My country living is a lifestyle and not a job. Living on an open farm, the animals and the tourists become so interwoven into my life. Everything I do has to fit into it; getting up in the morning, organising time off and family time are all planned around the business.
Any farmer will tell you: you could be at a wedding and you get word a cow might be in trouble calving and you have to go deal with it. You live for that and it is great fun but it can be hard work and wearing but we love it and that’s why we do it.
This morning we had a bit of drama. A sow had given birth. We weren’t expecting piglets, although I had a suspicion she was pregnant but I had no idea when she was due. She must’ve snuck in with the boar at some point.
Anyway, this morning, the piglets had arrived but the weather was not ideal and it was her first litter as well so only one had survived with the cold so we are now hand-rearing a piglet. It’s an exciting experience for the family.
Farm life for kids
That’s one of the things I love about this job, is being able to have the kids integrated into the outdoors and experiencing all the elements of farm life.
I think growing up on a farm, kids get a real sense of the world; a better sense of life and death, happiness and hardship y’know, hard graft and hard work and the importance of it.
Learning to care for things and learning to see things succeed and seeing things fail, because things fail on the farm the whole time.
Animals get sick and they die or crops don’t grow or something doesn’t work and they have to see that sort of stuff happening all the time. A lot of kids aren’t really involved in a parent’s work life.
When I think back to my parents, my mum was a nurse and my dad was in sales. I only had a vague sense of what they did in terms of the actual knowledge of what a sales job is like or what a nurse does in work. Kids are so involved on a farm in what you are doing, they really actively know and see what is going on.
I had trained in adventure sports and I went over to Scotland and got qualified with Abernethy Trust as an outdoor pursuits’ instructor. So, for about eight years I was doing that in Scotland and New Zealand mostly and a little bit in Ireland.
It was my dream job – taking kids out rock climbing, paddling, mountain biking, skiing or climbing mountains.
I used to always say ‘I wish I grew up on a farm
I had always worked on the farm here during school holidays or in-between travelling or jobs overseas. My mum was born here and moved to Northern Ireland when she was nursing and then met my dad.
We grew up in the north of Ireland and when I was 13, mum sent me down to work on the farm.
She was like ‘right, you’re going to go down and work for your uncle and burn off a bit of energy’. I always loved it; I was always jealous of my cousins who grew up here, I used to always say ‘I wish I grew up on a farm.’
An opportunity
So that was the beginning. Along the way, I met my now wife, Caroline. Her family are from just a mile or two down the road.
I had been working between Scotland and New Zealand and Caroline was finishing her accounting degree, so I came back to Ireland to be with her.
My uncle asked me if I would be interested in working here and maybe taking over the place when he retires.
He really is a visionary, by opening the farm. He was trying to find a way to provide another income for his family, he set standards and he utilised the land in a way that suits where we are.
So, I took my time and then said ‘yeah, let’s go for it and give it a go.’ We then got married and moved into the family farmhouse where my mum grew up and we haven’t looked back since.
Big changes are coming. My uncle retired at the end of the year and I have now taken over 100% from now, the new year.
I fell into it in a way but without seeming cheesy, it was kind of always meant to be my destiny to end up here. I kept going off to different places and doing different things but I kept getting drawn back to here, even when I was off doing adventure sports.
All the things I enjoyed in my previous work, I have here – the outdoors lifestyle, working with my hands, working with the public.
I don’t get to do all the sporty stuff but my hope and plan is that when the kids are older, we could go out and do some of these fun things together.
That would be the goal but trying to find time off to do these things, that’s what I must work towards. That’s on my new year’s list!
"One time, I dropped my pliers and a brown snake was at my feet"