In the deep dark pools, trout swim languidly. Occasionally a dorsal fin will ripple along the surface. Then there might be a flare of silver and even occasionally a flash of bright pink. These are gorgeous fish, huge – up to 2½kg each, like small salmon.
While it’s possible that poultry and pig farmers can find beauty in their charges, it’s fair to argue that the pens at Ger Kirwan and his wife Mag’s Goatsbridge Trout Farm hold a beauty that’s much more easily appreciated.
“My father used to say that he could sit on the bridge as a child and watch the fish for hours,” says Ger. “It’s not like raising a pig. Mag always says ‘No matter what, the fish are always beautiful’.”
Goatsbridge, on the Little Arrigal River, a tributary of the Nore, between Thomastown and Knocktopher in Co Kilkenny, is well-known for its rainbow trout. Now more than 60 years old, it has long been a pioneer in freshwater aquaculture in Ireland.
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Its fresh trout, smoked trout, trout pâté and even trout caviar are sold in Dunnes, Tesco, Supervalu and independent groceries across the country as well as in England, France and even Dubai.
It all started with the dreams of a bed-bound youngster in the 1930s. Padraig Kirwan was in and out of hospitals for much of his young life. Stuck in bed, he became a voracious reader. When he was healthy enough, he displayed a remarkable entrepreneurial spirit, selling market vegetables and locally caught game to his neighbours.
When he married in 1960, he and his wife, Rita, began casting about for ways to earn a sustainable living from the small family farm. That was when he remembered having read years before a magazine article about fish farming in the United States.
This, he thought, could be a natural fit for his land. It had plenty of water from the river and the millstream that had been developed generations before to power the family corn mill. The boggy area between the two could be converted to ponds – it couldn’t be used for much else.
So, with a little help in 1962, he dug out five pools, bought some juvenile fish from the state hatchery in Roscrea, and started the farm (hedging their bets, they also started a mink farm to see which would do best; the minks are long gone).
Today, the trout farming continues much as it started, though on a much greater scale. Fresh, clear water diverted from the Arrigal streams through a series of 17 ponds before returning to the river. At any one time there are around 50 tonnes of trout on the farm.
At first, the customers for the trout were local groceries, hotels and fine-dining restaurants. Over the years, as Goatsbridge’s reputation spread, sales increased and the company grew.
Finally, in the early 2000s, Padraig and Rita were ready to retire and Ger and Mag were ready to take over. At that point they were selling only fresh fish. Any idea of value-added was limited to offering the fish cleaned and filleted.
Ger and Mag decided to expand that. “Actually, we had some consultants come in and they studied the business and told us we should concentrate on what we were already good at – growing the fish – and forget about everything else,” says Ger. “So, needless to say, we did the opposite. There are times you come to a crossroads and you just need to trust your gut.”
Today, these new products represent nearly a third of the business. The first expansion was hot-smoking. The couple converted some of the old farm outbuildings into smoking and packing facilities. Then came caviar – because it’s pasteurised, it has a one-year shelf life, so it’s a staple. Then came the pâté. Then cold-smoked trout, which comes infused with different flavourings including Gunpowder Gin and Whiskey and Dill.
Today Goatsbridge has expanded to include six farms in counties Kilkenny and Wicklow, raising 500 tonnes of trout a year, with an annual turnover of about €5 million.
In a surge of building over the last year, what once were stone outbuildings are now gleaming with almost surgical cleanliness. What started as a family assembly line preparing the fish is now a series of ingenious machines that fillet, pin-bone, portion and pack.
The ponds are equipped with an system of pumps to maintain an even water level and temperature through the seasons. They are lined with a screen that allows any waste to fall through to the bottom, where it is then flushed into a reservoir to be used as fertiliser.
There are plans to turn Padraig’s original ponds into a water purification system so the water returned to the Arrigal will, if anything, be even cleaner than it was at the start.
In addition, there is a newly built solar farm to power the operation. The goal is to be carbon neutral by the end of the decade, and Goatsbridge is in the process of applying for Gold status with Bord Bia’s Origin Green sustainability programme.
This rush of improvements – more than €1.5 million in the past couple of years – is due in part to the Kirwans’ native restlessness and urge to be better.
But there’s another reason too. Mag, long the main public face of the company, was diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 2021 and despite a full range of treatments, “we’re sort of on borrowed time,” says Ger. “She has a terminal condition. So we’re looking at different things. We want to be set up for the future.
“The drive is not just money. For us it’s a little bit different. I suppose all family businesses are different, aren’t they? It’s really the feeling of continuing a tradition and doing it very well.
“We’re building on the grind that my parents put in and that Mag and I did after.”
