During the COVID-19 lockdown, enthusiastic Cork-based teenager, Tadgh Quill-Manley, has set up a socially-conscious farm supplies e-commerce site.
The 18-year-old Leaving Cert student is already the critically acclaimed published author of two farm-related advocacy books, titled An Introduction to Farming: Including Its Joys & Struggles as Told by Farmers Themselves & A New Answer and Europe, the State & the Small Farmer 1973-2020: Why you Should Back the Starry Plough.
Quill-Manley has already been elected onto the (voluntary) board of directors of Carbery Housing Association.
The charity, set up in 2001, had tackled homelessness across Cork City and county by buying out properties on behalf of people facing repossession.
He has also recently been made an ambassador for the Dream Life Orphanage Centre in Uganda.
Help children
Seed & Son Farm Supplies, the name of the e-commerce business, has been set up with the explicit intention of raising money for the orphanage.
“The children in the orphanage live in very poor conditions and are extremely susceptible to horrible diseases.”
“One boy recently had to have his leg amputated due to leg cancer which had grown out of control.”
Inspired by grandfather
Quill-Manley emphasises that he wishes to set up a business that focuses on providing a social return, not just a financial one.
He is inspired in part by his great grandfather Timothy Quill. He is on record in the 2011 book The Story of the Cork Showgrounds as having the largest herd of Holstein Friesians in the country in the 1940s.
When Quill bought a 400-acre farm just north of Blarney in 1946, he went out of his way to ensure that the farm labourers had a decent existence.
He had (what were at the time) state-of-the-art cottages on-site to house them comfortably.
Tadgh is hoping to keep that tradition alive by adding a socially conscious element to small agri-business.
Visitors to the website can find a modest stock of feeders, troughs, beanies, and more.
He is hoping to develop the e-commerce site overtime in an attempt to lift the children in the orphanage out of their “terrible” living conditions.
