Ennistymon

We had a bit of a journey ahead of us when we left Croatia; get up at 5AM, get a ride to the ferry port on Korcula, ferry to Split, bus to Zadar, afternoon in Zadar, transfer bus to the airport, flight to Dublin, bus into town, then another two buses from Dublin to Ennistymon, where our first farm was located.

Everything went smoothly enough, but we were too tired/it was too hot to do much in
Zadar and, as we arrived in Dublin around midnight, we decided we'd just a hostel and spend the night, then head to the farm the next day after a few hours of sightseeing.

This is exactly what we did. We even thought we'd throw in a welcome Guiness when we arrived at what was supposed to be something of a party hostel,
but everyone was asleep when we got there, which seemed really weird until we found out all bars in Ireland close at midnight. Who would have thought?

Anyway, the next morning, we got out early enough to do some hardcore wandering. This basically just took us through Trinity College and to Christchurch Cathedral, which
happened to be closed to the public as they were filming an episode of the Tudors inside. We also did a little walking tour that included a stop at an old church that had been converted into a tourist information office.

But it was soon time to go to the bus station. There, we were teased by the bus drivers who told us that while, yes, we could take the bus leaving in a few minutes,
we should just wait an hour for the next one which was direct. So we did. But then that bus was almost an hour late in taking off and we still had to change buses and, in fact, almost missed the connection.

But we did get to Ennistymon where we were met by Tommy, the owner of Knocknagraga or Stone Hill Farm. He drove us the mile or two out of town to his house on the hill, explaining that they were actually a beef farm, but we'd be working mostly with the vegetable garden and with construction. At the house, we met his wife, Kate (who will be referred to as "Farmer Kate" for the duration to distinguish between the Kates), and their dog, Minnie, who reminded Kate of her old dog, Millie. As it turned out, Minnie was actually once named Millie as well.

Anyway, they welcomed us in and showed us to our beautiful room in their four-year old house. This was quite an unexpected surprise to us as the accommodations at our last farm in Spain were, while comfortable enough, pretty basic and in a two-hundred year old stone house that was always cold.
Comparatively, this place was a palace. We had a huge room (bigger than expected, as it turned out; Tommy built the house and figured everything out in feet which the builders converted it to meters and he always estimated as yards... so everything was just a bit bigger than he'd planned on), private bathroom, walk in closet, in-room TV, wifi internet, and views out over the valley.

But I'm beginning to digress. Once we were settled, Farmer Kate and Tommy called us downstairs for dinner. Here was another difference between the two farms: in Spain, we cooked all our own meals with the food except for one meal a week or on special occasions) while here, Farmer Kate cooked every meal for us and we always ate with the family. So they welcomed us with a traditional Irish meal of bacon and cabbage, bacon being what we Americans usually call corned beef.

It was just the four of us on the farm for the first few days as the other two WWOOFers had taken a week off to go travel around Ireland. But we met Greg (French) and Tina (Austrian) a few days later and heard all about their rather crazy adventure that included getting chased out of a field by a pack of wild horses.

Life on the farm: get up around 9ish and maybe do some yoga downstairs with Farmer Kate before breakfast which, in actuality, usually didn't end until 10:30 or 11.
Then it was time to suit up and get to work. Work for a bit, stop for a tea break. Work a bit more, eat lunch around 2ish. Then we worked until about 6pm when we'd go upstairs, take our showers, and get ready for dinner.

What did we work on, you ask? Primarily, we were putting in a flagstone patio as well as a gravel driveway. The patio was pretty fun as we collected flat stones from all over the farm (though, to be fair, most of the stones were already collected by Tommy), then laid down a bed of sand before trying to find which stones fit together best. This started out hard, got easier, then got hard again at the end as we were a) running out of stones and sand and b) had to fill a hole in the patio rather than just building out. We didn't use cement or anything as Farmer Kate's idea was to fill the sand with mosses and other plants to hold it all together. This led to having to patch things a few times and level out what came unleveled after a rain, but I think it looked pretty good in the end.

The driveway was much more difficult and much less satisfying ultimately. I mean, what would rather look back on? A cool flagstone patio or a driveway? The process of construction was to first lay down sheets of plastic to block the sunlight from any weeds that might grow below. Then cover this tarp with gravel. Lots of gravel. Multiple truckloads of gravel. This, by the way, was no ordinary, suburban driveway, but more like a medieval moat which circled the entire house before letting off on the road. Then, after the gravel was on the tarps, we had to rake it level, then Tommy would smooth it over with his tractor's leveling apparatus, then we'd fill in the holes, etc... definitely a lot of work. And laying the plastic was no easy feat either, for that matter, as the circular shape of the driveway required a lot of cutting and laying in weird angles. But we did it - we finally finished the driveway... and killed off about five huge mounds of gravel in the process.

In the end, we didn't do too much with the vegetable garden, partly because the weather was so abysmal while we were there. It rained almost every day and even the days that were dry(ish) were usually pretty windy and chilly. But we did get to see a double rainbow (actually our first day on the farm - luck o' the Irish) and managed to take a few pretty nice walks around the area as well as into Ennistymon itself.

Ennistymon is a cute little town built on the banks of a series of brown waterfalls. The water looks really dirty, but we found out that it's actually clean - just filled
with peat, which colors it. One other notable thing about the town is that it supposedly has the highest pub to population ratio in the world with about 48 pubs for a population of about 2,000.

And speaking of pubs, we went to one our first night in another town nearby by the name of Lahinch where we were served by the oldest bartender in the world - an 89 year old who has been serving beer in the same pub since he was eight! He actually poured us our first Guinesses in Ireland and, in Lahinch, we discovered another Irish speciality: Super 99s, which are extremely creamy and delicious soft serve ice creams - treats we would get pretty much whenever we could.

We also took a couple day trips while there. First, we went out with Farmer Kate and Tina on a drive through the Burren to the Burren Perfumery (whose owners, incidentally, we would meet later on while at the next farm). The Burren itself is a pretty harsh landscape of bogs and, more prevalently, stone. The land is hard to grow or graze anything on but it has also been inhabited (albeit sparsely) for millennia. And the Perfumery makes perfumes from some of the native plants as well as boasts a tasty cafe where we lunched before strolling through the gardens out back.

Second big day trip was to the Cliffs of Moher, which were just a 30 minute drive from the farm. This time we went on our own (after getting a lift from Farmer Kate) and wandered up and down the massive, craggy precipices. We received a warning from Farmer Kate not to get too close to the edges as people have apparently been BLOWN OFF BY THE WIND before... and as the fall is several hundred feet into jagged rocks jutting out of/just below the assuredly frigid North Atlantic... we only peeked over the ledge a couple dozen times.

There was a pretty weird sign here, actually, which said something to the effect of "Do not cross - private property" but which was swarming with people. Kinda weird, but I went for it and got some great photos of the cliffs from a different angle.

Time to wrap things up. Also in County Clare... we climbed up to the crumbling church towering over Ennistymon and checked out the overgrown graveyard... we went out for drinks and Irish music with Farmer Kate, Tommy, and Tina with all the girls wearing jeweled bindis... we learned quite a bit about astrology and our signs... we met Tommy's mother who was just back from her pilgrimage to Lourdes... we helped herd cattle from one field to the next... we learned how to bake real Irish soda bread... we painted the foyer of the house...

We watched quite a bit of the swimming and boxing events in the Olympics as well as the spectacular opening ceremony... we read through our books (and got scolded for reading at the table) and borrowed a couple from Tommy as he had the entire series we were both reading... we picked blackberries along the sides of the roads on our walks past barking dogs and beautiful, long-maned horses... and learned exactly what a feckin' good crack means.