A storm named Ashley rages outside my bedroom window, threatening to blow the large polytunnel full of greens and tomatoes skyward, onward across Donegal Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. Sandbagged and secured, it should be fine. But there are no shoulds with nature lately, are there? There’s never any telling how things will end up.
There are no shoulds for me as well. If there were, I wouldn’t be at my third and final WWOOF farmstay in Ireland, my 11th overall. I wouldn’t have ridden a bike on the Euro Velo, a network of long distance cycling routes that connect Europe. I wouldn’t have climbed a cliff and explored a cave and thrown my arms up in front of a waterfall yesterday. I should be somehow acting my age, in ways I reject.
The Euro Velo, which I ride daily, runs right in front of this community-supported vegetable and sheep farm. Ronan started this vision-led project just two years ago as an effort to revive his family’s farm, after returning from five years on a commune in Spain.
Those other three things happened during the Magical Mystery Tour. Ronan took my fellow WWOOFers — a fruit farmer from Normandy, France, and a German teacher of Lebanese heritage — and me on it. It included some of the most rugged nature in this wild and forgotten part of Ireland. I crawled on my belly to peer over the ledge of the cliff.
I’m here in the southwest of Donegal County for only five more days. We’ll stack more dried turf for winter heating, spread more sheep manure, plant garlic and harvest enough crops to provide to 25 families, three restaurants and a special needs organization. We’ll take turns cooking, and we’ll linger over meals deep in conversation across ages and cultures and countries.
And then my own Magical Mystery Tour of this stunningly beautiful country will enter its final leg as I loop back for a third time to Dublin just in time for its marathon.
Stay tuned! Tap into TikTok for lots of videos throughout the #RoundIrelandWithADuck journey. And get the backstory by reading my book, Round America with a Duck, available online almost everywhere, plus in-store at Scholar and Scribe in the movie-making hotspot of Trilith, Georgia (get free upcycled bike tube earrings while supplies last with purchase of my book there during Biketober).
As always — trust the journey.
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