Trip to Cloncannon Bio-Farm
By Tadhg Kelly
On Tuesday 12th of March 2019, 3rd class from St. Colmcille’s headed for the hills of Toomevara to discover more about bio-farming from Sean O’ Farrell in Cloncannon.
We boarded Johnston’s bus at approximately 9.20am & I sat alongside my friend Tom on the Liverpool side of the bus. The journey lasted about 25 minutes and I spotted my Granny’s house en route. The entire class wore wellies and coats fit for a cold and blustery day.
On reaching the Bio- Farm we had a look at the pigs. There was a very large pig, we called him ‘Daddy Pig’. The other ones we called ‘Peppa’, ‘George’ and ‘Mammy Pig’. After viewing the pigs we met the owner Sean.
After a short conversation Sean began telling us about wildlife in the local area. He also told us a story about a murder in the area in the 1900’s. Unfortunately it was a man from Borrisoleigh working in Cloncannon Creamery who was killed .
In addition to that we saw geese that were beside the greenhouse. We went inside the greenhouse and picked a lot of carrots. Sean told us about planting vegetables.
Afterwards we went into Sean’s house which is a log cabin. It is built from head to toe in wood, even the stairs. He uses sheep wool to insulate his house. We had orange juice, bananas, smarties and jellies. Meanwhile we saw 100 little chicks, we all got to hold one. The chick that I was holding fell asleep. We put all of the chicks back in the box carefully.
We then went up the farm for more of a look around. We got an awful fright when Sean lifted two empty sacks from the ground to reveal a stuffed badger and a pine-martin. I thought Ms Ryan was going to pass out. When we were sure Ms Ryan was ok to keep going we headed towards an impressive wooden hut with a cool campfire outside. There were two nasty looking goats in the hut, one with a scraggly beard and one with very pointy horns.
As we were in the hut we had to pick our steps because there were little pellets of poo on the ground. We then went back to the bus and changed out of our wellies and into our shoes. We went home very happy with our adventure.
The end.