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Organic Farming and Staying Put with Aonghus
11 Plays9 months ago
In this episode we talk with Organic Farmer Aonghus (Chóil Mhaidhc) Ó Coisdealbha.
In Invern Co Galway on the wild west coast, within a stones throw of the Atlantic, a determined young family is building something special. Aonghus began over a decade ago and after many seasons of hard work, An Garraí Glas is becoming a thriving farm. A place for education in principles of permaculture and living in a kinship with the land. And also carrying on ways of being through music and language that have been present in the area for as long as the stories go back.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast and Guest
00:00:01
Speaker
Hello, listeners. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of what is now called Talking is Thinking, previously Philosophically. Today, we have a guest on by the name of Angus Okashita.
00:00:16
Speaker
who I let him say it himself actually.
Angus Okashita's Market Gardening Journey
00:00:20
Speaker
Angus, what is it that you're doing at the moment out in Invern? For the last 10 years, 12 years, I've been, 10 years, I've been a market gardener. So I grow and sell vegetables on the side of the road into market. Yeah. Okay. Market gardener. And it's organic.
00:00:38
Speaker
yeah it's all organic um although it's only this year we're getting our certification in finally but yeah we've been doing it um like this for a while I mean small scale um no chemicals not much use no use really of oil apart from our deliveries and and organic yeah organic very good I had the pleasure of going out there last week and it's a it's a beautiful place um it looks like a lot of hard work yeah it's really hard work um but it's seasonal so when you go into the winter you have a ah long wind down time and which is really good because you have your energies again in the spring for when you really need to go at it so it starts really
Challenges and Preferences in Market Gardening
00:01:26
Speaker
busy and
00:01:27
Speaker
February and March and it winds down then into into August, September and now we're in October and it's really winding down. So it's it's a nice kind of pace. The height of it, April, May, June, July, very, very, very busy. Yeah. And you're obviously making millions of it. Oh yeah, big time. So I joked on social media a few days ago that I'll be going to the south of France now that we're closing the shop to the yacht. But ah Yeah, no, it's that's the thing. it's It's very difficult and that's why there's so few people that do it. and
00:02:03
Speaker
I suppose, yeah, there's ah there's ah it's it's difficult as well to get people to do it with you, because you can't really afford to pay them very well. And um luckily, we're small scale, you'd think with that. And I suppose with that, we don't need too many hands. um But you can be left short, we need to be four to six people um per day, and it'd be six days a week working the land and packing takes a lot of time. So does, you know, every little part of it really, but yeah you know it does take a lot of commitment yeah ah physically it's taxing but it's really really rewarding in a myriad of ways like it's super interesting so you know you're never going to be lacking for you know coming up with new ideas and and thinking on your feet and being creative i suppose as well and
00:02:59
Speaker
you know it's just a really interesting way to you know to to you know to be able to live off the land. I was a when I was out there last week I was I was kind of looking around and and observing yourself and your wife and and you're obviously very intelligent people and committed people and hard working people and driven and I could see you both having successful careers at Google or Facebook with them kind of traits you know and you could have a nice big house with maybe a swim in Poland drive whatever cars you wanted and why aren't you doing that? Why are you doing what you're doing?
00:03:44
Speaker
um where i I can't answer for Sorocha, but um she is very, yeah, Sorocha is very, very, very hardworking and very committed and very passionate about everything she goes into and and now'm those things too, I suppose.
00:04:00
Speaker
i i i can' I don't know I left school at 16 and I never really wanted or tried I've got ADHD as well so I kind of get I can't really um this this fits me very very well you know this fits me very very well I like working with other people um I'm able to instruct people I suppose you know if if because there you do need a lot of people to do this and I suppose I can I can lead people a little bit um now it is and yeah I don't think I could do too much now and in terms of of running a business that's not something like this ah you know I mean I couldn't you know my
00:04:50
Speaker
it's it's it's Yeah, i I don't know where to call it. I don't see myself as someone who could actually or would, I know that I don't see myself as someone who would have any kind of a life um as as any kind of a CEO or ah of even ah even like you know even running a a shop or a pub on the side of the road in in in a big town or something like that or and that. I don't think I could even do that, to be honest. and that's not i just ah I wouldn't have patience for it. This sort of life suits me very, very well. i mean you know I'm not that driven. I'm not really driven by money, although it's so important in
00:05:36
Speaker
and market gardening that you are thinking about that all the time so it's kind of misleading because it makes you you know you'd be you'd be you'd have figures in your head all the time and you'd be trying to get the maximum out of the land and to make it work for you and to not waste Any of the resources that you're working with because you're working with these resources all the time and that's really nice um so resources now we're talking about the the lands resource
Resource Management on the Farm
00:06:03
Speaker
Yeah,
00:06:04
Speaker
you're look you're working at the lands resources and what the land can take you're working with water and you're working with the Sun even though you don't have much say in that and You're also working with what you buy in. The compost that you buy in are bagged or otherwise um the compost that you spread on the land or the the compost that you grow and you start your seeds and you're bringing in your seeds as well. You're bringing in your packaging and all of this stuff. So you're bringing in all of these resources and you're making them work for you.
00:06:29
Speaker
um Yeah, so i i prefer i like I like working with that and I like ah like the kind of life I have at the minute. I really do like the seasonality of it and I don't know, I couldn't see myself doing ah um Google job nothing like that. No, no, I don't have the mind for it I'm I'm a bit maybe be a little creative or at least I need something to Be creative with if you know what I mean, I can't work within Parameters I can't really work within parameters and I'm not great either taking orders. So, you know, I That seems to be the case with creative people that if you put creative people often into places like Google or something like that, it kind of kills their creativity because they're more controlled somebody else's creativity.
00:07:24
Speaker
Yeah, somebody else's goals and and and some of their goals are very um motivated by money and motivated to please the, I suppose, the shareholders or whatever. I don't even, I say that and I barely have an understanding of it, you know what I mean? so me Yeah, Yeah, me too. And so the the the nice cars or the holiday and the South of France, they're really nice.
00:07:46
Speaker
can't stick it no i can't stick it i just don't understand why people um would drive a car that they don't actually own proper or even if they do why would they spend so much money such a big bulk of of the best of a thousand grand or something on on on uh you know something on wheels that just is meant to move them around i mean i i just i don't it doesn't make any sense no no I'm with you and also why do people spend so much money on maybe houses but a big jeep and never leave the town yeah that's another kind of the jeeps are awful yeah the big jeeps are awful like you know yeah they're all ugly they're all monstrosities like you know that come from a lot of it comes like i don't i don't know i'm guessing it comes from american influence and that and that's such a shame we all watch the same youtube these days yeah we're all watching the same we've all got the same feed and we've all got those influences yeah so some of it i suppose with another thing is with our resources with my resources and my limitations in in how much money does come in and that i want to put it all back into the land all the time i wouldn't be too
00:08:53
Speaker
I can't be um distracted by by vehicles or by by by um homes even though you know by rights myself and my wife should have our own house now and you know everything like that but you know I just kind of want to build up this farm until it's as functional and as perfect as it can be and then we can start tweaking it and when we when we start tweaking it money can go aside for holidays or can go aside towards a house a house just a house
00:09:25
Speaker
Do you remember where this started for you, this way of thinking, or was there a start? Was it always the way you thought?
00:09:31
Speaker
When I was a teenager, I used to play in the late 90s, I used to play computer games and I used to play Age of Empires and I used to play Championship Manager. And those games, right, you were kind of in charge and you ran everything and you had a lot, there was a lot of ah detailed and there was a lot of stuff that you had control of and I kind of like that with farming because I suppose because of the ADHD sometimes I kind of need that kind of um opportunity to
00:10:08
Speaker
Because of the ADHD, I think I kind of need opportunity like that and limitations like that and pressures like that so that if I'm kind of, in if I've got a lot of responsibility and a lot of it is kind of a lot of detail and and everything is coming at me real fast and I need to react in real time that I can do it well. So farming and market gardening suits me, you know, and that part of running a business and also try to satisfy all of these chefs and all of these shops and have the supermarket shelves full and things like that. That all suits me. And I kind of found that out in my teens playing these computer games somehow, you know, so it's kind of funny, but um because they're the kind of things that I like to do.
Influences and Experiences Shaping Farming Approach
00:10:55
Speaker
and i'd get lost for hours playing championship manager trying to get a really nice football team together and look at all the stats and all of the the strong points of ah of all of the players and meld them together and and go out there and win a football game and go on a run and go along in the cup or whatever it was you know and then i'd play age of empires and i'd learn all about the different, in Age of Empires, you'd you'd be managing a civilization or something like that. And you'd be building it up from like the Stone Age to the, you know, to the Imperial Age or something like that throughout a long time. And building a farm, a small scale farm in America Garden was kind of like that a little bit for me. And I really liked that. And things throughout my, in my twenties, and I used to travel a lot.
00:11:43
Speaker
So I used to hitchhike around, I used to kind of make my way and decide things at the last minute. And I was kind of blown around from one place to the other, but I also had a lot of control. And um I don't know, I kind of I i need a little bit of and guidance almost or something like that and I certainly need the responsibilities and the fact that you have to harvest this thing at a certain time and yeah you know you want to make sure that the shelves are full all the time in these shops because if you don't at the end of the year you look back and you'll see how much money you're down and how much finances you're down because you didn't do that things like this so I don't know like ah
00:12:30
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know when I figured out that this would work for me, but it certainly works for me like, you know, it definitely does. There seems to be an element of you like bringing order to chaos there. Yeah, I do. Yeah. But you need but you need the chaos to to bring the order to it. I think I need the chaos. Yeah, I need the chaos. I need i need ah i need the chaos or I kind of progressed in it. And ah when I progressed in it, I really don't get anything done. And I find everything so interesting. And I'd be like,
00:13:03
Speaker
I'd find everything really really interesting um so the internet is is ridiculous and having it in my phone in my pocket is really difficult for me and my wife would really say that and we use like the social media that I use on on and sc Instagram and Facebook people always say oh that's brilliant you're you always do interesting stuff on that but my wife would tell you totally the opposite. you know like i'm i'm i'm like I'm using it way too much. I'm on it way too much. I'm trying to be as intricate and as detailed with it as I can and and it just takes way too much time. you know guess I think the whole world is captured now by by social media though these days. you know yeah there There really are that there's there's some marvelous elements to it.
00:13:50
Speaker
so there is but Yeah, it's it's brilliant. um I just spoke last week on this podcast about how amazing it is for getting people back to the land. And it's it's really cool. like It really does get people out of their armchairs and out of their sofas, off their sofas. And it kind of does get them to to work the land and understand the beauty of it, but you know also see the possibilities of of having it um
00:14:21
Speaker
pay for your way through life as well, you know? Yeah, quiz the land pay for your vegetables. Yeah, yeah, I mean we started, I started farming, I started farming in 2013 and it was only in 16 that we started selling our vegetables.
00:14:39
Speaker
So I think kind of the first few years, it's kind of finding my feet and we were kind of doing almost ah like having a small holding, like being um independent of everyone, you know, like I wasn't looking to be commercial or anything like that. But after a time, I
Transition from Self-Sufficiency to Commercial Farming
00:14:56
Speaker
understood that I needed to sell these vegetables and have something, whether it was tourism or selling vegetables or whatever an experience to to bring to people that I needed to sell something.
00:15:09
Speaker
that I was, of of what I was doing, that I needed to do that so that I could actually do the thing that I really loved, which was working the land. I really did love working the land. so For three years, you weren't selling anything. I was on the dole. You didn't intend on selling anything. You wanted to live off the land itself.
00:15:28
Speaker
I was on the dole and I kind of wanted to live off the land itself, if I could. yeah and um yeah I done permaculture in Australia. so What is permaculture? is like I think it's it's like permanent agriculture so it's it's kind of living very close to the land and I suppose it marries kind of architecture and ah having a home that's
00:16:02
Speaker
kind of tied to the land and it also is is the way of using resources very kind of responsibly you know and it comes from Australia but it also comes from a climate that's not really a west of Ireland or a northern Europe climate you know yeah and in Australia people can live a little bit easier off the land because of things like food forests and stuff like this fruit fruit and stuff, you know, vegetables and and and food that are perennial and you can have, you know, there's not really a winter time. So um I think people can live easier off the land than you can in Ireland and also the need to eat a home and everything means that we have to have bigger, stronger buildings that are able to take the weather. But permaculture does come from Australia and it kind of comes from it's like a marriage of living
00:16:56
Speaker
of the land and also being responsible and having having the building that is ah passive enough and often you know lies on the land well and everything else yeah so that's permaculture so I was studying that in Australia and I thought that I could kind of replicate and do a little bit in Ireland but it's just more hard work in Ireland to because you have to save all of your vegetables and get through the winter you have to work pretty hard and sometimes the amount of work and the amount of calories you use
00:17:31
Speaker
is not leveling up with the amount of food that you can kind of get into your body you know kind of so yeah so permaculture there's a lot of hippies that do permaculture and kind of it suits them idealistically for a while but then when the push comes to shove you realise that to live off the land really in our climate you need to work pretty hard and you do need to have something at the end of the day to give to somebody outside of your farm so that you can take in some income that you can actually live off the land and live off the farm. i think
00:18:05
Speaker
So that's kind of where I got to. by So 13 and 14 seasons were fine but by 15 and 16 we needed it to be selling the vegetables and I was learning about growing them and we started to sell them on the side of the road initially and that was really great and after that we started going into shops with them and to restaurants.
00:18:27
Speaker
did you What other places did you travel? You traveled a bit? Yeah, I traveled a lot in my 20s. I started in America. I was living there for two years. And then I kind of traveled up and down the coast and inland and a few places. And I used to be in San Francisco. So I was influenced by, I was used to read a lot of Jack Kerouac's books. And I wasn't like doing any drugs or anything, I swear to God. You didn't go to school. bus I didn't go on a school bus, I'll stop. um Yeah, there was the dark sides to that as well. i heard of I heard of a bus going to Burning a Man once that everyone was so stoned that they drove their double decker into a bridge and and last, you know, so yeah. um So San Francisco anyway, there's a darkness to to some of the the
00:19:14
Speaker
The big party partying that was happening there, but like reading about Kerouac and about, and you know, they they used to indulge a lot, you know, but reading about Kerouac and about um people like that and the board the poets, the beats and all of these and all the hippies and all the music that was coming up off Hippie Hill and not far away from I was living and everything else.
00:19:35
Speaker
It was just like it was really romantic for a couple of years and I was very much into travel and I was very much into living in hostels. I lived in a hostel for nearly two years and I had a lot of friends. one to another No, I was in one. I bounced around a tiny bit but I found one that I liked and there was an Irishman that ran it and he trusted me to do night shifts and I did the I looked after security and I did the night shift And in the end, after a couple of months of doing it, he gave me the weekend. So I would do every Friday and Saturday night, I'd do 12 hour shifts, he gave me a room in exchange. And then I just worked during the week, I was moving furniture mostly. yeah And I was moving furniture for another Irishman.
00:20:20
Speaker
And yeah, it was brilliant. um So I was traveling around as much as I could, then, you know, extra cash. I'd go up or down the coast. And my friend had a car. My friend, Porik from Invern, some of his family were over there, and they were working in construction. And he had a car. And we'd travel up and down a lot. And we went to all of the big sites. You know, we'd gone to Yosemite, and we'd gone up to the Redwoods, and would have seen a lot down to Big Sur.
00:20:47
Speaker
There's massive nature over there, huh? Unreal, yeah. Them redwoods over the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge. so Yeah, yeah. Even going up over the Golden Gate Bridge is just so, so inspiring. So there's a lot of nature. There was everything that cowboys in places have gangsters in places, you know what I mean?
00:21:06
Speaker
it had It had black culture, it had um Italian culture, it had a lot like San Francisco was seven miles by seven miles, but it had so many different cultures. you know There was a Chinatown, there was a Japan town, there was all of us Irish out there.
00:21:22
Speaker
um yeah So it was really interesting for two years to be there and it inspired travel and living in a hostel as you were meeting people all the time really did that too, and pushed you also. So um when I finished there I did spend most of my 20s travelling around and I went well i want to um Central America and I would have gone to Eastern Europe and later on when I went to live in Australia in my late 20s I would have traveled I went to China at one stage and you know place Central America yeah how was the
Learning and Applying Permaculture Principles
00:21:58
Speaker
That comes to mind when I hear about things like permaculture and living with the land. and And you know, you have the rainforest down there. You have the indigenous peoples who've been doing this for as long as they've been there. Yeah. Did you come across any of them? i Funny enough, I wasn't that interested in it at the time. Really? Yeah, it was funny. I wasn't that interested in living, not living off the land. I just I i wasn't that interested in that. I was more interested in travel.
00:22:25
Speaker
I was kind of a seeker at that time. her You were a seeker at that time. I was. Yeah. i And I thought I did think in my 20s that in my teens that I did need that I was at a disadvantage because I couldn't get schooling and I couldn't get, you know, school. I couldn't get it. I couldn't understand it. I couldn't make it work for me at all. Like i'd I'd be just looking out the window the whole time and I was terrible at it and I caused a lot of trouble and I would have drove them teachers crazy.
00:22:52
Speaker
And that was within the class. But then at lunchtime and everything else, everyone would have thought I was quite quiet and, you know, nearly introverted. But I had a lot of friends too. But in the class, I was I was a wreck. I just used to wreck them, wreck their, you know, you're the spanner of the works. I was. Yeah, I was. And I couldn't help myself. I just couldn't, you know, I just couldn't conform and I couldn't I couldn't learn either. I actually couldn't take things in properly. I just get bored very quickly.
00:23:19
Speaker
So later on, so I kind of used my 20s to soak in everything I could. um And then when I got to my late 20s and into my 30s, now it's been time on building sites and I knew how to work. And because of that, it was very easy for me to kind of teach people and and um not inspire them, but to to motivate people towards doing good days work alongside me. And I was motivated to And I was driven and all throughout my 30s, I was driven and I still am today. But I did use my 20s to soak in everything I could. And in my 30s, it just started to come out and I made it work and I built the farm, I suppose, with a decade of just really hard work in my 30s. And was it the was it the Australian experience that really made it click? Actually, this is yeah the something with me in the land.
00:24:14
Speaker
It was two things in Australia. One was permaculture. One was ah an awakening of permaculture because in my tea in my ah seven but seven, eight, nine years old, I used to clean my father's onions and his carrots in the fields. You know, that was my job of weeding and doing these jobs. So that was my job and I loved it. And in the 90s, then he didn't have, he wasn't well, so he didn't have like have the garden growing and everything else. So it was different.
00:24:41
Speaker
and I struggled in my teens you know in the 90s and into my into my 20s I think but when I went to Australia in my late 20s and learned about permaculture I just kind of woke up to that I woke up to that I'd already been traveling for nearly 10 years and I was taking a lot in but it didn't all make sense I was seeing I was seeing disparity, like I was seeing poor places and I was seeing rich places. So I was kind of seeing and understanding the way that resources were managed and people taking advantage of each other, you know, and
00:25:19
Speaker
um I think then when I got permaculture as this tool, as this way of learning more about life and about resources and about kind of working the land and living on the land properly, that when I kind of got that and I got it in Australia which was so far from home but I also got it in Australia where people are really resourceful like they really are um I'd be staying with old farmers and they could you know they could wire the house they could fix the van if it was broken they they could do everything they'd put down the floor they'd put the roof on the on the house they they but they'd grow all their own vegetables they did
00:26:03
Speaker
everything. So in places like Tasmania now, I'd be thinking about it was like that and other places right along the coast where I traveled. So there was a lot of people in Australia, a lot of the men, the older men that I was meeting. And because I was kind of jobbing, working for cash on building sites or on farms, especially in farms, I was coming across these characters and I was inspired by them.
00:26:30
Speaker
and I grew up a lot very quickly then and I was moving around a lot and I needed the money and I needed to find a place to stay and I just I was inspired by by the characters yeah of of Australia off the outback almost and of the bush and around you know the people that lived outside the cities I have a very romantic notion of that because I've never been there. and yeah and when When we think of places, I used to have a croc about it or the image of going around. du yeah But that but it sounds it sounds great and so many Irish people do go out there.
00:27:07
Speaker
And I would have thought it would be a rather harsh environment to kind of try a permaculture because of the sun. But I guess the sun is a resource too. And when it's used right, and when you can have a kind of a relationship with the land, you can work together. Yeah, those limitations, not limitations, but those, what would you call it? Those extremes. Those extremes are cool because they kind of, everything is at an extreme. so when you're dealing with long hot days kind of everything has to be a little bit more on point almost you know and when you're when you're living in conditions like that or when you're living remotely like that then you know the van can't break down or you know everything has to be kind of you either do it yourself or
00:27:59
Speaker
you know you do all your shopping and one go in the local town or whatever all of that was kind of inspiring because you know they were very practical people and they were very sensible in organizing their day and I don't know it's just kind of it started to make sense then you know Yeah, I guess there's ah there's some things in life we can have control over, but the likes of the seasons and the weather and the things like that, they're things we have to work within, isn't it? Yeah, there there yeah that and that makes it kind of easier. yeah like So when I'm talking about having ADHD or something, yeah, those kind of things make things easier for me, and I get less distracted, and I can folk i can you know get a little bit more done when I'm under the pressures of things like this.
00:28:44
Speaker
um I spent the last few days learning about your dad.
Influence of Family and Philosophy on Angus
00:28:50
Speaker
And there's a famous saying that are people die twice, you know. They die when their body dies and they die a second time when the last person speaks their name. And it seems like your dad's name will be spoken for a long, long time yet to come. So you must be very present He must have been a massive influence on Jan. He was a a huge, huge influence. He was a little older when I was around, so I didn't see, um you know, it was it was difficult for me and my brothers because we wouldn't have have been brought up by a man in his prime, I suppose.
00:29:32
Speaker
and um then you've kind of got the legend that goes with him so and the pressure in a small place of following that those footsteps is is huge as well that was another reason to run off you know yeah in a way but yeah he he was he was amazing and um oh yeah as you get older then and you become a father as well like you know um you think more about what he did right and you try and do that and um you really do try and do that so I really try with Fanon to do some of the things I remember my father told me once he had a different way of looking at things you know um
00:30:13
Speaker
I said to him, but I have to do this. I don't know what this was. at the you know I can't do this for you because I have to do this or something like that. um you know Anyway, whatever it was I had to do, he told me, you don't have to do anything in this life. And I was very young, but he said to me, you don't have to do anything.
00:30:31
Speaker
in this life, nearly, you know. And he was a bit of a maverick and he could have been working. He's the man that maybe could have been a CEO or something like that now, maybe. But at the same time, he was a bit of a maverick and he um he did things his own way and he wouldn't have conformed. So, you know, even if T.J. Carr had come along 20 or 30 years before, people would have said he'd be great fit for T.J. Carr. He'd have his own show or whatever.
00:31:02
Speaker
but he probably wouldn't because he wouldn't kind of like to be, you know, made to do things that, you know, he'd he'd get bored or whatever with things. So yeah, he but he was brilliant. He was a brilliant influence. He was a great influence in some practical ways as well around the house and in the garden when he did, when he was able, when he was physically able to to help us there. But um I ah don't know, I think he had a really old kind of philosophy in an old way of thinking um that went back a long way and just his belief system was really good like his belief system was really really on point you know he didn't get distracted by i um by district district by you know commercial anything he didn't get distracted by anything commercial at all and yeah he he was he was brilliant into like that
00:31:55
Speaker
He was, a just ah for the listeners who don't know who we're talking about now, he was a ah blacksmith, a playwright, a poet.
00:32:07
Speaker
and many other things in between, it seems. he He was a bit of everything, and he was called the king of the spoken word out there, and the Brendan Behan of Connemara. Yeah, he had to trick louder. ah But he could do all these things, and he was he was ah he was a powerful man. like he could he could ah He could take his drink, you know? so And that kind of became part of it, part of his legend, and that you know and he drank too much in the end. like but Yeah, you know, he he um you know he'd he'd be great company be great company in the pub for everybody.
00:32:44
Speaker
But then he'd be a great company walking into the shop and meeting him at the shop, or he'd be a great company in the field or down by the shore. you know so yeah But the pub was his favourite. The pub was the stage, it seemed. Yeah, it was. there was ah like My uncles now who are from back there watching the TG4 thing about your dad, there was a moment in it when he was in the pub.
00:33:06
Speaker
And he had a laugh. But it it was a laugh that I recognized in an uncle of mine. And my uncle, he's sick at the moment, but my memory of him when we were young is his laugh. And it wasn't like he was well known for like he'd be in the sitting room laughing at cartoons like Tom and Jerry and stuff. But it wasn't just a giggle he was having. He was it was a full body laugh and he was nearly in tears laughing. Yeah. And it was a. It was a free laugh. It was a laugh that wasn't held by anything, you know what I mean? And I seen that in in your dad as well in the in the videos I watched. And it was it was lovely. And I think it must be something that's
00:33:51
Speaker
That's part of the culture back there. You know, there's a freedom. There is a freedom. Yeah, there's a freedom. I live in Lechobor now for the rest of my wife. And there's a freedom and the people there that that is, is you know, you can't battle it. It's amazing. There is there is people are themselves dead was himself. That's the thing. like He was so comfortable with himself. It's hard to be that nowadays. Yeah, it's impossible to be that nowadays.
00:34:14
Speaker
as As all the good things you talk about social media, it hooks us into a story of what we're supposed to be as well. so you know and And it does negate that freedom a little bit.
00:34:25
Speaker
there yeah no it's ah It's something we could go deep into, but sure well we'll talk about the firm. We'll talk about the firm. You're right on the course there.
00:34:41
Speaker
How do you deal with the salt air? I mean, there's famous lines in Irish history about to hell or to conduct because you can't grow and then out there.
Traditional Organic Farming in South Connemara
00:34:49
Speaker
So all the people that weren't following the rules were pushed that way because it was so hard to grow out there. Did you find things when you were away and able to bring them back here that you were able to implement here?
00:35:04
Speaker
i I didn't work on kind of traditional farms when I was away. I worked more on small holdings. I i didn't work on productive vegetable farms or commercial entities, you know. um So I didn't come back. I kind of had to start at home. I had to start in 13 and 14 learning how to farm really. But I'll say that like what What I did find, what ah what is true of our farm is is um there's no one else farming around us and we're not in East Galway and there's no influence. So it took me only until this year to start the process of getting organically certified. But the funny thing getting organically certified is that you're asked, you're um put in changeover from, um you know, chemical agriculture to, and there's this period where you go from chemical agriculture to organic growing.
00:35:59
Speaker
you know because in their eyes in the offices where they're marshalling organic farms and and and and approving of them um everyone is kind of growing with chemicals and then they become organic farms mostly for commercial reasons but in In South Connemara, although there some chemicals put on the land in my father's time, they were still using manure and they were using seaweed. and My uncles out in the Iron Islands were mothers from, they would have been using manure and especially been using seaweed out there.
00:36:39
Speaker
So I didn't have that influence. So, you know, from the beginning, um though you I wouldn't have known anything else except for organic agriculture. Yeah. Because of this. I remember I i think it was back in the noughties when I started seeing organic food in the supermarket. Yeah. And all of a sudden this name became very popular and I was thinking,
00:37:06
Speaker
what What the fuck have we been eating up until now? Do you know what I mean? If this is our organic, that's all the stuff. but But no one's asking that now. we still we should all be That's funny now, right? Because it's it's crazy that the person who's being organic has to get the certification. We have to go through all the testing. We actually actually actually have to pay money to be approved as organic, whereas the authors, using the chemicals to grow their vegetables and and using the P and the K,
00:37:34
Speaker
ah but They don't have to do anything like that. see it seems where seems to have got reversed It seems to very kind of skewed that way. very skewed yeah and is there a lot of ah is there a lot of people know You mentioned that they're that are organic for commercial reasons. so Is there a lot of people that just do enough to to to pass these regulations so that they can put organic on their farm. Absolutely, yeah, absolutely. But when you're on a big scale, it's kind of understandable, very, very big scale, some of these farms, and we we share shelves with farms where, ah yeah, they're organic, but like, what does that mean? You nearly want to grade the organic and go into like a deep organic or something like that. theirs is a very shallow organic theirs is also poly cropping where you have maybe one type of vegetable on the land so there's not good rotation being used or good practices used there so that's not a permaculture friendly kind of
00:38:27
Speaker
No, that's not a sensible kind of that's not a sensible kind of thing at all. I remember my permaculture teacher said to me, like ah what is permaculture? And what she said was she said that she she did a class with an old lady once and the old lady, a student, she said, look, permaculture has been around for years. yeah It's just common sense, but there's not much of common sense anymore. So permaculture or or well organic agriculture, ah you know, using your resources instead of bringing in these inputs, using chemicals in that, um the oils really.
00:39:06
Speaker
like Yeah, we farmed like that because I'd kind of seen my father farmed like that um and it lent itself very well to a small-scale farm and it lent itself to the ideals that I had um about going down to the about clearing out my neighbor's shed and taking the the old manure or going down to the seaweed and that's pulled up that's washed up on the shore in the wintertime um you know so I did it like that and
00:39:42
Speaker
Yeah, I probably took um exception for a few years in the middle there where we kind of should have been getting certified as we were going into shops. And I thought, why would we have to pay money and get certified and all this crack when ours is such a the most nutritious food that we can put in people's hands and into their trolleys like why do we have to do this and why am why am I being told and made to do that but I suppose after a few years going into supermarkets and everything else you kind of you you you get used to following rules I suppose so finally now this year we're going to be organically certified and probably I should have like commercially I should have done a long time ago but I wasn't really thinking commercial you know
00:40:30
Speaker
Yeah. That thinking commercially is is it a hard thing to come around to. Yeah, especially yeah it is actually. yeah I feel like there's that like that ah that freedom and letter more and that freedom of people out there that seems to run through your blood. It seems to be a part of who you are. And like you said, you get used to following rules eventually, but you still still you still don't really like it.
00:40:57
Speaker
I don't like it. And when we do tours, we do tours in the suburb of the farm for two seasons and we come into the packing shed and it's a mess, you know. It's kind of a mess. There's a few different things happening in there. It's not stainless steel and everything else in our packing shed. It's not brand new concrete and it's not perfect perfect and and you know there's not um it boxes being ticked in the morning to show who cleaned down the sideboard and this that and the other you know but and I tell the people coming in this is the wild west you know so this is this is the wild west and this is where we are and this is also where we are nearly 10 years into it maybe in 20 years it'll be a bit different
00:41:36
Speaker
But this is where we are, this is the Wild West, and you can nearly get away with it a little bit more. you know like we We build a shop on the side of the road, whereas we probably shouldn't have. And we built all our polytunnels, even though you needed supposedly an exception from planning. and Yeah, that's what it was called. It was called an exemption from planning.
00:41:57
Speaker
And um to get an exemption from planning from the the county council in gallway city up in the hillda air square um you need it to get an exception planning, you needed to bring out, when I looked at it three or four years ago, you needed to bring out an engineer and pay him, I forget, was it one or two thousand, to just do a map of the place. And he would have spent a couple, he told me he would have spent a couple of hours, the man that I was speaking to, a couple of hours,
00:42:27
Speaker
on the farm, just kind of measuring things and everything else. Then you go back and you draw out a map. And then after that, very little else is done, except I get my exemption of planning and he gets a thousand or 2000 euros. And that really got my blood up, you know, because of how hard we worked. or Back then as well, before we broke ground or bought machines and we used to build our own walls and dig our old drainage ditches and everything else by hand.
00:42:54
Speaker
So the amount of work that we had to do and then afterwards the amount of vegetables that we had to sell to bring in a certain amount of cash and then your man will come around and he'll take one or two thousand euros which would have taken us weeks to earn you know this was four or five years ago.
00:43:11
Speaker
taking us weeks to earn 2,000 euros, you know, whereas Yaman would come around, taking his pictures, taking his measurements, gone back, put it together in a piece of paper that he knew the perfect formula of for art and what people wanted in the county council office and would have sent it into an office, they would have processed it and I would have got my exception for planning for building a couple of polytunnels. Those couple of polytunnels were needed for the farm in order for us to survive, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah, it doesn't seem No, it doesn't. know So things like that still would annoy you. like yeah So after a decade, you start to to learn to play their game and everything else. But still, it's like it it and it's it's really not fair for people st starting out yeah without the brass balls that I had to show.
00:43:59
Speaker
um and Yeah so and i i've I've spoken about the things that molded me to where I'm 30 years old and I have the balls to go and do this you know but and I know like a lot of other people would have been you know um destroyed not you know that they wouldn't have gone through with it.
00:44:21
Speaker
So what we did was we built our tunnels without any um exception for planning or whatever it is. It hasn't come to haunt me yet, but it just gets me really mad to think of all the people that would be even definitely, definitely would be better, more talented growers than I am.
00:44:37
Speaker
um And they can't live off their land and and provide vegetables and provide a living so that they can you know grow there grow their land, grow their children and everything else, because because of the rules that don't make any sense at all. Yeah, and the rules made by people who don't really understand the land out there either, maybe, and and and no they don't have to to work around it.
00:45:02
Speaker
They don't know there's an ex yeah because it's an exceptional, that's another thing, it's an exceptional part of the country because um yeah it's an exception there's not broad big fields of deep soil and everything else. So we really do have to work really, really hard to get the stones out and get the soil up above ground and you know to build our garden and get the soil up to the level of the ground, nearly. And we also have to contend with very heavy rainfall and strong winds and everything else.
00:45:32
Speaker
um you know I think of the the stone walls that cover our country, particularly in the West. And I wonder what kind of engineers tests they'd pass nowadays.
00:45:44
Speaker
um Probably not many, you know. No. The ones that you you you take a bit for in your pocket as you're trying to climb over them, you know, the stones fall down. and Yeah. Yeah. but ah But but that's the way things are done. That's the way things have kind of always been done.
00:46:02
Speaker
Yeah, well, we we had that concert last week and by rights, I probably shouldn't have had so many people up there because and especially for kids, you know, we we walked around, my brother walked around all every single wall and he checked every single, not every single stone, but he pushed pressure on top of the walls, make sure that they wouldn't topple instead in case of kids messing around that in this day and age would not be used to anything like this and could be shoving walls on top of each other from either side. But yeah, at the same time, that would have been an excuse not to do it, you know, because we didn't have ah any kind of insurance or anything like that to have 150 people on our land like that up in the top fields and ah surrounded by these tall, tall walls and, you know, walking over uneven ground and s slipping and sliding and everything else. But yeah, sometimes you have to plow ahead. Sometimes you do. Yeah. And and and that ask for forgiveness rather than permission. You know what I mean? It has to be.
00:47:02
Speaker
We have to be brave, especially now. Especially now. yeah Especially now we have to be. Like the regulations are good when they're coming into... to stop a lot of the commercial stuff that's going on now, but when people are trying to do things organically, let them off, give them plenty of leeway. I enjoyed that concert last week and it made me even more embarrassed that I don't have Irish language. that That's so deep in my history and and I lost it along the way somewhere. But sitting up in that field and down
00:47:38
Speaker
down in the corner you had the stone walls going around we walked through the Pali tunnel to get there and in the corner of the field then there was a little stage and then there was natural banking coming back up from that and you had blocks placed around the place and then scaffold planks across it And it was like a mini Coliseum pointing towards the corner there. It was I thought it was class. And Jesus, if you had if you had brought engineers in there and started putting up gates and barriers and cow it would have absolutely ruined it. Yeah, it was it was beautiful. And I loved seeing I was telling my parents with me that the kids going around look so healthy.
00:48:23
Speaker
and they're going around and they're getting dirty and they're not bothered by it and the parents aren't bothered by it and there's no there was no flashy people there you know what i mean there was there was some i remember looking around at one stage and i thought this is such an interesting place to be there was the musicians playing music on the stage and then i looked at the top of the hill And I caught a kind of silhouette. There was a man sitting up there with a ah big harp in front of him. And then I looked to my left and behind me, and there was a very interesting chap there. He was a huge man. He had a suit jacket on him, a big beard, and and and a kind of ah a top hat. And he was a big jolly man and smiling. I thought that's such an interesting character. ah he is that was martin i know i know exactly who that was uh he is yeah and i think you're right with the with the parents that bought the kids up especially that they did have that little bit of a streak in them that you know that boldness and the kids are used to being out in the outdoors and that's why they encourage it and they bought them there and they know us and they know kind of what to expect and uh i think they knew their kids were safe and
00:49:39
Speaker
yeah it was a good place it was a good place it's a good place all the year round but it's only the sheep that get get at it you know but yeah it's a beautiful place to do that and it worked it's lovely and and the music then um he had some really tough musicians come there for the music how i did i was i was wondering how do you get a this This lady to come back from Nova Scotia and play in the corner of the field and in in the west of Ireland. How did that come about? She was the last minute friend of Brindant's, Brindant Begley. And just like, yeah, having Brindant Begley made a huge difference. Having James Begley's brother and having a Begley.
00:50:18
Speaker
up there on our hill made a huge, huge difference and pulled in a name like Ronan Osnoti pulled in a name like that would have pulled in the people as well but they were so suited to the place and they were they're such a couple of rebels and they're such genuine um men you know very real comfortable in their own shoes and they you know they sang and they and they played the music and so but Brindon's friend ah Rosie came probably to the country to spend some time there and and she probably Told him she was around and he said look I'm going up to Clifton to the Arts Festival That's another way we got Bryndall because I knew he was at the Arts Festival the night before and he was in our neck of the woods So I did some homework there and but I did try a few people that couldn't make it like but it was all very kind of last-minute but yeah, I would have been ambitious in that and um
00:51:11
Speaker
yeah it was cool because Ronan was nothing new to the farm which is kind of really cool and now he's texting me you know he's so sound and yeah so that's really you know that's really nice but you know 10 or 12 years down the line to have people that actually know the farm and kind of come on the back of that a little bit as well like Ronan did which is really really cool and it suited him the place suited him I really hope that element grows. I'd love to see in 10 years that it's it's it's a big music thing at the end of your harvest year. That'll be fabulous. I think it was Brendan Begley and the lady Rosie that told the story that showed their rebelliousness. They were out with another famous musician in Paris and he brought them to a fancy wine shop and they bought a bottle of wine. but
00:52:03
Speaker
the musician had to go somewhere else. So he asked them to mind this very expensive and irreplaceable bottle of butler wine. And so the night got long and their third music into the night and the bar closed and there was nothing else around. And Brendan said, sure givemet give me, give me, give me the bottle. And then they cracked it open and they drank it. The next day he got a phone call saying, have you got the wine? And his answer was, you know, you shouldn't leave a sheep with a fox. I thought that was classic. Oh, that's so funny. the yeah It really shows that rebelliousness in them and that that that rebelliousness that I think is in the land out there. So it flows through the people. yeah There's something special about it. The community out there. Could you do what you do without the community out there?
00:52:54
Speaker
um
00:52:58
Speaker
Well,
00:53:00
Speaker
yeah I don't know. I suppose the one thing is that you'd get people complaining probably if you were in the suburbs of Galway or something. I'm sure you would. I'm sure you would. You'd get people complaining about, you know, um about all this plastic or about, you know, the shop right in the side of the road or, you know, about the Cummins and Goans and about the loud music if if we came to that. Like, there'd be many things that they would Maybe fine fault and um, no the people around here around I know we're in your place now We're not on the farm, but the people in in Connemara are very accepting I think what helped a lot was they knew my father when I was away I came back and I started that in 16 opened the shop like and it was flying from the beginning and you know, I think a lot of it I I'm guessing a lot of it was
00:53:55
Speaker
My father's influence, he was long gone then in 16. He was 10 years gone. But, and you know, yeah, they trusted us.
Community Support and Farm's Future Vision
00:54:04
Speaker
And we're on the side of the road, the only road. And they saw how hard we worked, you know. They saw how hard we worked to get that whole field.
00:54:14
Speaker
um into lazy beds and so on and when we started selling and on the side of the road first we had who was so busy was selling potatoes mostly yeah and it was so busy and then after that going into the shops we always had good you know um yeah people were very loyal and that's been yeah that's been really good and then the other nice thing is because it's not only local people um There's a lot of blow-ins, there's a lot of people coming from, you know, there was a lot of people coming out on the bus, even from Galway City. Not a lot, but a few coming out on the bus from Galway City and for the day. And, you know, it was that kind of, yeah, it was kind of the people that kind of believe in
00:54:57
Speaker
and something like that you know we didn't have money for advertising or anything like that it was all done on social media there wasn't anyone behind it there wasn't anyone behind us it was just ourselves and we worked pretty hard to get that concert done and um dig the holes into the side of the hill and put the blocks on the holes and balance the scaffolding blank on that Everything else, it was all done last minute and my brother did a lot of work on the walls and and Frankie, whom you know, he did a lot of work on everything, especially strumming the grasses and everything. He's one of the hardest working men I've ever met, Frankie. He's got about 14 jobs in conditions.
00:55:36
Speaker
He's got so many jobs. He doesn't sleep. He used to drive the lads around years ago to the to to beach parties and stuff. and Yeah, he'd he'd he'd go to work. They'd all go to sleep, and they'd sleep till the afternoon, and he'd go to work after two or three hours. And I don't know how long he can keep it up, but he's amazing. He's an amazing man. So there is there's plenty of men like and women like Frankie out in Cunamar still. um Yeah, they're they're not as recognizable anymore because I think there were characters and they used to be in the pubs and I used to grow, I grew up with them, you know, meeting them and knowing them. But um and there there was, there was a great deal of them. We were right next to the pub. Great many men that that worked and drank and you know celebrated life. um So we had all these people and people trusted people trusted that we would do what we set out to do and and and we did.
00:56:30
Speaker
I like that phrase he used, those many men that celebrated life. I think there's not. not enough for that now and when i say celebrating life i mean life in in in all its forms not just not just people like you know there's uh the picture that i had first for the cover this podcast was a man up on top of the hill with his ourselves but he was he had he was saying cheers to nature you know that's what the glass was was a big cheers to nature because it's not just enough sometimes to be in awe of it i feel like we have to
00:57:03
Speaker
celebrate it you know that's why the end of harvest festival thing I thought was because it was was really nice was really nice uh there's bees out there not yet there's not there's there's hives we have names okay yeah we haven't got that uh Jill Jill who works in T.G. Carr she's she's from she's been in the in Connemara for a while she's from Kerry Kerry Galtacht um Yeah, she she shared some hives. She bought in some hives and we get to fill them. She would bought them in in the start of summer when we were so busy and we we have to get that in order. yet It would be lovely to have bees on our land. They will. They'll do many things. Not only give you honey, but I'll have that. Yeah, they will. They'll do things and stuff. They will.
00:57:48
Speaker
The Irish language, how important is that to you and how important is it to the place out there? I mean, I asked Frankie, I said, what doesn't Gary Glass mean again? I'm ashamed, I don't know this. He said, at the Greenfield, he said, its good Glass is green. He said, all It's grey sometimes, he said, depends how you use the word. I said, well, that that kind that kind of suits it too, the weather out there. Sometimes it's bright and green and sometimes it's grey. Yeah, sometimes our field is grey. But how important is the language to you out there? I feel like, i feel like how do I say this? I feel like as humans we often
00:58:28
Speaker
We live within a language as much as anything, as much as a place, because we build our reality of the words we use to describe it around us. you know So I feel like people who are bilingual, such as yourself, have have almost an access to two ways of being.
00:58:44
Speaker
yeah you know this isn't that I'm not sure, but I know that having a second language, having two languages is huge and I can't, I won't, I don't know when I'll start to understand why why so many people brought up in the Weltachts.
00:59:02
Speaker
don't use the language that they're listening to and they're being brought up in. And and i ah I can't understand why some people, um they'll get they'll marry someone that they've known for 10 or 15 years and and that they came up with in the schools or whatever. So they're from the area, they're brought up in Irish, but they bring up their kids in English. And um that's painful now. That's really painful, that alone.
00:59:29
Speaker
um Sure, there's a lot of people coming in, and they're coming in for the scenery, and they're coming in for the for the you know the drive to Galway Sandy, the commute, and there are not good reasons to come in.
00:59:45
Speaker
You know, um they're lovely reasons for them, but they're they're not really good reasons for us. um And how long will there be in us? I don't know. um They say that Irish will survive as a written language, not as a spoken language. So that's not a survival. That's not that's not really. It's not alive. that No, it's not alive. It's not alive. A memory of a language. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's yeah. It's nothing really. I mean,
01:00:13
Speaker
It's a painting really, you know, yeah it's a painting of a landscape that's been pulled out. so and That's painful like, but at the same time I was brought up, my father had been a lot of so lot of friends will say that we're very much for the language and so was he, but um I think you can't spend your life trying to fight for the language because it's it's not what it's not something that's um it's something that's very difficult because you're fighting against people all the time and and their needs and everything.
01:00:50
Speaker
and like Anyone, even Finan, who's brought up now my son, who's three years old, and the amount that he's already socked in from his grandparents and neighbors and everything else, it'll only go downhill.
01:01:10
Speaker
from 2024 on and and it was for me from 1982 it'll only go downhill so um it's not the best way to live your life to fight that good fight and to push against the seas you know um But you want to, you I think you should be yourself and I think you should really, um I think you should live the life that was presented to you in your start, you know. And I just don't understand why people are bringing up their kids in English yeah when they have lovely Irish. Yeah, yeah. There's a,
01:01:58
Speaker
Yeah, there's a lot in that. There's certainly a utility to the English language, and especially now it's the language of world trade, etc., etc. But there's something seriously lost when a people loses their language. And I think the Irish are a great example of that now. I mean, we had our nasty neighbours and we had our incidences with them. But like you said, we took it on ourselves. Douglas Hyde wrote a great article about the need to de-anglicise Ireland and how because we take on the language, we take on
01:02:39
Speaker
what's good and what's bad for English people rather than what was good and bad. The concepts of like for Irish people, you know. Now I know my mother was brought up in Irish, but they moved in the 1950s into Galway from Littlemore.
01:03:01
Speaker
And they were slagged for being Irish speakers. Do you know what I mean? It was like, oh, that's that's so backwards. That's that the backwards way of thinking. And this this is continued. no There's a bit of a reversal on that in later life. But there's some things that I, even the the poem your dad wrote Angus about you, I could ask my mother to translate it for me.
01:03:22
Speaker
And she was doing the same thing that she obviously does. She's like, this means it this and this, and what about that? but i did She's like, I know what it means, but I can't say it to you. And she talks about when she goes to funerals up in Conamara. And she says in town, in town, they say things like, I'm sorry for your troubles, I'm sorry for your troubles, I'm sorry for your troubles.
01:03:43
Speaker
She said, but out there, this is something different. And I said, what is it? She said, like, it doesn't translate directly, liy but it's something like, I'm glad your troubles aren't my troubles. But but it's a it's it's a different way of looking at the world by the language that you use. And I feel like whatever Irish identity people are missing or people feel like we've lost,
01:04:07
Speaker
We've lost most of it by not using the language. And I'm not innocent of this either, I've lost it too. But yeah, we might get it back. Yeah, we might get it back.
01:04:28
Speaker
so could be It could happen but could happen in a few generations that we might get it back. you know because people will start to People will start to look like we're looking a little bit now, but people will really start looking properly deeper on on where we're going, and they might identify it like you've explained it there.
01:04:50
Speaker
So maybe, maybe, I mean, if, you know, if the kids that are coming up now are as intelligent as people are saying about them, but then they will eventually, they will start and they might do it properly, you know, they might do properly. It's not, it's, it's a language like, you know, there's enough, at least there's enough in the last hundred years of you know, microphones and everything that has recorded that, you know, the in interests intricacies of it can be replicated. ah And that's something and that's not our reality, but it will become a reality. You know, it could become a reality in a few generations for the kids coming up and they'll make it something into something else. But that could that that needs to happen, though. That's the thing that needs to happen, because if they keep going like they're going and there is no real
01:05:40
Speaker
hard look at it you know then then oh yeah that's that's huge that's huge and I noticed that people We're not just using that language either, we're losing accents, regional accents are disappearing and everybody's getting youngsters now, like from the back of Cono Maro down in Kerry or something, they they're coming out with American YouTube accents. it's kind of They are. But I think that could prompt it though. I think eventually if they keep on listening to one another and
01:06:11
Speaker
if they really start to seek independence and individuality and and to seek reality, you know, and and proper culture and to seek something deeper, that they could start to to take all of this equipment and all of this, you know, all of does the modern, you know, that the they could teach themselves to to do a job. and And, you know, I don't know, maybe, you know, maybe that maybe they can reset a lot of it.
01:06:40
Speaker
do you Do you think in Irish when you when you count or when when when you're thinking along to yourself as an Irish word? Kind of half and half. I actually learned English by forcing myself to to think in English. Really? Yeah, I forced myself to think in English because I suppose I i wasn't embarrassed at all but I couldn't keep up with I'd be six or seven or eight and I'd still be um at football training or something. A lot of the kids would be speaking in English. um And like I forced myself then to um to think in English a little bit. And that wasn't great. I think um spending time with Saruqa and with her family has has brought my Irish back a lot, actually.
01:07:27
Speaker
and When I was away, I think I might have lost a little bit of the Irish language in my teens and twenties, but I did push myself to to think in English at one stage of my life because I needed to I needed to learn English um at six, seven and eight years old. I didn't need to actually learn English because my parents didn't teach me any. And like I said, I wasn't great at schoolwork. So well, I was good at reading. I was good at reading. So I did learn English quite quickly when I started reading. and
01:08:05
Speaker
You know, I did learn it quite quick, but that was the the way to the way I had of of learning it was I started to think in English. So it's um kind of half and half now, maybe. Half and half at this stage. Your wife, when we were out there last week, your wife is, she looks like
01:08:26
Speaker
perfectly made for that environment. she With her pale skin, her fiery red hair, yeah she can she she could be cast as Gronya Whale or are any of them characters out there. Where where did she meet?
01:08:39
Speaker
ah We met in the Iron Islands in 2016. It was 16, wasn't it? The same year I opened the shop and my aunt had passed away actually and she was the first of the four brothers and three sisters in my mother's family and they're all alive now, thank God, except she's passed.
01:09:02
Speaker
So she she died, she was one of the elders, but she died, and she she was amazing. Anyway, I was out on the Arran Islands and I was at the funeral and when we were going to the funeral, um because you walk to the funeral out on the Arran Islands and you follow a horse and cart that pulls the coffin.
01:09:17
Speaker
and it's a long walk and it was a lovely day it was a Sunday I think it was the 30th I think of May 16 and it was a really really warm day and it was a beautiful funeral she went a bit too young but it was a beautiful funeral when we were going there we had to walk by a load of kids that had just been out on on a tower road, and on a road there, practicing dancing outside of a hall. And they pulled into the side as as the cause so I was up close enough to the front, I seen them bawling in. And and the red-haired lady led them in or out of the way. And she's very respectful. and A little later, i recognize I didn't recognize her straight away, but I had to go home early. I had to actually leave the the
01:10:03
Speaker
the funeral and I went home early because I had a huge garden that was dried up and I had to water it and I went out on the boat and I met her waiting by the shop. I met Saruqa and I knew her in passing like you know I knew her because Qunamar is a small place. I knew she was an actress on Rusnarun. I didn't know she wasn't any longer um and I got talking to her and she was really lovely and I asked her on a date and she was so good looking that i know I didn't think i'd I'd get a date. So you chanced your arm. I chanced my arm. I think I'd been buoyed by the day and the celebration of life and the weather and everything and I chanced and I got my date and yeah that was it.
01:10:56
Speaker
Yeah, so you chanced your arm and you managed to get the date anyways. And now you have a beautiful son to get her feet on. You do. I mean, she's not a farmer's wife. She's not a farmer's wife. But she's a very good woman.
01:11:14
Speaker
um
01:11:15
Speaker
OK, so you grew up in Connemara. You've done a lot of travelling. You went to Australia, learned permaculture, learned about it. You came back here and you wanted to live off the land. You started your firm. You met your wife. You now have a young family and a firm that's growing. What's your plans for the future out there? I mean, you said you didn't really want to go commercial, but it kind of almost was thrust upon you that you had to.
01:11:53
Speaker
Do you see the farm growing into a big commercial thing? Do you see it becoming more of a tourist destination? Do you see it becoming maybe a school of sorts? Yeah, I think education is going to be a big thing. and I don't see it getting bigger.
01:12:12
Speaker
Physically, you know, I see maybe more buildings, more workspaces, you know, more floors that we're working on within, maybe doing getting a commercial kitchen and start to to and put some of our vegetables into jars and you know things things like this and cooking and things like that um and I see education for sure education for sure um but we be you need to become something a little bit different and I think it can happen I think we can be a very slick
01:12:54
Speaker
commercial commercial one acre farm very intricate and very um organized and then probably it'll take a while it's already been 10 years it'll probably take another five to ten before it is where it runs like clockwork and that can happen you know that can definitely happen um And then with that.
01:13:26
Speaker
We can do more education. We can do more experiences, we'll call it, and bring more people in. You can call it tourism, experiences maybe. And that'll be a big part of it. The concerts are just one option, probably one of our best options. And a comfortable fit, because I like the traditional music. I really do. So that's a really nice fit for the farm.
01:13:53
Speaker
um yeah so we're going to stay small possibly become smaller but at the same time be able to actually grow more vegetables by doing it better um yeah and yeah that's it maybe the experiences and sharing it with other people and bringing people be in as well you know The experiences, are these the the woofers? No, I mean, ah the the experiences, well, yeah, I suppose you could do a stint where where you could learn about farming and you could pay the farmer for his time in teaching you. I'm not sure about that though.
01:14:35
Speaker
um But I think the experience is is more about being on the farm and things like the concert is perfect for that. The tours of course as well, tour of the farm showing how it works and the intricacies of it. But dinners as well, dinners is an option for small farms like us that you've seen.
01:14:54
Speaker
people do. There's a lot of options that I see Americans do. um A lot of my farming comes from American influences. Small farming, yeah, a lot. Some of it comes from Richard Perkins, who's over in Sweden. He's an Englishman. And yeah, he's he's done a lot on YouTube and and written books, and I studied with him once. But like, most of it comes from America. Most of it comes from American Canada.
01:15:19
Speaker
and where there's a lot more competition and they've really hit peaks that were way off, like way off. We're pretty good and within this country but like there's boys over there that are just like doing it in their sleep, you know, they're doing amazing things.
01:15:39
Speaker
Like what now in small holdings farms, is it? Yeah, very productive farms, seriously productive farms with their fertility down perfect and their crop choice perfect and their markets perfect. um And that's it like to enable that permaculture kind of idea. It's more of a market gardening kind of thing. um So there and their labor.
01:16:08
Speaker
So the people are very well trained and they're very capable and they're going from one farm to the other and they're getting a good wage. They're getting a pretty good wage, you know, whereas around where I am in Ireland, we'll say there's not many farms that can afford to pay a good wage. There's certainly not one and two acre farms that are giving out a good wage, you know. um So yeah that can be done that can be done you bring in a enough other things to bring in the money to the farm that can be used for wages outside of vegetable production but you also really really increase your vegetable production and become really slick with it you know like you can become really functional with it you can become very very organized
01:16:57
Speaker
Is there a maturing a maturing of the kind of plants, that life itself, in the ground that takes time to to happen? I have a very rudimentary, this is me listening to my my girlfriend about her garden, so I'm unsure, but I'm wondering, is there Does productivity grow over time? it Fertility can be improved on, yes. ok But crop choice is huge. So crop choice is huge. So if you have a market for it, and you can go towards creating parts of that market and encouraging it. But if you have a market for it, you're you're good. So we grow maybe 20 different crops. When I started out, I grew 40 plus.
01:17:38
Speaker
And I would have grown cauliflowers and leeks, a lot of potatoes, and we would have grown a lot of vegetables that really don't make sense on a one acre farm. On a one acre farm, you're looking for fast growing salad crops and fast growing roots, maybe, you know. So you're looking for all of these really fast growing roots that aren't in the ground for a long time. Salad crops aren't in the ground for a long time. And when they come up, they're replaced almost instantly. So you have this really nice balance like an orchestra. yeah You really do. You have like an orchestra of different instruments okay coming in at certain points. So you have this really nice, you know, symphony happening within the year, right? And so you've got something coming out of the ground and something perfectly placed to go in there, take its place. And you're not sewing too much of anything. So there's not much waste.
01:18:38
Speaker
Yeah, and you're definitely not sewing too few of anything So at all times the supermarket shelves and the shops that you serve have their shelves quite packed, you know i get you And the half a dozen plants or vegetables say salads, especially that you're That are leading the whole thing are always there for you, you know, and then you bounce around Behind them with bringing other color and other vegetables and other tastes and you know um and And it's really, it's kind of cool. um It keeps it very interesting, trying to create a balance. And and yeah, that that's really interesting. so But im I'm realistic. I think it'll take another five to 10 years to kind of get it down, even though it's been tin already. Just kind of, you you need a long time to kind of do it.
01:19:27
Speaker
and But it's kind of the course we're on at the same time with the mountain shops that we're in. and um kind of where it's it's It's a very organic growth of our markets where we've been, where we are now and where we were three or four years ago.
01:19:45
Speaker
Yeah, it's really happening very nicely. I wouldn't push it too much. But yeah, apart from that, that's mostly on me. But then the people working with me is going to be a big, big deal. And I started with willing workers on organic farms with woofers, which is what I did once upon a time in Spain and in Australia, um working on farms in exchange for room and board. That was it. That was all.
01:20:12
Speaker
We started with that and then now the exchange is more monetary but educational too. yeah and If you can, directly educational where you're taking time with a whiteboard to teach young people that want to grow vegetables mostly because they want their own farm. So that's where we need to go with it and hopefully go to where we can have people on minimum wage, local people on minimum wage that you know that want to do it for the labour and also for the lifestyle, um you know really for the lifestyle and the outdoors and everything that and you know people coming in in and staying in the house and and and mostly taking the learning and and eventually you know those lads will only be there for a season or two at the most before they go off and start their own farm.
01:21:03
Speaker
But they learn a lot. They learn a lot in that time. You learn so much so much in that time. I like the the analogy you used of the orchestra and the music because I often and use it myself at something and yeah when things start going really well and really smooth. And suddenly it's like we're like we're like the band at the end of a tour. You know, when everything is on point, you know what I mean? Compared to the band at the beginning or the middle where things are still getting worked out.
01:21:31
Speaker
dont Don't come and see us at the start of our tour. Come to the end. Catch us at the end when everybody knows what they're doing. yeah no it's it' it's it's it's It's a special place out there and I think it's a special thing you're doing. I really do. I think it's ah it's lovely. I hope it goes really well for you.
01:21:49
Speaker
into the future and we'll see what the band is like at the end of the tour. You know what I mean? Yeah. I have a question for you and now. It might sound a bit strange, but you might have an answer for it. if If we were to write a new story about our relationship with nature and about man's place in the world and about how we should be treating nature or how we ah we think about it, if you could put one sentence
Cultural and Community Contributions of the Farm
01:22:16
Speaker
into that story, what would it be?
01:22:20
Speaker
I don't know why it came up so quick, but stay put. I don't know, that came up real quick now, but stay put. Put your intention and your energy into, if you do, if you are if you if you if you are being brought up rurally, at least, into the place and Do you know, if if you go to the local pub when you're 17 and you shouldn't be there, take in drinking everything and take it all in, drinking everything as in like, see the, yeah, taking everything and and remember it and spread it if you can, like culture is is is is
01:23:02
Speaker
is gone quickly, like people's habits and people's ways. And there's so much, there's a lot of poetry to it. um But it moves very, very quickly. So I think what I'm saying, stay put, stay put, like,
01:23:23
Speaker
ah
01:23:24
Speaker
You know, put put your intentions into into into the place around you a little bit more, I think will will help a lot around the world. I know it's not for people, maybe not for the cities. And I know that there's a lot of, the you know, there's loads of exceptions to this. But, you know, if you come from rural, if you come from a nice place, look after it, look after it, yeah connect with it, I guess. it it a Yeah. connect with it and look around you, and yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's great. um Is there any epiphany that you've had that you can never go to the life you've had before? Do you know what I mean? Has there been a moment in epiphany, an idea, a realization that's happened that you've gone, oh, that's, I'm never going to see the world and same again, or I'm never going to be able to go back from that?
01:24:16
Speaker
probably the permaculture probably the permaculture probably probably uh working i was a stonemason i was doing it all day long in the dust and it was lovely work you're you're anyway it's very meditative and you're working their physical work and and detailed work like real you can be very artistic but in the evening and then um when the day was done and very early start and and it's went into the evening and the sun's coming down pretty quickly and in in Australia and you have the I'd have YouTube and I'd be looking at videos by Bill Mollison and I look back at them actually last week for some reason they're all so grainy and they're not great at all but God I must have seen so much in them at the beginning when I first went through with them and there was so much there um when you're so ver you're you're an absolute virgin even though I was bought up
01:25:05
Speaker
on land and I was put to work on it. And my uncles are on the Iron Islands, used to grow their own vegetables and I heard all throughout. My father used to um nearly have a prayer where he he he he didn't think much nearly of the people that didn't grow their own vegetables in the spring. The men that did not sow their vegetables, sow their potatoes in the spring, he nearly thought, geez, they're lazy, you know, you have to come on out of the winter and put your vegetables in the ground, put your potatoes in the ground. You're not much if you can't do that, you can't believe in your, you know. There's such a connection to the land there that's just held in the culture though, isn't there? There was. Like, you know what I mean? That's what I'd call a productive shame. You know what I mean? It's a good kind of shame. If you're not putting your hands in the ground and growing your veg, didn't you? What are you doing? That's something you probably should be ashamed of. Not what you said in the pub last night, you know?
01:26:01
Speaker
yeah you're right you're right yeah that's how we were kind of brought up a bit with that but so years later having shaken it or having not understood it or whatever i'd be in i'll be watching these youtube channels what would it would it would a beardy 60 something year old australian fella reminded me so much of my father. He was born in 28, Bill Malliston and dad was born in 29 and he'd be telling these stories along with his teachings like if you go alpha on rants but they'd be perfect little stories about where he was brought up and how he was brought up.
01:26:38
Speaker
But yeah, that really, sorry, no, it's a big long answer I've given you. I love long answers here. I love long answers.
The Discovery of Permaculture and its Impact
01:26:48
Speaker
So yeah, I think that being out there and in Australia and seeking but not known and then finding these videos and finding this fellow that was telling you about permaculture, about living with the land.
01:27:04
Speaker
and about your options he's given you all these options you see so I was given all these options when I learned about permaculture okay and that was it really that was that was it I knew there that I found something yeah so that was really good That was cool. That was was cool. That's something that you could bring home and reconnect with your own home and land. and Yeah. It bridged a lot. Yeah. a it It seems like having an eyes on what you're doing out there now is important um because you the the growth that you want, as you said, is not necessarily going to be a physical growth, but it's a growth of education and experience and eyes
Gary Glass's Social Media Presence
01:27:44
Speaker
on. So where can people find out about Gary Glass?
01:27:47
Speaker
um Or social media, like I was saying, is is way too busy. Way too busy. So there's plenty there. There's plenty there. And and you're on all the platforms around. I'm not. i i I have to stop myself somewhere because I'm so bad at it. Yeah, i'm I'm always on Instagram. and Mostly um what you put on Instagram goes on Facebook too. So that's it. We have a YouTube channel that's not really used.
01:28:10
Speaker
um but that's it but you can find us in supermarkets and shops around Galway City so you'll kind of get a taste of what we do and hopefully it'll you know it'll give you something different that taste and maybe with that taste you you'll think like where does this food come from and why is it so different and did the tes over but why does it taste so good like why what's like what kind of time or intention has gone into this that it's yeah It seems like there's a bit of a love gone into it too and a bit of kinship and a bit of community and a bit of music as well gone into it.
Music's Impact on Plant Growth
01:28:43
Speaker
Shintla Grohl. Did you ever play music to the no to to the plants? No, I I've heard of it. yeah And I've heard that there's actually a
01:28:54
Speaker
There's something in the plants that opens up to the photosynthesis and that that actually ah becomes awakened by the birds singing in the morning so that the plants know to open these receptors of some sort for the photosynthesis. And apparently that might be what is replicated by people playing music. I know very little about it.
Conclusion and Future Discussions
01:29:16
Speaker
That's class, isn't it? It's an idea I like. and I like the the thought of it.
01:29:20
Speaker
but the Yeah, Angus, thanks for coming on here. It's been a very enjoyable conversation. i don know You might be back sometime. Yeah, it was great. Okay, Slán, thank you listeners.
01:29:32
Speaker
lama