Pick up a pint: why Portrush farmers are the cream of the crop

He hit the headlines recently after he and his wife introduced one of the first milk vending machines in Northern Ireland to be located on a farm, and judging by his past history, William Chestnutt isn’t a man to wait around when it comes to chasing his agricultural ambitions.

“I didn’t really hang about for my graduation,” he says in his laid back, North Antrim accent, a smile very much evident in his voice.

“The calving season had started over in New Zealand at the end of June, so I did my finals and headed out.”

The University of Newcastle graduate had literally just finished his degree in Agriculture, and was setting off to the other side of the globe to spend six months on a farm in the North Island, gathering up all the experience he could, even though he had already grown up on a dairy farm just outside Portrush, and would ultimately be returning home to farm there alongside his father.

“I farm in a partnership with my mum and dad, James and Ruth,” the 32-year-old father-of-one tells me, speaking about the Ballybogey Road based enterprise, which is less than a mile from the Royal Court Hotel.

“Our family has been on this farm since 1913 - it was my great grandfather who started it. Today we have 250 milking cows - there have always been dairy cows here, even years ago when most farms were mixed, we were always predominantly dairy.

“When I was growing up on the farm, I was always helping out, messing around, just doing something. I love working with the animals and particularly the cows - I do enjoy the milking.”

But in somewhat atypical teenage style, William, by his own admission, wasn’t one of those ‘farming kids’ pulling every trick in the book to try and get out of going to school.

He attended what was then Coleraine Academical Institution (now the newly formed Coleraine Grammar School) and enjoyed it.

“School was never something I didn’t enjoy going to,” he recalls.

“I was into rugby, and I wasn’t one of those kids who grew up on a farm and was always fighting to stay at home, although I was at home when I was needed!

“But I didn’t mind going to school, and I did my A levels.”

William was initially faced with the two options of going on to study Agriculture at either CAFRE Greenmount in Antrim, or Harper Adams in Shopshire.

He says he knew that he “wanted to get away out of the Northern Ireland bubble for a while”, and ended up choosing Newcastle, for a number of reasons, including its ease of access and regular flights to and from Belfast

The trip that followed to a farm close to Hamilton, New Zealand, wasn’t quite so short, but it was worth every mile.

William explained how he found a website which published ads for farms searching for workers and vice versa, and he uploaded “a very basic CV” outlining his experience and qualifications.

“People began contacting me, and there was one in particular which looked as though it had a very good set-up.

“I headed out and I worked there for six months, then I did a bit of travelling; I went to the South Island, and to Australia, and then I actually ended up coming back to the farm to work for a couple of weeks before I went home.”

William found that farming in New Zealand was vastly different from farming in Northern Ireland.

“New Zealand would be very cost focused, whereas here it is more about production,” said William.

“And of course the landscape is very different over there.

“The land is steep, some of the areas we had cows on we would have considered more sheep country.”

When he returned to Ulster, William got stuck in to farming alongside his father.

He says it was, from the outset, very much an equal partnership, as “I had always been involved in the decision making, even when I was at school”.

He continues: “When I was away as well, I would have been in contact with my dad quite a bit to see what was going on and what they were doing.”

So where does wife Alison fit into all this, I ask with a smile, hearing the couple’s 15-month-old son, Edward, shout loftily in the background.

It transpires that they actually met before William travelled to New Zealand - at a Young Farmers’ bash at Ballymoney Rugby Club, not far from Alison’s home village of Stanocum.

And because she had been brought up on a dairy farm as well, she knew precisely what was in store when her and William got married.

“We didn’t start going out properly until he came home from New Zealand,” she says. “I knew what being a dairy farmer’s wife would mean, and the lifestyle that went with it.

“To be honest it was the only lifestyle I ever knew growing up, and I was quite happy - I don’t know what I would do with a man if he worked nine to five!”

*Call in for an utterly delicious glass of fresh cow’s milk at Chestnutts’ farm, 211 Ballybogey Road, Portrush, BT56 8NE.

The moment couple realised venture was going to be a success

When the Chestnutts actually ran out of bottles to serve up their milk to the public, they realised their venture was going to be a success.

“We had only ordered a limited number of bottles, as we didn’t know how popular it was going to be,” reveals William, as his wife Alison explains that the idea to install the vending machines at their Co Antrim farm actually took root way back last December.

“We had seen them in magazines and on CountryFile, and we just decided it would be a great idea,” she said.

“We had been talking about diversifying anyway, and when we saw that we thought it would be a good way of doing so, especially considering the fact that we live so close to Portrush and have caravan sites and so on, on our doorstep.”

Alison, who worked within food quality departments within the food industry for eight years, said one of the machines is for dispensing the bottles - you can choose a one litre one, or a 250ml quantity - and the other supplies the milk.

“The process is that the milk is pumped directly from the cows into the pasteurizer, and then it is transferred into what is like a milk tank on wheels. William then transfers that into the vending machine.”

The Chestnutts did all their research into the way the machines worked back at the beginning of the year, and travelled over to Somerset to see them in operation at four different working farms.

“We saw their set-up and discussed it all with them, and they were all really positive about it and encouraging. They said they wished they had done it years ago, and are getting a much better price for their milk.”

The Chestnutts finally opened their very own machines earlier this month, and after a busy first weekend, the number of visitors started increasing further. William believes there are a couple of reasons for the enterprise’s popularity, one being, quite simply, the flavoursome taste of the milk.

“It’s just that wee bit creamier than ordinary milk,” he says, adding that milk processed in a factory is ‘flash/quick pasteurized’, whereas the milk pasteurized at his farm is done so using a much slower process, with a batch brought to 63.5 degrees for 30 minutes.

They even offer different flavours of milkshake, which unsurprisingly, the younger visitors absolutely love.

And whilst the family had discussed the possibility of locating the machines at the bottom of their lane, for ease of access to passing visitors, they’re glad they stuck with their original idea of having them up in the yard itself. “People like to come in and meet us, and see the farmyard,” adds William.