Nicole: Welcome to our podcast, “Cow to Cone”. We’re going to explore the connection between the cows you see in the fields around Dingle, Ireland, to that luscious ice cream everybody is enjoying, rain or shine. 

Nicole Batinich (left) & Emma Avenia (right)

Emma: Ever wonder what makes ice cream in Dingle so creamy? Is it the way the cows live, so happily eating grass, or the short distance their cream has to travel? Or is it some other mysterious ingredient, like love? Elsewhere in the world, dairy production is highly mechanized. What is it about the way dairying is done here that makes the cream so rich? This is (in our own voices): Nicole, Riley, Lola, and Emma and we are here to explore the importance of the traditional dairy industry in rural County Kerry and how it supports the growth of popular ice cream shops like Murphy’s. 

Riley: It’s a cold, rainy afternoon, however there’s a crowd of people lined up outside Murphy’s, salivating for a scoop of ice cream. 

Murphy’s Manager Kevin:  Uh, so my favorite flavor of ice cream is the Irish brown bread. Uh, we crumble up brown soda bread, cover it in brown sugar, pop it into the oven for eight hours on a really low heat to caramelize it. So it has a very, uh, crunchy texture but a very sweet flavor

Customer: I got the butterscotch and the Irish strawberry, they’re delicious, I could highly recommend.

Lola Sehl (left) & Riley Ramos (right)

Riley: Murphy’s ice cream was started by two American brothers as one shop in Dingle and has since expanded to Galway, Dublin, and China. There are even two locations in the town of Dingle alone. Clearly there is something special about this place. The bathroom doors are painted with information about their process and where they get their cream. But what makes this ice cream so appealing? Is it the unique flavors, the friendly staff, or the locally sourced cream they use?

**sound of bell**

Ciera: Hi, my name is Ciera. I work in Murphy’s Ice Cream. I am currently a host advisor. I have been here three summers and I work in the Dingle shop mostly, but I also work in the Dublin shop during the winter. 

Lola: You may be wondering, what’s their most popular flavor? Well…

Ciera: The Dingle sea salt is one of our most popular flavors. We actually gather seawater from a beach local to us, wine strand, filter and boil it down and we add it to our base which is cream, milk, eggs and sugar. It’s very similar to vanilla but there’s actually no vanilla in it which is surprising to a lot of people but you can really taste the creaminess of the Kerry cow in the Dingle sea salt specifically. 

Emma: What really makes this place work is the people. 

Ciera: It’s really family friendly. Like I arrived at the shop and I’m working with my second cousin and it’s just so random because we didn’t know, but a lot of people who come into the company have had connections already in the company, like their parents or their aunties or their cousins, they were already in the company.

**Sound of cows mooing**

Lola: So where do the ingredients for all of this luscious ice cream originate? Turns out, not so far away…

Soft green acres of open pasture hug the sides of a narrow road on the outskirts of a quaint town called Dingle, Ireland. A herd of cows gather, their hides black and silky with white patches, with the exception of a single red cow. Welcome to Dinny’s farm. 

Dinny’s Red Calf

Dinny: I’m Dinny Galvin. I’m 54. I’ve been farming here since I was 16. It’s a mixed farm, dairy and sheep, and we produce milk, we produce sheep meat and wool, and we sell those on to the processor. 

Riley: He’s justifiably proud of his cows and the quality of the milk they give. 

Dinny: The best possible milk you can get anywhere in the world comes from dairy cows who are eating grass, not from dairy cows that are indoors, because a lot of it is produced from maize and concentrated feeds and genetically modified feeds. 

Emma: Grass is the one crop that grows in abundance in County Kerry, an area where the land yields not much else, but it’s not all sunshine and rainbows here at Dinny’s farm. It’s expensive to keep up with environmental regulations designed to protect waterways. 

Dinny: It’s very, very environmentally driven now. Which is putting pressure on a lot of the smaller guys like me. So if you’ve got a young family, I’m married, I have five kids. My goal in life is to send those girls to college, to uni, like yourselves, but if you have to invest X amount on the farm, and you’re trying to take care of the family as well, you’d need to be getting a lot more for your product.

Nicole: Dinny feels like he has a big target on his back as a small dairy farmer. 

Dinny: …they prefer a lot of the smaller guys would get out of the way and they prefer to have so many bigger guys, you know, concentrate on us.

Narration Emma: With all these added pressures and responsibilities, the future of Dinny’s farm is uncertain…

Dinny: I hope somebody will farm something here. It may not be dairy cows, but you know, I would hate to see, I would hate to think it would be sold. The farm next door was sold because it was an elderly man that owned it and then he never married. Which is sad, you know, we love to see it being handed on, but I mean, for the small farm 50 acres and milking 30 to 40 cows my son Cathal would not make a living outta that. He would have to do a double job. 

Lola: Is “keeping it local” actually enough to save a farm like this? After all, Murphy’s is expanding and the demand for grass fed dairy is escalating. 

Dinny: Anything you get wrapped up in plastic and we’ll say that milk, that beautiful white milk that’s in the tank, that goes to the milk processor. Nutrition is health, and certainly don’t ever believe anybody that tells you any different. As fresh as you can get vegetables, as fresh as you can get milk, and as semi-organic as you can. 

Nicole: So, if farmers like Dinny were unable to sustain their businesses, what do you think would be lost if local cream was no longer available? Ciera from Murphy’s has her thoughts. 

** sound of bell **

Murphy’s Dingle Location

Ciera: I think a lot of it is lost. We try to make everything ourselves. If not, we get it locally, which makes us stand out because we use such products where you know they come from. The taste would be lost, the creaminess would be lost. I think it would be a significant challenge and that we’d lose some customers over it, because that’s why they come to our ice cream is for the creaminess. 

**Ice cream truck jingle**

Nicole: After speaking to Dinny and Ciera, we’ve come to realize how much We take organic and local produce for granted. Everyone loves the idea of eating organically. Especially when it comes to supporting the farmers behind the scenes. 

Lola: Yeah, I think oftentimes we find ourselves enjoying the final product of something without really acknowledging the work that goes into it. 

Riley: I agree. It’s so vital to appreciate and support the people who contribute to satisfying our taste buds and for preserving an industry we all love. 

Emma: Especially since Murphy’s is so good! 

***Fade out music of Ice Cream by the Carling family***

Nicole: You’ve been listening to “Cow to Cone”, a podcast about how Murphy’s ice cream is promoting local dairy by sourcing from local producers and spreading the love back to farms like Dinny Galvin’s. We hope you’ve liked what we presented here. Thank you for listening. This has been Nicole, Riley, Lola, and Emma. If you liked our scoop on Murphy’s, maybe you should go get your own! 

Links:

Dinny’s Website: https://www.farmingfornature.ie/nominees/dinny-galvin/

Murphy’s Website: https://murphysicecream.ie/