Turkeys put food on the table for Clive!
Winston Churchill once said that “an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” However, when Dunkerrin butcher, Clive Clarke lost his job as a butcher in 2010, he wasn't feeling too optimistic about the future. The father-of-two was faced with two stark choices – either emigrate with his wife, Shirley, and young family or stay in Ireland and try to make a living in a country which was still in the throes of a deep recession.
“There wasn't too much room for optimism there” he recalls “ but I made the decision to stay and I decided to explore all my options, and the first place I looked was to the family farm.”
As an only child, Clive knew that there wasn't enough land to sustain himself and his family on his father, David's, mixed cattle and sheep farm, so he had to look at ways of combining his skill as a butcher with his knowledge as a farmer!
The answer arrived in the form of a butchering enterprise on his father's farm, and today Ashgate Farm Butchers is one of the most successful businesses of its kind in the country, selling free range turkeys, chicken and pork products to customers all over the country.
The run-up to Christmas is particularly busy for Clive Clarke who reared over 100 free-range turkeys during the year on the family farm, as well as his own pigs and chickens. “There is a huge demand for free-range produce, and we have expanded our business every year for the past eight years” he says.
“We have five sows here, which is small in the overall scheme of things, but we breed them twice a year, so we would rear between 100 and 140 pigs per year, all of which we sell directly to our customers” he says. Clive also adds that he rears “a couple of hundred chickens” on the family farm as well.
In addition to selling his free-range produce into the market at a premium price, Clive Clarke also prepares animals for customers to put in their deep freeze, and says this aspect of the business is very important and is growing all the time. He also provides a fully prepared “pig on the spit” service for barbeques in the summer.
“We have a lot of repeat customers here, and then we have people who we only see once or twice a year, but we value all our customers and treat them all the same” he says, adding that it has been a great “morale booster” for him to be able to set prices for his produce, rather than have to take whatever price is set by the market, which is the norm for most farmers.
As a one-man operation, Ashgate Farm Butchers is a very busy place to be, especially this close to Christmas, but Clive Clarke says he is “over the moon” to be able to grow and expand his business. “I have got great assistance and advice all along the way from the Offaly Local Development Company and I would like to acknowledge that” he says, adding that his 12-year-old son, Zac, and 10-year-old daughter, Abigail, are both very interested in farming and are always willing to lend a helping hand when needed.
Clive got the name for his new business from a big ash tree which grows at the front gate to his father's farm. “When I was a child I always thought the tree looked like a big sad person, so when I started up my butchering business I decided to call it Ashgate Farm Butchers as a reminder of that big ash tree” he says.
Clive Clarke's story will feature on RTE 1 television's flagship farming programme Ear to the Ground on Thursday night of next week, December 20, at 8.30pm.