Yoga farming

First off, an announcement: we're changing the style of the blog. We want this to be something that is half journal, half actually useful information. We've tried it before, but we're trying it again and, if anyone has any suggestions for things they'd like to see, feel free to write.

OK. So. After two weeks in Ennistymon, we moved on to County Galway for our next WWOOFing adventure. We got a ride into town (pictured here) then grabbed a bus run by BUS EIREANN, Ireland's national bus company. The ticket was about 16 euros/person and we had a change in Oranmore as we were heading to Athenry, a suburb of Galway. Unfortunately, the connecting bus was 1.5 hours late(apparently common in Ireland) and we had to wait in the pouring rain, always hoping/expecting it would be there any minute and thus unable to call the farm and tell them we'd be late.

But we did finally arrive and we did finally get in touch with them thanks to a nice lady who let us use her cell phone. We were picked up by Chetan, a Danish expat living in Ireland under an assumed name.
He drove us back where we met Shraddha, his wife, and Tim, another WWOOFer from Belgium who knows a lot about wild plants. In fact, we arrived to a dinner which included a salad made from plants, flowers, and weeds Tim had gathered from the nearby forest! Awesome... and delicious.

Tim was only on the farm for a week and only a couple days overlapped with our time there so we really didn't get to know him too much. But he did wail on the sax and he introduced us to his passion, permaculture, via a video about this amazing farm in Austria run by Sepp Holzer.
Permaculture is all about using nature to work together and to work for you. For example, next to the vegetables you want to grow, you plant "weeds" that work together with the vegetables and that you might also want - like herbs, for example - that choke out the other "bad weeds."

But as Tim left early, we spent the vast majority of our time just with our hosts. Shraddha grew up in Ireland before moving abroad in her 20s, ending up in Copenhagen where she met Chetan, a native. There, they both became interested in yoga via an Indian restaurant
and ended up becoming trained as teachers and eventually taking new names as gurus. They later moved back to Ireland where they opened the Galway Yoga Centre which teaches Satyananda Yoga. They teach a) classes at their studio in Galway, b) night classes at their yoga barn in Athenry, and c) 2 year long teacher training courses, also in Athenry.

While we were there, we stayed in the Yoga Barn, an old barn they converted into dorms on the ground floor and a beautiful yoga room and lounge on the upper level. We moved here after a few days at the detached (and bathroomless cottage), taking over a huge 6 bed bedroom with a window overlooking some beautiful zenish gardens.

Actually, the whole place is surrounded by some of the most gorgeous gardens we've been privileged to see. Ponds, fruit trees, huge lawns, walkways, sand gardens...
But I'll just leave you with this photo for now and you can get the idea from the other pictures.

Anyway, what we did on the farm:
Our daily schedule went a little something like this: breakfast at 8AM, work from 9 til noon. At noon, we'd all break for an hour of yoga (or, more precisely, about 40 minutes of yoga and 20 minutes of some amazing yoga nidra - a relaxation technique; our's was on a CD and guided by Swami Janakananda in EXPERIENCE YOGA NIDRA, then all eat dinner together (interestingly, lunch is what you call the cold meal and dinner is the hot meal, so usually we'd eat dinner for lunch, if that makes sense) then we'd work from 2PM to 4PM at which point we would retreat to shower and relax for a couple hours before lunch(dinner) around 6PM (usually bread and cheese as Chetan is big on both cheese as well as cheese slicing etiquette).

As we really became a part of the family here more than anywhere else we've been on our travels, the evening meal often became an extended affair where we would discuss everything from Irish slang (see the side panel) to the their experience at a variety of ashrams (yoga communes). Also, along these familial lines, we were always welcome when guests would come over, be them friends or family; in fact, we became friends with Shraddha and Chetan's daughter, Saorise (an Irish name that means "freedom" and is pronounced "Sir-sha") and probably would have become friends with their son Bror (a Danish name that means "brother") if not for the fact that he was working in Australia for the year.

This post is really spiraling out of control, so we're going to cut it short here and split it in two. More soon...