What One Person Can Do: The ridiculous step

Three years ago Tirloch O’Brien looked like he had his professional life sorted.
“Good job, good money, all the perks – insurance, dental, there was nothing I could give out about,” the 37-year-old recalls of his spell at a pharmaceutical patent office in Dublin.
“Money was always the thing: if I was paid more money I’d work better and I’d climb the ladder in this job. Then I got the job that gave me the money, and I realised it’s not about the money. So I kinda took a ridiculous step,” he says with a chuckle.
That ridiculous step takes us into a surprisingly cosy mobile home plonked beside an acre or so of rented land in Loughduff, the hub of Tirloch’s nascent business which officially got underway last week. Having parted ways with the pharma-sector, the NUIG graduate in microbiology went travelling around India, and returned home to indulge his dream of farming. Just one thing stood in his way: he knew absolutely nothing about agriculture. Tirloch’s not from farming stock; his father was a bank manager in Cavan town while his mother ran a B&B, so their initial reactions when he broke news of his big plans may be easily imagined, but not so easily printed.
Tirloch shared his philosophy with them: “You’ve one life to live, you have to try something.
“They came round to my way of thinking and said, ‘Yeah, go for it’. They’ve helped a lot.”
When explaining how he fell into horticulture, it sounds quite natural. He’s into food, and has been a vegetarian for “seven or eight” years because “I don’t like how meat is produced”. However he readily admits to eating what he regards as ethically sourced meat in that time. 
“If I know that the animal has had a good life, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with eating meat in that scenario.”
He’s also concerned by how fruit and vegetables are grown commercially too.
“I read a lot about chemicals used in farming, the destruction of land,”  he laments. 
Finally, he was also inspired by seeing friends who were able to grow almost enough food at home to sustain themselves. It would pain him to buy a tomato wrapped in cellophane in a supermarket, particularly when he can grow an infinitely tastier one himself.
“We’re handing over our own power to provide for ourselves – so that was all the reason behind it.”
The ‘it’ in question is his enterprise he calls ‘The Patch’, and upon venturing out into the crisp autumnal afternoon it’s immediately apparent that the   progress he has made is simply stunning. A ginormous polytunnel is the focal point of the operation. It’s a repurposed mushroom house, the frame of which Tirloch got for free from a generous Ballybay farmer looking rid of it. Friends and family helped him affix the newly purchased polythene sheeting – it could double as an airplane hangar.
Billeted inside are winter salads thriving in their pristine and orderly rows, like a well drilled regiment. He explains that given his scale of enterprise, growing veg like carrots or spuds just wouldn’t be viable. 
“The cut, and come again models of salads, spinach and kale is where you make the money,” he says, showing that environmentalists aren’t entirely immune to the profit motive. Essentially, he’ll take three or four of the biggest leaves from, say a lettuce, so the plant can continue to grow.  The harvested leaves are brought to an adapted shipping container that serves as his packing unit. He spent that bit more to ensure that the bags his customers lift off the shelves are compostable.
 At another end of the plot stands a potting shed complete with  heated mats to extend the season that bit longer. A drumlin of harvested squashes occupy a table, while on the ground, varieties of exhausted tomato plants have earned their retirement. 
As we approach his outdoor veg patch, surrounded by mesh to offer some protection from the worst of the persistent winds, a trembling of finches take flight. Amongst the kale he points out where his calendula are finally dying off.
“I had zero aphids up until recently,” he explains, “even now it’s slight. The aphids are attracted to the calendula, they’re sticky, they get stuck, they stay over there.”
Over by a wildflower section - “they weren’t for anything other than for the birds and the bees” - Tirloch enthusiastically rhymes off the types of native trees he hopes to plant to revive a desolate corner: hawthorn, birch and a weeping willow.

Grounding
The tour confirms that the step he took in 2016 could no longer draw ridicule from anyone. For the success he directs much of the credit to his parents, his uncle, and friends for their generous input.
The three year journey from knowing nothing to establishing his own farm saw him learning from some horticultural heavyweights. First up, a year long course in the Organic Centre in Rossinver proved invaluable in gaining a grounding in the subject.
“A class place,” is Tirloch’s verdict. “When I started that I had no concept of farming. I didn’t even know the basic families of vegetables so I was starting from zero.”
Stage two: a season’s internship living and working alongside Jim Cronin of Killaloe, Co Clare.
“He’d be very respected in the community of organic growers. He’s kind of like the Gandolf of organic growing,” Tirloch jokes.
Jim showed him the next step up from the organic model:
“I started with organic because I just wanted nice clean food, but it’s come to the point now where I want to be ‘regenerative’, because it’s the thing, I believe anyway, that will solve this climate issue.”
An online definition doesn’t exactly undersell regenerative agriculture: ‘a system of farming principles and practices that increases biodiversity, enriches soils, improves watersheds, and enhances ecosystem services’. 
Like an election manifesto, it’s big on promise but scant on detail. Tirloch is a details man, and he gives detailed talks to gardening clubs - such as the one with Cootehill GIY coming up on Tuesday, November 26 - but fortunately he can also do broad brush strokes:  
“Regenerative agriculture is building soil,” he explains. “Soil is the largest carbon sink in the world, and we’re depleting it at a ridiculous rate, and then they [world governments] are going on about carbon in the atmosphere. 
“If we rebuild soil, we will pull carbon out of the atmosphere and put it into the ground – and by putting that into the ground we are solving the climate issue.”
He says that one third of  the world’s land has turned to desert in 40 years due to farming practices, and identifies this as a factor in exacerbating the refugee crisis.   
“There’s also people fleeing from these areas that once were thriving lands... obviously there’s wars but a lot of that can be brought back to the fact that they can’t provide for themselves... the land will no longer carry life.”
Tirloch spends much of the interview discussing how he “built” his soil. Essentially old farmyard manure was laid out, then 25 tonnes of used organic mushroom compost was spread on top of that, then he sowed varieties of crops which can “mine nutrients”, capture and store nitrogen, scavenge phosphorus, and  inhibit weed seed germination. He rolled those plants before they went to seed. He then grew winter hardy crops to provide soil cover and further improve the nitrogen content.
“In conventional farming they spend so much money on nitrogen fertiliser,” he observes. “78% of the atmosphere is nitrogen, and plants know how to take that and put it into the ground if we just let them.”
After just nine months a basic soil test confirmed that he had achieved “very high levels of organic matter”.
“Basically I turned that section of the field into this perfect little area for growing veg. So then I just started growing veg!”
Having put the regenerative system into practice he’s more convinced than ever of its benefits. 
“It can literally change everything: it can clean our rivers, it can clean our air, it can cool our planet and it can feed everybody. It does it all – it’s not a bold statement – there’s hard evidence that proves it.”
The Celt observes, that for regenerative farming to “change everything”, it would need to be applied widely. That would take training and incentives for farmers to apply a “regenerative” model to at least some of their land. 
Tirloch’s exasperated at the conventional farming models and the current model of agri grants, such as  “this nonsense of paying them for vast expanses of grass”.
He suggests that farmers should be encouraged to adopt “silvopasture” which he describes as “the ultimate regenerative practice”.  This involves planting multiple species of trees in ways that also permits livestock rearing. 

Thriving soil
“So the cows can hang out – get shelter in winter or shade in the summer. Those trees are going to increase biodiversity – they’re going to increase insect life, they’re going to increase bird life. Their roots are going to go down and pump sugars into the ground, and you will have healthier, thriving soil. Farmers need to be getting paid to do that.”
He accepts a silvopasture system would require a reduction in livestock.
“You will reduce your numbers but you will have higher yields because you will have healthier animals. You will have higher yields of milk – the animals will have different herbs and grasses to eat, and different trees they can feed off, not just rye grass...
“The trees can produce fruit if you want so the farmer can have apples, nuts, whatever. Or you can have them for timber, fuel.”
While many farmers may roll their eyes at Tirloch’s beliefs, they will be surprised to hear his perspective on the bete noir of Irish carbon emissions: cattle. 
‘Everyone’s like – it’s the cows, the cows!’ It’s not the animals, it’s the method in which we’re farming,” he says, adding that livestock are actually “crucial” to a truly regenerative system. For an example of a successful silvopasture enterprise he cites Will Harris of White Oaks Pasture in Georgia, USA.
“This man has 10,000 animals and he’s sequestering more carbon than he’s giving off,” says Tirloch.
Is Will a beef or dairy farmer, the Celt naively asks?
“He’s everything – this whole single species thing doesn’t work. It’s not normal. What they are doing is holistic land management.”
Will Harris and his 10,000 animals seem a million miles away, when standing on this wind-swept acre. 
“In my mind I’ve said, give it three years and review it,” says Tirloch, “give a fifth year and definitely really consider is it working or not. Because it’s hard work.”
Physically or mentally hard work?
“Everything,” he says gathering his thoughts. “This year has been physically, mentally, emotionally, f*cking spiritually, everything has been really hard.”
Looking back, he thinks he bit off too much in year one, but adds: “That’s the only way to learn, to make it really difficult and say: ‘I’m not doing that again!’”