys but we just want to be able to earn a decent wage, take the odd holiday and above all make a really good product.
"Since the 1950s ice cream has been made commercially and I think we've forgotten what the real thing tastes like. Commercial production uses the bi-products of dairy as opposed to dairy itself. Because we have the herd here, we only use fresh milk."
Does working together at such close quarters cause its own stresses? "To be truthful, it does," says Nigel. "When you are self- employed, you think of business 24/7 and it's difficult to switch off." Carol agrees: "We have a new rule - when we finish up at night we have to stop talking about ice cream. It doesn't always work."
Both agree that the benefits of their new life outweigh the negatives.
"When I was working in town we didn't get any time together really. He would be up early milking so we would only see each other for a few hours in the evening," Carol says.
"There's also a great sense of achievement when we are in a supermarket and we see someone picking up a tub of our ice cream."