Sweet taste of success for landscaper turned farmer in the Dublin mountains

Producing what’s been acclaimed as ‘the best honey in Ireland’ wasn’t on the agenda when Olly Nolan began farming a smallholding on the outskirts of the capital eight years ago

Olly Nolan, a landscaper by profession, didn’t have any intention of starting his own honey business when he bought a house in the Dublin Mountains. Almost eight years later, however, Olly can barely keep up with demand for his honey.

“Myself and my partner Christian moved here in 2012; I’m originally from Killiney, South Dublin and Christian is Canadian,” says Olly.

“The house was set on eight and a half acres of ground. I had just started beekeeping the previous month and had just one hive which I intended to use for honey for ourselves. We wanted to become self-sufficient and produce our own food.”

Olly began by planting enough vegetables to supply his own household and bought a few Dexter cows for meat and milk.

In order to own livestock, he was required to get a Green Cert, and as he already had a degree in horticulture, he was given it without doing any further training.

Olly and Christian quickly transformed their new land into a smallholding and bought some chickens, goats and Jacob sheep.

As Olly’s love for beekeeping grew, so did his desire to produce more honey.

“One hive turned into two and three and so on. People began to realise that I was producing honey and they’d ask me for some. It became apparent that there was a niche in the market for the type of raw honey I was producing,” he says.

Tree surgeon

Olly had been working as a landscaper and tree surgeon and decided to reduce his work in order to put more time into his smallholding.

“I wanted to invest more time into the honey production because I could see that there was potential for something big there,” he says.

After focusing on the honey production for a few years and preparing to get his business off the ground, Olly joined SuperValu’s Food Academy in 2016.

He attended a workshop every couple of weeks where he learned how to run a food business. At the end of the workshops he had to make a pitch to SuperValu management and was offered ten stores to supply with his honey.

Although Olly was delighted by the offer, he declined taking on so many stores.

“I didn’t want to risk taking on too much too soon, so I started by supplying two SuperValu stores in my area, Knocklyon and Firhouse,” he says.

Fast-forward to 2020 and Olly’s Farm is now supplying 17 places throughout Ireland, including cafes and small shops. Olly produces different varieties of raw honey including Heather, Blossom and Softset, and has set up a website whereby his products can be directly ordered in Ireland and the UK.

Olly’s honey is different to most as it is ‘raw’.

“The honey is simply extracted from the frames and cold-filtered

this means it passes through a coarse filter to remove any large particles such as wax,” he says. “My honey is not heated in any way to make it pass through the filters or to turn it into ‘run’ honey like what you get in the supermarket, so my honey will always crystalise naturally.

“I think that by heating it, you destroy most, if not all, of its health benefits.”

Olly says Heather honey, which is made from nectar collected from the purple flowers on heather, is the most difficult type to harvest.

This is because it is phixotropic in a resting state, which means that it’s like jelly when sitting untouched but when you start harvesting it, it turns to liquid for a period of time.

“I have hives in the mountains where they are surrounded by heather, which is lovely, but harvesting this is hard work and it takes a long time,” says Olly.

All of Olly’s honey jars are sealed

‘One hive turned into two and three and so on It became apparent that there was a niche in the market for the type of raw honey I was producing’