{"id":623787,"date":"2026-09-13T22:06:36","date_gmt":"2026-09-13T22:06:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/623787\/"},"modified":"2026-09-13T22:06:36","modified_gmt":"2026-09-13T22:06:36","slug":"hey-its-not-that-hard-to-grow-your-own-spuds-how-portnoo-in-donegal-spawned-a-social-media-star-farmer-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/623787\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Hey, it\u2019s not that hard to grow your own spuds\u2019: how Portnoo in Donegal spawned a social media star farmer \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cLife is good when you grow your own food<\/a>\u201d is the philosophy of Donegal<\/a> man Barrie Quinn, one that has drawn more than 780,000 followers to his Instagram account<\/a>, where he shares snippets of his life as a regenerative grower. For more than six years, he has told the story of Portnoo Market Garden, a small, chemical-free farm on the west coast of Donegal, as well as sharing candid chats, helpful videos and tell-all food tales. Now, he has put it all down on paper in a part-memoir, part-how-to book called Homegrown.<\/p>\n

Over a video call on a late summer afternoon, Quinn offers a look at the spectacular south-facing hillside farm that started it all. He points out the house where his father grew up, where his uncle now lives, and the shed where his grandad worked as a blacksmith. This land has been in the family since the 1800s, when his great-great-grandparents first set up home, but Quinn\u2019s is not a simple farm-being-handed-down story. When he was young, he had no real interest in growing and was working as a plasterer when, in 2009, he headed to Australia. While there, he ended up harvesting iceberg lettuce for one of Australia\u2019s biggest supermarkets. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt was my first taste of farm work \u2013 and it was awful,\u201d says Quinn. But a seed was planted for him \u2013 it was the first time he had really thought about agricultural chemicals. \u201cI became aware of names like glyphosate and Monsanto, and started to dig into it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Along the way he met his now-wife Yuka Quinn, from Japan, and together they started paying more attention to what they were eating. Weekends in Brisbane were spent tracking down organic produce and shopping at local butchers. By the time he moved back to Ireland in 2016, Quinn was hungry for better food.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had it in my head that I wanted to grow. Three days after I got off the plane, I was in my mam and dad\u2019s greenhouse,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

And so, Quinn grew, he read and he gave food away to neighbours, learning that he wanted to be able to produce food in a way that allowed him to be sure of \u201cexactly where it had come from\u201d. <\/p>\n

He still had the day job, though, which at the time was fitting PVC windows. Then the Covid pandemic hit and work became precarious. <\/p>\n

\u201cI was cracking up,\u201d says Quinn. \u201cI was really suffering with my mental health.\u201d Against this backdrop, he found solace in the garden, deciding to put everything into growing, and seeing results as early as August 2020.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had a huge amount of cucumbers and tomatoes and apples. I took photos in the back garden and posted on Facebook and said, \u2018Anyone want to buy a box of veg?\u2019 There was a bombardment of messages, and I sold everything. That was the point when I said, \u2018I\u2019m going to go fully in on this.\u2019 That was the day Portnoo Market Garden was born.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"BarrieBarrie Quinn’s Portnoo Market Garden \"BarrieBarrie Quinn’s Portnoo Market Garden \"BarrieBarrie Quinn of Portnoo Market Garden <\/p>\n

Quinn started to transform two acres of the family land that hadn\u2019t been touched in decades. With YouTube tutorials and help from family and friends, he cleared land, learned to drive a digger and found a water source. Trees were cut, ground levelled and 2,000 bags of firewood hauled away. He googled polytunnels. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere was so much work involved, I wouldn\u2019t do it again,\u201d he says, recalling blacking out from exhaustion while planting beetroot. \u201cI went down on my knees to take a breather, and my face hit the dirt. It took my dad to say to me, \u2018Barrie, you\u2019re going home. You\u2019re going home right now,\u2019 otherwise I might have gone back to the beetroot after I\u2019d come round.\u201d<\/p>\n

That first year in the garden Quinn planted about 28 different vegetables, but not everything sold. He realised rainbow chard was not a big seller in Portnoo, but soon the standout products became obvious, and now he does a strong trade in lettuce, kale, tomatoes, cucumbers, French beans, scallions and garlic. <\/p>\n

One plot, now abundant with potatoes, did not start out like that. Quinn tried cabbage there first, but it didn\u2019t take, and spinach was no better. When he tested the soil, he found toxic levels of copper; it turned out his uncle and dad had grown potatoes there decades earlier, spraying copper fungicide against blight every year, and that copper had sat in the soil ever since. <\/p>\n

He presumed the fungicide had ruined the ground and so he covered the beds, until he read how sunflowers can take metals out of soil. \u201cSo I planted 250 sunflowers in there and pulled them out the next season. It\u2019s meant to take two years to change the soil, but we tried it after one, and we got a massive crop. They had cleaned the soil; it was unbelievable. We grow potatoes there every year now, and they have been fantastic.\u201d <\/p>\n

[\u00a0The rural Dublin family farm where the best chefs in Ireland source their produceOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Every crop and every corner of the garden tells a part of his story. John\u2019s Tunnel is a polytunnel his late friend John McCole, who taught him how to grow tomatoes, left to him. \u201cIt\u2019s a really special part of the garden. I made a video of it a few years ago, and I started bawling crying when I was making it.\u201d <\/p>\n

Quinn\u2019s social media videos have played a huge part in the business. He started out posting photos of the garden, then began talking to camera. \u201cInitially, I thought if I just tell people how I\u2019m growing things, it will help sell them. This is how I grow, this is how I do things.\u201d <\/p>\n

But his breakthrough came with a video about a scallion shortage in Ireland, caused by a hurricane in Mexico. \u201cI think it really struck a chord with people because scallions feel so Irish. That was my first video that went big \u2013 100,000 views, I think. Then I was like, hang on, people want to hear this stuff, and I had loads of it in my head.\u201d<\/p>\n

Six years on, he still shares plenty of shocking food stories, but he\u2019s also wary of catastrophising too much. \u201cI also want to talk about, \u2018Hey, it\u2019s not that hard to grow your own spuds.\u2019 I always come back to that \u2013 growing your own, and how to do it.\u201d <\/p>\n

That balance runs through almost everything in his garden. Overgrown corners that might look neglected are essential, the building blocks that let him grow without chemicals. \u201cWe are always trying to rebalance the ecosystem. What people don\u2019t realise is this is pest control. I\u2019ve never seen so many ladybirds in the garden this year, and this is where they live. Then they come out on to my lettuce and eat any greenfly.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Study of \u2018forever chemical\u2019 in European foods finds highest level in Irish cerealsOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Quinn says he gets most questions about slugs. \u201cI have a long answer and a short answer. The short answer is using things like copper tape and sheep\u2019s wool, but the long answer is to balance out your garden, not using chemical sprays, creating a water source, building habitat. Leave grass to grow the way it should. A pile of old sticks, a pile of rocks. It can be anything. They all work together. So nothing gets out of whack, and there\u2019s never too many of anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

Quinn credits the land itself, too. \u201cThe soil was pretty good when I came here. It\u2019s a very unique place. There\u2019s a section with incredible topsoil, and all I can come up with [to explain it] is the trees. Oak, rowan, all this plant life growing on this hillside for centuries, building up and down, growing.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"BarrieBarrie Quinn of Portnoo Market Garden with his father John Roger Quinn \"BarrieBarrie Quinn of Portnoo Market Garden \"BarrieBarrie Quinn of Portnoo Market Garden <\/p>\n

He shows me heads of lettuce planted stripe by stripe, colour by colour, for no real reason other than that it looks great. Lettuce is his biggest seller, which he finds ironic: after that first job in Australia, he swore he\u2019d never look at another head again. In a tunnel bursting with tomato vines, he plucks one and wraps it in a basil leaf growing beside it, smiling widely. \u201cThis is a little perfect moment. Almost every day I\u2019ll do this. There\u2019s nothing like it. I take people in here just for that. It\u2019s an experience. So fresh, oh my God.\u201d <\/p>\n

The only time he smiles more is when talking about his two children, aged four and seven. \u201cIt\u2019s like a playground to them. Then they say, \u2018I\u2019m hungry, Daddy,\u2019 and I\u2019ll say, \u2018Go down there and get yourselves a cucumber,\u2019 and they\u2019ll be munching away.\u201d <\/p>\n

Outside the tunnel, a slide made from water pipes leads down to another tunnel; it\u2019s used for birthday parties, and for the tour groups who make the trip to Portnoo to meet Quinn.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have people from all over \u2013 gardening groups from Ireland, Scotland, England. People that follow me on social media. We do school tours too. I wish we could do more, but they\u2019re time consuming.\u201d <\/p>\n

He admits to having hosted a few super fans: \u201cSome people get overwhelmed when they get here, but a walk around the garden always sorts that out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Quinn says a book had been in his head since he started the garden, but he didn\u2019t want it to just be a how-to; he wanted to tell the story behind it too. Some writing days were hard. \u201cThere was so much emotion. I had tears on the keyboard writing about my friends that passed, my dad\u2019s upbringing. I didn\u2019t think I\u2019d have all those feelings writing about fruit and veg.\u201d<\/p>\n

He knows not everybody has a garden and that not everybody can grow, but he would still love us all to pay more attention to where our food comes from. That\u2019s what he tries to teach at home. On Sundays, the kids pick nettle tops for an omelette made with their own hens\u2019 eggs. At dinner, it\u2019s \u201cthere are your spuds, Daddy, and that\u2019s Cathal\u2019s beef\u201d. His kids know the names behind their food, and that\u2019s a philosophy he would love to see spreading in the wider world.<\/p>\n

Homegrown by Barrie Quinn is published by Gill Books. Follow Quinn on @portnoomarketgarden<\/p>\n