This is an opportunity to take an immersive tour of our small farm in Connemara. An Garrai Glas is truly a beautiful place to work and to live. We have built a farm that works with nature, functions as a viable and exciting business to keep us on the land and also allows us to build community, be part of community and to share and educate on small scale farming and regenerative practices.

Our Vegetable farm is modelled on the small-scale market garden farms of the US and Canada, practicing 'No dig gardening' and 'Regenerative Agriculture’. We follow techniques and use tools that make small farms work.

You will see on the tour practices which suit our growing conditions, our crop choices and our markets. All of which contribute to a unique farming philosophy.

As we make our way around the garden you will get to taste the growing vegetables under the backdrop of Galway Bay and the Aran Islands.

During the 1 hour 45 mins we look at:

How An Garraí Glas started out in 2013

How we got into shops and supermarkets

Our idea when opening the farm shop early on in the life of the farm and how that part of the farm has changed since (this part of the talk takes place inside our little roadside shop)

How we start all our plants as seeds outlining then the importance and the resilience of doing so as well as the techniques. And of course showing you where that magic happens!

We talk about what it is like working with some of the Galway's best chefs and/or working with people championing local food here in Connemara.. Inside our packing shed we outline how all of our food is distributed and orders are taken and filled.

As we make our way around the garden you will get to taste the growing vegetables under the backdrop of Galway Bay and the Aran Islands. Over the course of the afternoon you will see some of our team harvesting for our lunch.

We see what the land is like from the highest part of the farm here, from 'garraí na gclocha arda' and looking at all the challenges that growing outdoors in the west of Ireland presents. I begin to outline how we countered those challenges and where we made inroads and where we hit dead ends and even now still do.

Now we look at the main garden, not an inch of it left dormant in high season, we look at the functionality of 'lazy bed' systems in shedding water, we look at our fertility and our use of green manures, we look at correct spacing of vegetables; creating a canopy to suppress weeds and retain moisture.

Let's look at hand-tools together such as hoes and garden forks and the correct application of these hand tools. Let us see how a jang seeder seeds a 120ft bed in 5 minutes or how a greens cut harvester allows you to take 10kg of rocket from a bed in less then 10

Lets go into the tunnels and contemplate season extension, drip irrigation, roll up sides and why are there are more salads crops available in Winter then in Summer.

Let us appreciate some climbing Toms and climbing Cukes!

Lets straddle a 30" bed and see if a yoga posture called 'connemara bog' has anything on downward dog

Lets even look at how the human body is this beautifully functional super-tool and how we can work with it to allow us, as before, to nurture and harvest indefinitely on our land without tractor and tillage.

Lets Farm for a couple of Hours

And then let us eat!

Go raibh maith agaibh anois

le meas

Aonghus O Coistealbha

.