Brexit and Covid put these Beara cheesemakers on the brink after 48 years. Here’s how they survived and thrived
Quinlan Steele’s parents started making Milleens cheese in a saucepan in their kitchen in 1975, using milk from their dairy herd. They used to export all over the world but ‘the pandemic nearly destroyed the business’ and they turned things round by focusing exclusively on the Irish market
Quinlan Steele inspecting some of the newly made Milleens cheese on his family farm on the Beara Peninsula before it is packaged and distributed. Photos: Don MacMonagle
It’s almost half a century since the Steele family made their first batch of Milleens cheese in a pot on their kitchen stove on West Cork’s Beara Peninsula.
Norman and Veronica had been milking a small herd of dairy cows on their farm in Eyeries and found themselves with some excess milk.
