IT JUST takes one conversation with Abbeyfield Farm’s Daragh O’Neill to see why the business has become the success it is today. It all began when his grandfather bought 240 acres of land in Clane, Co Kildare, in the 1930s and worked it as a sheep and dairy farm.

Daragh’s father, the late Charlie O’Neill rode his whole life from Pony Club with his first pony Blossom, to serving as joint-master of the Kildare Foxhounds for 10 years. Two weeks before Charlie was due to sit his leaving cert, his father suffered a stroke and he had to come home and take over the running of the farm.