Fun and Friesians mix at favourite farm for business world
THE legend tells how Ireland's patron saint blessed a spring well beside the Haydens' farmyard at Killaveney, Tinahely in South Wicklow more than 1,500 years ago. Some of that blessing was bound to rub off on the Haydens, who successfully built up their 120 hectares farm (296 acres) over four generations. Now, they manage 95 dairy cows, 100 breeding ewes, and 30 bullocks for fattening, and Joe Hayden is a past recipient of the European Farmer of the Year award. Joe and his brother Michael have also won the National Dairy Development Farmer award in recent years.
But it's not for their farming skills alone that the Haydens have earned the praise of leading companies like Microsoft, Baileys, and De La Rue Smurfit.
Now, more pilgrims come to visit the Orchard Centre on their farm than ever visited St Patrick's Well.
Opened in 1999, situated just 1½ hours from Dublin, the Orchard Centre has become an important specialist provider for companies and organisations who require a dedicated venue for conferences and activity-based programmes.
The Haydens' story of one of looking well beyond the boundaries of farming to fully exploit their assets and location. "We grew up believing this is a beautiful place and that farming is a great profession," says Joe Hayden.
But much more than the beauty of South Wicklow and the industriousness if its farmers has gone into making the Orchard Centre a location which employs four full time and up to 30 part-time staff.
They really seem to have drawn inspiration from St Patrick's Well, because getting LEADER financial support to protect and develop this ancient site was one of the Hayden family's first non-farming ventures. That was in 1992.
Two years later, they got involved in the Daisy 2000 educational project, aimed at genetic improvement of the Irish dairy herd. But the major extension beyond the farming horizon came in 1999.
The Haydens secured LEADER funding of £50,000 towards the Orchard Centre, which is now the focus of their non-farming activities.
Joe Hayden still milks the farm's 95 cows, but he is also Managing Director of the Centre, which he describes as "Ireland's executive venue, creating key programmes for many of Ireland's top companies, leading multinational firms, and public bodies." It's a long way from farming to organising training and activity programmes for business people.
Company staffs come to the Orchard Centre to be transformed into work teams which communicate better, trust more, work more effectively and productively with each other, and solve problems together.
Instead of "get up the yard", the catchwords you hear on the Hayden farm are "corporate team building", "problem solving" and "communication."
On the www.theorchardcentre.ie website, some of Ireland's top business executives give their verdict on the venue. "The aim of our day at The Orchard was to mix team building with fun, in order to get our newly formed group to work more effectively. Our expectations were exceeded in terms of quality of service. The Orchard did an outstanding job in this regard, not to mention that our goals for the day were fully realized", said Wayne Norton, of Microsoft.
"Corporate team building can sometimes have connotations of strident inter-company competitiveness, but what I found at The Orchard truly lived up to the meaning of team building", said Iseult Healy of INAMED International Corp. "From the easily done and fun games to the real cracker of building a house of straw, the groups went from individual participation to a full-out team effort."
"All levels of employee mixed and mingled with great ease and there was none of the usual office-factory situations that can arise. The setting, the events, the food, the entertainment, everything was organised to the last detail."
Team building, improving communication and team effectiveness are taken very seriously in today's corporate world, and the Haydens realised that a farm within a couple of hours of Dublin was an ideal venue to provide these services.
A visit to somewhere like the Orchard Centre is a regular exercise for the Human Resources departments of big multinational firms, and a very necessary exercise for companies involved in mergers and acquisitions, who have to amalgamate new workers into their teams.
The methods used often include outdoors activity programmes. For example, a company might split its 40 staff members into four teams, and use survival games to develop leadership and facilitator skills. "We have had very high occupancy", says Joe Hayden. "We haven't stopped since March."
The reputation of the Orchard Centre team has spread, and the staff are frequently invited to bring their skills and unique staff training courses to other locations, mostly in Dublin but as far afield as Waterford and Cork.
Back at Tinahely, what they offer companies is basically a 200 acre private playground with a conference and team building facility, designed for corporate decision-makers to renew themselves, their management teams and their ideas, away from the helter-skelter of their everyday business lives, a reflective space in a rural setting. "Most of all, its unique environment helps to forge the spirit of teamwork that modern companies need if their business objectives are to blossom and bear fruit", says Joe Hayden.
The venue's distinctively designed conference centre, and a number of other facilities are designed for the enjoyment and achievement of guests, whatever the weather, as there is more than 1,000 square metres of all weather activity area.
A 400 square metres area is constructed around the trunks of huge old trees, covered by a transparent roof. And the Hayden farm's hundreds of acres of parkland and rolling countryside in Ireland's garden county is not only the source of feeding for their flocks and herds, and a playground for their business clients; it is also used for imaginative product launches.
Business clients are offered fun, excitement, and challenges seven days a week, 52 weeks of the year for groups of 20 to 600. From 'Grand Prix Racing' on Ireland's most unusual formula one circuit, to 'Stilt Walking', using team co-ordination and communication to reach their destination in record time puts valuable corporate skills to the test.
Games like 'Human Pinball', 'Water Chain', The Dinosaur Egg, Crossing the Rapids, Captain Hook and 'Balloon Pyramid', challenge participants to be creative team players and problem solving experts.
In the Orchard Centre's Irish Olympics, team play, motivation skills and personal skills are developed in fun events - all covered by the Centre's insurance, of course.
Or Treasure Hunt sets teams the challenge of exploring the Wicklow countryside and using all their observational and problem solving skills to discover gold.
After their exploits, participants can look forward to testing the Orchard's high class reputation for food from the kitchen of Head Chef Margaret Corcoran Margaret.
Completing the package are entertainment facilities, drawing heavily on traditional Irish resources. Musicians and dancers are available, or guests can enjoy an interactive experience with authentic crafts, such as open fire bread making; butter making; basket weaving, stone masonry; working sheep dogs; sheep shearing; wool spinning; pottery; straw rope making; and horse shoeing. Another old world touch is the farm's re-construction of a 1938 village street, offering and ideal backdrop for craft and cultural events.
THE vineyard for Baileys is what Peter O'Connor calls the Hayden farm at Tinahely, Co Wicklow, and its Orchard Centre.
The Marketing and PR Director for the world's top selling liqueur has a double connection with the farm.
He brings the company's guests to the Orchard Centre, and the farm is one of 1,400 Glanbia suppliers contracted to supply milk for Baileys.
"It brings the whole Irish experience to life for our foreign visitors. Recently, we brought 50 overseas clients from every continent to The Orchard and they had the time of their lives", says Peter.
Why become one of the 5% of dairy farmers who sign a legally binding contract to supply high quality milk for Baileys? "We like to be associated with success, and achieving the high quality standard is a challenge", says Joe Hayden.
Joe also sees security in his successful relationship of 13 years with Baileys. As the brand records annual sales growth of 9%, Peter O'Connor predicts that the company will be buying 100 million gallons of milk per year within a decade (representing a 100% increase).
"We pay well", he says, but adds that he is proud to be associated with a group of farmers operating at a high quality level.
The 95 pedigree Friesian Holstein cows are the farm's main enterprise. They fit in with the Orchard Centre's corporate entertainment and training activities. Visitors can observe the feeding and farm management, including a computerised dairy management system.
And diners in the Orchard restaurant can take a step outside to view the herd peacefully grazing over the hedge. The cows are one third autumn calving, two thirds spring calving. Average milk production is 8,100 litres (1,780 gallons), resulting in a total annual farm supply of about 700,000 gallons. Cow management is built around eight or nine months of grazing, and maize silage. A closed herd system is operated, with the 35% replacement rate supplied from within the herd.
Thirty bullocks are fattened, and the farm's flock of 140 ewes continues the link with Wicklow's oldest farming enterprise.
The Haydens are proud to have three protected areas on their lands, in contrast to the attitude of farm organisations who have generally resisted the big increase in designations of farmland for environmental protection, as Special Areas of Conservation (SACs), Special Protection Areas (SPAs), NHAs (Natural Heritage Areas).
Five hectares of fen bog, natural woodland and wild meadow and its unique flora and fauna are protected.
The farm also has a protected trout river, and St Patrick's Well, near the farmyard.
"We were farmers all the way back", says Joe Hayden. He and his brother Michael are the fourth generation of the family living here in Tinahely. Also involved in running the 120 hectares farm (296 acres) is his mother Eileen. The three operate as partners, says Joe, and one farm worker is employed to cope with the farm's joint workload of agriculture and corporate services. How do they do it? It's easy to find out, because guided farm tours are invited, tailor made to suit each group's requirements.
Farming visitors can even benefit from the Orchard Centre's proven training services; the Haydens aim to give farming visitors a balanced approach to agriculture and, above all, recognition of consumer sensitivity.
A distinguished panel of guest speakers are available to them for presentations on farming subjects such as enterprise development, Ireland and the EU, and Rural Development.
