US city girl finds her Irish calling

It’s hard to believe now, but I wasn’t exactly the kind of girl who dreamed of country living. In fact, I had never even been on a real working farm in my life – except for a visit to Zander’s maple sugar farm in Wisconsin during the fifth grade, which doesn’t count because the only scent there was sweet syrup, not ripe, steaming slurry. As a young woman building an exciting career in Minneapolis, New York, and Los Angeles, quiet rural living never occurred to me.

Then everything changed. Mad love swept me up and carried me across the Atlantic where I landed on a centuries-old family farm in the Irish countryside with the dashing man I would later call my husband. Everything that made up my former identity was replaced with a dramatic new set of circumstances and a whole lot of muck to trek through.

When I first moved to Ireland, we took up residence in the village of Adare, Co Limerick. Adare looked and felt like a scene out of medieval times. This was alluring when I first visited the village with Richard, but once it became my home, the romance seemed to fade a bit. I began to wonder where my place was here in this new country. What was my role?

It was decided we would move to the family farm. In planning my move to Ireland, I secretly imagined it would be only a matter of time until Richard and I would return to the States, but I learned quickly that an Irish farmer will never leave his land, and this became especially apparent later on, when the heir to the milking parlour – our son, Geoffrey – was born.

In due course, we built our own ecofriendly house adjacent to the family farmyard, very near Richard’s mother, father and brother.

It took me a long time to get used to rural living. There are no food delivery services or nearby restaurants in the middle of the Irish countryside. It became quite clear that I had to teach myself how to cook and grow whole, healthy, interesting foods on our farm.

My new family’s pastures were rich with dairy cows, chickens, hedgerows and superb soil to start a bountiful kitchen garden.

In the autumn of 2009, I began writing my blog, originally called I Married an Irish Farmer and later becoming simply Farmette. I needed an outlet for my creativity, to produce something and perhaps connect with other farming women.

Comments by readers provided adult company when the farm kidnapped my husband for 13 hours a day while I was alone at home with a toddler.

With all the time I was spending in the kitchen, I started quizzing my mother-in-law on her traditional Irish cooking skills and recipes. I discovered other doyennes of Irish country cooking and lingered over the cookbooks of Ireland, past and present. I photographed and recorded my culinary experiments and shared them on my blog. I sat down each day and shared the details of my Irish country cooking journey with my family and a quickly growing audience. My blog not only built my online community; I soon found that if you prepared homemade clotted cream and baked a mean scone, you might make a friend or two in the neighbourhood.

Each week, Geoffrey and I started visiting our charming local fishmonger to see what we could create with his catch. An abundance of raw milk from the farm and my father-in-law’s honey provided inspiration for many of our meals and homespun indulgences.

The farm at Dunmoylan has been in the McDonnell family since the early 19th century. Richard and his brother, David, are the seventh generation of McDonnells to be the custodians of this land. Today, Dunmoylan is a modern grass-fed dairy and free-range poultry farm with a focus on sustainability and renewable energy. The home farmhouse is inhabited by my father-in-law, Michael. Our little homestead, adjacent to the farmyard, is named Dunmoylan Grove. David’s home across the road was the original presbytery, built in 1872 for the local parish priests.

In the farmyard, Richard milks Holstein Friesian dairy cows, morning and night, all year round. He also raises free-range poultry, which was proudly established on the farm in the 1960s by my late mother-in-law, Peggy. There is a small orchard on the home farmyard. Originally planted in the 1940s for supplying an Irish cidery, it has since been cut back to a scale that provides just enough apples, pears, plums, gooseberries, and currants for our families each summer and autumn.

My father-in-law is also a beekeeper. He keeps three hives in a wooded area near the river Shannon, and they keep us in honey all year. Dunmoylan Grove is my farmette.This is where we grow all of our vegetables and some fruit and raise small amounts of pastured livestock for meat. It’s where I make wholesome magic with the milk from the farm and press orchard apples and pears into juice.

While the farm and its working practices have been updated over time, my husband’s family remains traditional with regard to family as well as community; raw milk in the tea, big roast lunches, quaint country dinners, the observation of all holy days, the blessing of the farm on May Eve, a penny for luck on a sale of land or cattle, and unwavering support of small local businesses.

Over the years, I have been fortunate to meet and break bread with a bevy of magnificent Irish food producers, writers, chefs, and enthusiasts, who have shown me that although we should respect all Irish food, there is more to Ireland than Guinness and beef pie.The Farmette Cookbook is a compilation of tried-and-true recipes that emphasise local, fresh ingredients and use my newly honed, traditional Irish kitchen skills. These are skills that have healed homesickness, forged new friendships, and provided an education that has taught me to respect the land and the animals that thrive on it.

The book is also a tale of celebrating Irish traditions, while finding common ground with new family and friends. It’s about cultivating a love for the land and the quiet of the countryside and all the unpredictable cultural and practical differences I’ve encountered along the way.

From The Farmette Cookbook, by Imen McDonnell. Reprinted by arrangement with Roost Books, an imprint of Shambhala Publications Inc, roostbooks.com