About Me

The long and short of it…

I’m Conor. By day I work as a software engineer with Apple in Cork. It’s a great job with challenging work and great people however when I’m not sitting at that desk there a few other things you could find me up to…

I’ve been running competitively for over 11 years now and I love what running has given to me in life. Great health, happiness and friends. It has taught me the value of patience, commitment and simple yet consistent hard work. This takes up a good chunk of my time and energy, particularly in a marathon training block. I feel my days of competitive racing might be winding down yet running will forever be a part of me and something I want to continue to enjoy into the next chapter of life. Some of my race reports and results can be found on my personal blog.

Music is another part of my life that has fed my soul and creativity over the years. I’m self taught on the keyboard/piano and have honed my craft over the years allowing me to play almost any instrument using a keyboard and DAW (digital audio workstation) software such as LogicPro on the Mac. I’ve been composing (primarily instrumental) music of various genres since I was a teenager and while this has taken a slight back seat in recent year but I still occasionally sit down, hit record and see what happens. Creating music is something I never try force and it’s nice to know that no matter how long I leave it, it will always be there for me. My backlog of tracks finally became useful as background music for my farming YouTube channel. You can find some of my music on my Soundcloud page.

Finally there’s the farming. Yes, there’s that. I’ve felt a pull towards the outdoors and nature for as long as I can remember but it was during a 6 month work secondment in California in 2019 when I fell down the rabbit hole on YouTube and was mesmerised by Charles Dowding and Richard Perkins and what they were achieving with the on small-scale farms. I tend to allow my curiosity out of the box to play but this one really took hold.

At that time I was living in a small townhouse with a tiny back garden and I set up some small no-dig raised beds in the common area of the estate. I involved the local kids where we grew some carrots, onions, garlic, broad-beans, potatoes and much more. I was hooked. Something felt so right when I was sowing, tending and harvesting crops. The feeling of my hands in the soil, the insects humming around me, the slowness, the patience and care required to nurture plants. I loved the entire process, I loved how nature constantly surprised me yet at the same time was so predictable and so generous. I loved how I was able to make a meal for myself from what was once a pinch of seeds. I also knew that I knew very little and this would be a lifetime of learning. Being humble is important and never assuming that we can control nature. I also felt that this approach of not using nasty, artificial inputs and growing as naturally as possible would leave a positive impact on the earth along with providing me with my own food. In late 2020 I enrolled in a 2-year distance learning organic horticulture course. This gave me the perfect grounding, some on-farm work experience and reaffirmed my dream of building something great. This felt like my purpose and I had to follow it. But I needed land.

Fast forward to summer 2021 and I finally came across a property that fit. a 3.8 acre holding with a home in Midleton, Cork where I now live with my wife Elena and our two Old English Sheepdogs dogs Basel and Berry. There was almost 3 acres of pasture, a bare green canvas ready to be transformed into paradise. We moved here in early 2022 and got to work immediately. I know I’m on the right path and part of an incredible journey. I love being out there and I love having to try my hand at everything – woodwork, plumbing, building, marketing, sales and always growing. My ultimate goal is to build and operate a healthy, biodiverse and beautiful organic farm, humming with life and producing bountiful harvests for the people of Cork. On the flip (boring) side of that is a commercial business, one which needs to be lean, smart and efficient. I’m working patiently towards this, slowly building, defining my workflows and making plenty of mistakes but always learning. One day soon I will invite the public onto the farm to enjoy the beauty, to lose themselves in nature and perhaps leave with a bunch of delicious, local and healthy homegrown organic produce. Can’t a boy dream?