S5 ● E50 I'm coming to IRELAND!

We're going to be in Ireland from 25th September to 4th October at the beautiful Moy Hill Farms, a beautiful CSA set up by a team of pro surfers who are heavily engaged with growing vegetables for a CSA and planting out thousands of native trees for their charity and still keeping up the surf. So I wanted to let you know about that. So it's a really special one for me. These guys took online training throughout the winter and I just was really touched by their approach and the ambition and scale of what they're up to. They started out wanting to reduce their impact on the environment, having been pro surfers flying all over the globe and then realizing they wanted to make an impact at home where they have some of the best surf. So they're on the west coast of Ireland with amazing surf, so they can still keep up their passions with surfing and sailing. But these guys set up a CSA for 50 families and they started on half an acre of rented land and now they've bought a lot more land and they've set up for scaling up to 150 families. Fergal's involved in local politics, running for election last year and these guys are setting up this huge tree planting. I think they planted over 12,000 native trees and looking to plant 30,000 more on the land that they have. And I just was really moved by their approach. It's a very community focused csa. It's really involving local people and working with education and family. And I love their approach and what they're up to. And it's a great story. And so here's a little film that they produced just to give you an insight into what it's like.

Surfing is quite similar to farming in, in the way that you can do what you can to ensure you have a kind of productive crop. But sometimes nature kind of has different ideas. And kind of like this morning, I suppose it's still a beautiful morning, but we didn't really get the harvest we were after. But there's another couple of ways around the corner that we can definitely go and surf.

I dreamt of being a surfer originally and dreamed of surfing around the world. And I did got sponsored and, you know, paid to be to go ride waves, which is an amazing time, an amazing privilege to be able to do it. But at the end, you know, I was traveling, traveling. I was getting paid to, you know, booking another flight and go another location. And after, you know, flight after flight and trip after trip, I was just like, something doesn't feel right here anymore.

There Was a point in my life where I took 28 international flights in a year.

I suppose we've been lucky enough to.

Have.

Been travelling and realised that it's not what we want to do too much anymore.

The original essence of a surfer is someone who's very in touch with nature. It doesn't make sense to be someone who cares about nature. But I just keep getting on flights to go surfing. I'm not really doing anything else other than that. I love Ireland more than anywhere I've ever been. Basically, that's where the light bulb moment was. And it took me a couple of years to stop my flights. I pretty much lost most of my sponsors because of it. I basically had to tell myself, this is, this is enough. Now, That bulb you're holding there, that's a lovely bulb. So every clove is going to be the gene of that bulb.

Ah, yeah.

So you're just. You're going to get the same genetics as that one.

Yeah.

Takes years to get a lovely type of garlic. My parents started their organic vegetable farm about 30 years ago, so I grew up with that and I always knew I'd come back to growing food because I always loved doing it, but I didn't want to do it just for myself. But I really wanted to try and teach my friends who are also surfers. Naturally. They've kind of stopped traveling so much and, yeah, we kind of run this farm together.

I'd never planted anything or, you know, a tree or any kind of food and had absolutely no idea how to feed myself. It dawned on me that maybe I should come back and plant some more trees and do my bit.

We've been lucky enough to get a piece of land that we can plant thousands of trees on and feed lots of people. Really organic food, you know, it's definitely hard work, but we enjoy it. Absolutely love it to bits.

I think there's a real connection to surfers wanting to do something for the environment. But there's not really many outlets for surfers to do that. Our goal is to make farming attractive to young people and get. Get more young farmers. That's what the world needs. It's a really nice feeling seeing like 10, 15 people out in the field working together all by hand, sitting down with your neighbors and a bunch of friends, having big lunches and getting loads of work done.

As a surfer, you generally have a lot of free time. I mean, farming is perfect because you just. When you're not surfing, you can come and you work together and then when there's waves, you Can. As long as there's not really pressing jobs, you can go for a surf.

So, yeah, this is what makes it all work. All the work possible is you can look down there, see if there's any waves. If there is, you can go up. Let's go. That one there is my old favorite. I rode it for about four years and I've brought it all over the world and try and keep it in one piece. Yeah. This is a photo from quite a few years ago from kind of nearby. You go around the world looking for ways of that and we have them around the corner. It was definitely when I was a full time surfer, not just a farmer.

You know, we're told that there's 60 harvests left before the world gives up on us. To not take that in, we'd be kind of bonkers. You know, I'd love everyone else to change the way they live. First appetite is the way I live. You know, for me, I'm learning as much from not going anywhere as I ever did from going anywhere. It's been a pretty cool journey not leaving. It's all for the environment. You know, everything that we do here, that's the number one priority is to care for the land here. And in doing so, we care for the land everywhere.

You know, we're at a time in history that we can't just bury our head in the sand anymore. You know, we're the generation that can be doing something about it. We're old enough and young enough to think for ourselves and do something. I've now a daughter and another child on the way and it's. It's too important to just say, yeah, I need to go make more money. Because money isn't going to make our kids future brighter. It's having clean air and water and good food and a strong community. Those are the real values that we all actually look for.

The farm, the whole reason I stay here is because, yeah, I suppose we created it. Yeah, it's hard to walk away from anything that you created.

I suppose surfing gives you a great connection with nature and you really learn to respect every part of it.

I felt there was more I could be doing than, yeah, just riding good waves. And the thing is I can ride good waves and be a farmer as well. So I didn't feel like I was losing out. Really.

Super beautiful. I'm really excited to go and it's not often that I leave the farm in the season and you know, more and more I don't leave the farm at all now because of my schedule here, but I just felt really touched. Go and spend time on the west coast of Ireland and get to know these folks and get to know their project. We're going to be running a 10 day farm scale permaculture design course. So it's quite unlike most permaculture design courses in that we're really focused in on productive, profitable, regenerative solutions and we'll be going through the whole gamut. You can see in the link below the course schedule. It's a typical farm scale permaculture design training and I got to know through some interns and course participants here that there's very little of this stuff going on in Ireland. So I wanted to bring a bit of flavor to the place and that's a great opportunity for those of you in Ireland or the UK or you know, close to that area that want to come and yeah, get trained up in the solutions that can lead us forward to a totally new path in agriculture and how that interacts with community and how we can start changing the food system one farm at a time. I'm super excited about the training and really excited to meet these folks and go through, looking at their site, looking at ways we can offer assistance to developing their design in the future. So they have actually a festival for three days before the training. There's going to be a couple hundred people showing up locally who are interested in community and growing food and celebrating together. And so that's also an opportunity that they've extended to course participants for a very low fee. It's I think €20 or something, admin fee, where it's normally a couple of hundred euros. There's going to be talks and lectures and a lot of food and music and it's going to be really nice time. So come down for that too. You're welcome to come to that. Before the training, I know that they said that if you are coming, you need to come for the whole thing. They want people to really participate in the whole, to understand the context of what's going on there. And I'll be there for that too. So it'll be great to meet some of you there. Bookings are now live. They're on the website in the links below and it's going to be limited to about 30 spots and there's already quite a lot of interest locally. So sign up now if you want to join us there. And it's going to be an epic time. I'm super excited and yeah, hope to see some of you there. Thanks so much. For watching just a quick video today to announce that because it's an unusual thing for me during our production season, but looking forward to being in Ireland and meeting you there.