What do they do?
The Ferguson family has worked Gubbeen Farm for many generations now. It is a 250 acre coastal farm in West Cork one mile outside the fishing village of Schull, the Atlantic Ocean bordering one boundary and Mount Gabriel to the North as a back drop behind the land, sheltering the pasture that has always supported the Gubbeen herd. Tom Ferguson is the herdsman. He inherited Gubbeen in the early 70’s when he married Giana who originally came from London of an Anglo-Hungarian family. Their work at Gubbeen has involved, almost from the earliest days of meeting, a quest to produce food on the farm - food that comes directly from the land they farm and reaches customers as seasonally and as freshly as possible. The cheeses started when their son Fingal was born, by the time their daughter Clovisse arrived Giana had moved into a small dairy alongside the house where she worked with William Ferguson, her father in law, on the earliest of the Gubbeen Cheeses. Fingal has become a well-respected smoked meat producer; he has over 50 products and a fascination that grows each year with the arts and science of charcuterie. His pigs are born at the farm, the sows having grazed the pasture all summer long and the young being born down at the farm. They are fattened-on in large, airy, straw filled pens overlooking the Atlantic with one wall open to the fresh air and the fields. All the animals at Gubbeen are fed on GM free feed. The cattle that produce the milk for the cheese are carefully reared by Tom and Andrew Brennan.
Why do we love them?
The land provides the grass for the herd at Gubbeen, their milk is made into the cheeses and the whey is fed to the pigs and other animals, the gardens add vital flavour to the cured meats and the family work the year round in their chosen life - as food makers.
