A wheelbarrow, a cable drum, gardening tools, and a pickaxe are unusual items on a wedding registry. They are what Mac and Siggy, a German professional couple, need to fulfill their dream of organic gardening. When Chernobyl blows up a few years later, they are scared enough to undertake fundamental changes in the lives of their young family to seek a simpler and healthier lifestyle in an unspoiled country.
They buy a farm in Tipperary, Ireland. They give up their jobs, friends and home to raise their children in an unpolluted environment. Although Siggy shares her husband’s environmental convictions, she would prefer a warmer climate, maybe an olive farm in Tuscany.
A period of intense learning and acquiring new skills follows: how to raise chickens, pluck geese, breed cattle and sheep, and how to grow all kinds of vegetables. Soon they find out that farming means a never ending workload. They almost kill themselves ─and each other─ to produce healthy food.
I Once Had a Farm in Ireland not only gives advice for budding organic gardeners but it is also the story of a woman who sacrifices her own ideals for the sake of her family until she discovers her own dreams.
Educated in
Germany with a Master’s Degree in English, Siggy Buckley lived in Ireland for
over 15 years, first teaching at the University of Limerick as an adjunct
professor, while building up an organic farm. She later ran her own businesses
in Dublin before coming to the USA in 2003. In 2005, Siggy married an American
and pursued her life-long dream of writing.
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Always a popular genre - a well-trodden path. I liked the Carol Drinkwater books about her olive farm in the South of France. This will be an Irish version, I presume.
ReplyDeleteI loved that book too, but this is different. ...The end...is different!
ReplyDelete