FRESH START:A job in IT sales, a long commute, a house out of range of the suburbs. Something had to give. And so a new life began, a life in the country with self-sufficiency a priority, writes Michael Kelly.
SOMETIMES WHEN I take a break from writing and look out the window at our passable impression of The Good Life - vegetable plot, polytunnel, hens, pigs etc - I can't help but marvel at the fact that we've ended up here. You know when you look back on the really pivotal decisions in your life, and you can't believe you actually had the balls to make them? I wonder if we were faced with the same decisions again, would we have sufficient courage second time around?
In the grand scheme of things, two people jacking in corporate life in Dublin to move to a leaky cottage in the country is nothing remarkable. But in terms of our life, it was huge. Sometimes I think if the wind had been blowing in a different direction, we might not have moved at all, and it's sort of scary to think about just how random life can be. We could still so easily be getting up at 5.30am and commuting three or four hours a day to jobs we had no particular love for. Living in a commuter town we had no connection with. Wishing away the week. Living for the weekend.
Moving to the countryside was about taking back control of the seconds, minutes and hours that make up our day. It was about lifestyle and standard of living. It was about community and family. We bought our windswept acre in Co Waterford without even having jobs organised - that's the sort of bravado the late, lamented Celtic Tiger conferred on its cubs. Mrs Kelly took the plunge first, leaving corporate life behind to become a teacher shortly after we moved here.
It took me a little longer. In early 2006 (less than two years ago, but in some ways a different lifetime) while I was still working in IT, the editor of this magazine published a tiny, 150-word piece about invisible keyboards (don't ask). It was a blink-and-you'd-miss-it start to my journalism career, but a start nonetheless. I was, I assured myself, Irish Times material. Shortly after that, I got a larger piece published about keeping hens under the mouth-watering headline "Living in Eggstasy". These modest incursions into the world of journalism were enough to convince me that I might have what it takes to make a living from writing.
I still get excited shivers down my spine when I think back on the day in July of that year when I finally abandoned life as a corporate drone. My boss was just back from holidays and he was all tanned and relaxed looking and when I finally managed to stop trembling sufficiently to get the words out - "I'm handing in my notice" - I could see he was thinking: "This is all I need, I haven't even got through my e-mails yet." And that was that. Overnight I went from (relatively) successful software salesman to struggling freelancer. Sure, our income is looking a little emaciated, but my God the flipside: the freedom, the flexibility, the free time. To love work, to be excited and challenged. Not to hate Mondays anymore.
The wannabe smallholder stuff started with a bulb of garlic. We were in a supermarket one afternoon shortly after we moved and came across something that seemed to highlight just how absurd our food chain has become: a bulb of imported Chinese garlic on sale for 42 cent. That bulb of garlic was our epiphany - how can it make sense to ship something so tiny and so cheap half way around the world when it grows perfectly well here in Ireland?
What started with a decision to plant some garlic in the garden to give two fingers to the Man, spiralled completely out of control to an obsessive, highly-addictive quest for kitchen table self-sufficiency. That can be frustrating when you know as little about growing and rearing things as we do. Looking back on it now, I can't imagine us living our lives without producing our own food. It seems to complete the picture - it's the icing on the cake. The garden has provided us with some truly magic moments. The first pristine egg from our new hens sitting triumphantly on a bed of straw. The day we brought two wriggling squealing piglets home wondering if they would always be this loud? Spending a whole day preparing a seed bed with my back and limbs aching and then at dusk feeling sorry the day was over. The distinctive cheep-cheep from the coop heralding the arrival of little chicks for Easter. The day we got Roger, the Sussex cockerel, and when his crowing woke us up at 5am the following morning, giving serious thought to turning him in to an earthy coq au vin. But above all, the steady momentum of the seasons. The abundance of high summer and autumn. The gentle, melancholic pause of winter. The excited anticipation of spring. These have been the most honest moments of my life.
Trading Paces - From Rat Race to Hen Run by Michael Kelly is published next week by O'Brien Press (€9.99)