An Garraí Glas

GAEILGE Ta muid ag fás glasrai ar an talamh seo mar a rinne ar ndaoine romhainn ó thainig clann Maidhc an Ghabha, Choistealbhach, as an Lochán Beag in Indreabhan siar chomh fada leis Na Creagain ós cionn céad bilan o shin. Ag gabhnaíócht a bhí na fir ins an gclann agus taréis do dhuine acu go leor dhá shaol a chaith i Meireaca shocrá sé ar cheartá a oscailt anseo. Mar sin ní shé seo an chéad uair siopa a bheith san ngarraí sin amuigh. Chomh maith leis sin chuir na daoine seo fatai (agus a lan eile) in san Earrach. Rinne dár freastal ar phortaigh agus ar farraige. Ach rinne chuile dhuine sa gceantar seo an rud ceanna go dtí blianta beag anuas. Feicfar dhomsa gur údar bród é sin. Tá gar do acra talún cuireadh againne i mbliana(2016). Cé nach bhfuil ceird an nghabha, an sli maireachtail a bhi sa gclan agus a bhí ag Johnny Choil Mhaidhc fhéin forleathan sa lá atá inniu ann tá ceird an gharradoir ag dul o neart go neart.

ENGLISH My grandfather, Coil Mhaidhc, must have loved Connemara because although having gone across to America as a young man and worked as a blacksmith for over twenty years there he returned to Ireland and raised a family here. He came from a long line of Blacksmiths. My father claimed that in 1912 Coil Mhaidhc contracted lead poisoning in New York and woke up in a hospital bed with the man in the next bed having come off the Titanic. Well thats the story anyway. But my father had a lot of those. What we do know however was that they loved the land here and from a young age myself and my brothers were made aware of our responsibility to look after it. Well I frittered around in different corners of the world myself for a few years before the principles he had laid down to us in our youth made any sense. In 2013 An Garraí Glas started as little more then longing to repair a few stone walls and sow potatoes for the first time since the 1990s. In 2016 we had a name for what was happening and we set ourselves up as producers of Organic Vegetables. Doing it for a living allows for more time in the Garden you understand! The land here is Pristine and our Vegetables are some of the healthiest you can get. They are also some of the freshest. As far as I know no farmer in the country harvests almost the entirety of the produce he will sell on the day that he sells it. But that is what we do here. Our veg comes out of the ground and is set out in front of you, the customer, to buy. And its all straight-forward. We are following the seasons and our one acre plot is mostly made up of the staple vegetables that our grandparents consumed. The wooden shop, road-side, is open from June until November but you can see us hand-weeding our traditional lazy beds and spreading out seaweed and animal manure anytime of the year. A place like this takes a hell of a lot of hard work to maintain. But the people that went before us were right. It is all worth it.
-Aonghus Johnny Choil Mhaidhc Ó Coistealbha