Pathways: Sarah Furno, owner, Cashel Blue cheese

I grew up surrounded by a farm-to-fork perspective, with food production, food producers, small distributors and chefs. Our lush green fields and Irish weather create the perfect environment for dairy herds to graze outdoors, and my early childhood memories are of feeding calves on my parents' farm in Tipperary, Ireland, and selling our Cashel Blue cheese at the local country markets.

What was your first job?

When I was 10, my parents suggested I buy and rear a bonum [young pig], feeding it with whey from the cheese and selling it to the local pig factory for bacon.

How did you decide on your career direction?

I have always been drawn to people working in specialty food and drink production and the diversity of outlook and knowledge they represent. I entered Oddbins' graduate retail training programme in London, which led me to work for a various wine importers and merchants. While working for Findlater, an Irish wine merchant, I focused on the premium end of the wine portfolio.

My career goal was to work for myself and, together with my husband Sergio, we planned to set up our own import company of specialty wine and food from small producers in Europe. Equipped with a Wine & Spirit Education Trust diploma, we set off, just married, to work our way around France and Italy for a year, sourcing products. We worked in vineyards and wineries and for cheesemakers. At one point, Sergio ran the kitchen of a cheese restaurant in the French Alps serving 200 covers and I ran the cheese shop and presented the cheese trolley.

What happened then?

In 2003, we were in Tipperary visiting my parents and we could see how stretched the family business was. We had submitted our business plan for a bank loan and it had been approved. On a walk across the farm a thought struck: "Was it the best use of our energy to start another business, when our experience was well-served to develop my parents' business?"

I have now been running my parents' farm for 20 years.Initially, I started in general administration – as a small business, you need to be willing to be a jack of all trades. I answered the phones, worked shoulder to shoulder with the team stirring vats of milk, did the payroll and book-keeping, customer relations, tastings, you name it. Sergio and I travelled a lot in our first few years, gaining an insight into where Cashel Blue was in the market.

Between 2004-2006, we developed our taste grading system and expanded the stockholding of cheese from 4,500kg to 18,000kg. Today, we typically age in the region of 60,000kg of cheese. In 2015, we launched Cashel Blue Organic and in 2018 we created Shepherd's Store, an aged sheeps' milk hard cheese. Last year, we unveiled our 520 PV dairy solar panel project, which supplies up to 70% of our energy requirement.

What are the biggest challenges you've faced?

I think it's managing my team in a supportive way to respect their life needs, while ensuring they are engaged and productive in their work. I seek to provide a good work-life balance for my team and have had many people who have worked with me for well over 10 years.

The past few years have been very challenging, what with Covid, the war in Ukraine and inflation. We lost 70% of our business for a number of months, but we kept everyone on, pivoting into food hampers. We got through it, but it was exhausting.

What advice would you give someone starting out in the industry?

Take it one step at a time. Don't overextend yourself physically or financially. Bigger is not always better.