Taste the Nation: It's a long way from Australia to Tipperary but love brought Kylie to Fethard
Kylie Magner of Magners Farm who sell eggs along with their own lamb and a range of organic vegetables.
Growing up in New South Wales, Australia, Kylie Magner could never have imagined how far her dreams would take her. Living on a mixed farm, she developed a passion for horses at a young age — a love affair that would become a career travelling all over the world for some of the globe’s most renowned studs.
It was while working for world-renowned Coolmore Stud in Fethard, Co Tipperary that Kylie met and fell in love with Billy Magner. The couple married and had four children — Matilda, Tadhg, Imogen and Finn — spending a stint in Australia before returning to Ireland to settle on their own farm near Moyglass in Tipperary.
Kylie saw the farm as a business opportunity from the moment they moved there.
“I thought, well if we’re going to live on the farm, then I’m going to make it my income,” she says.
“We had to try to find something that the kids could be involved in and was safe.
“While horses are our love, they are quite dangerous around young children, and it was not an option for us. I looked at cattle and sheep and I couldn’t see how we would make a living farming them on 20 acres.” And then came the hens.
In 2017 Kylie bought 10 hens, allowing them to forage during the day, moving them onto fresh pasture every day. These hens would inform the way Magners Farm would run their farm: using the land itself as a guide to farming regeneratively.
“We sold the eggs in an honesty box on the side of the road and we put all the money into a jar that lived under the sink. We used that money to reinvest into the hen business until we got to fifty hens – that’s when we had to register with the Department of Agriculture as a flock.”
Since then, Magners Farm has become certified by the Irish Organic Association, practising regenerative agriculture. “At its core, this means that we work to improve the health of the soil which enhances the quality of water, vegetation and land productivity,” says Kylie.
“Integrating livestock onto our farm improved soil health, sequestered carbon and helps biodiversity to flourish. For us, it was a no brainer, really because you’re improving your farm you’re cutting down on waste and you’re cutting down on inputs. It’s really environmentally friendly.”
The Magners try to make their farm as diverse as possible, with cattle, sheep and pigs now all resident on the land. This is important to the delicate balance of the land, says Kylie. “I felt that having a monoculture or monospecies on our farm wasn’t really using its full potential. The animals that graze on our land are following a holistically planned grazing management system, which is a type of grazing that mirrors nature.”
Less a buzzword and more a way of life, farming in this way has allowed the Magners to widen the offering of food products that come from Magners Farm. Today, as well as the organic eggs, the farm produces pasture reared organic pork products, including sausages, pudding and delicious merguez sausages.
In season, they sell their own lamb and a range of organic vegetables, all on their online shop at magnersfarm.com Their award-winning chicken bone broth is sold in jars and pouches and is cooked in slow batches with chicken and vegetables from the farm.
Now more than ever, says Kylie, consumers are demanding products that have been produced in the most ethical way possible, and this is hugely important. “I think consumers have just as much of an impact as farmers and producers because we are growing and producing what the consumer wants.”
As a mum to four children, it’s her hope that by growing up watching their parents farming in a way that respects the land, they will be thoughtful consumers.
“It’s my hope that we are instilling in them a connection about what they eat and where it actually came from.”
