Country Living: Fantasising about quitting your job and moving your entire clan to the country to make your own jam? Sarah Marriott, who left Dublin for Roscommon, gets realistic advice from families who have opted for the 'good life'.
One goat is standing in the back of the car looking at where we've been and the other one, curled horns rubbing against the roof, pushes her head between me and the driver - as if she's ready to give directions or take her turn at the wheel.
The day I shoved two goats into the back of an old Saab and drove through town without getting a second glance from the locals was the day I started to feel like a character from The Good Life. I used to laugh at the 1970s sitcom with Felicity Kendal and Richard Briars as suburbanites who give it all up and go back to the land, without leaving their semi-d in Surbiton - and never imagined myself leaving Dublin for a lifestyle which involved getting up early to check that our goats hadn't strangled themselves on their ropes or killing a Christmas goose instead of buying a turkey wrapped in plastic.
The goats were on loan - as living lawn-mowers - to eat the grass threatening to engulf our little stone cottage in Co Roscommon, and to see if I could cope with looking after farm animals. Luckily they didn't need milking but they did need staking down (to stop them from eating trees and my washing) and moving to a fresh spot each dinner-time. A couple of months later, when all the grass had been neatly munched, I bundled the hungry goats back into the car to return them to fresher pastures - and decided that animals were a step too far on my personal Good Life scale.
Many people fantasise about leaving the rat race - saying goodbye to the career ladder, the commute, the stress, the struggle for time, to enjoy a rich family life - but don't know where to begin.
"Start small," says Hans Wieland of the Organic Centre in Co Leitrim. "Not everyone can do everything. You don't have to become fully 'green' all at once - but you can bake bread or grow herbs wherever you live. Producing your own food is an integral part of life, keeping you connected to nature. Even having a nice meal once a week or picking herbs in the morning for tea instead of buying herbal teabags makes a difference."
When Hans and his wife Gaby moved from Germany to Co Sligo with their children almost 20 years ago, they knew nothing. "It took four of us an hour to milk one cow. And we made sourdough bread but couldn't sell it; people we gave it to chewed it out of politeness but then turned round and spat it out. Then we made cheese for ourselves and started to sell it through word-of-mouth when we were still living in a mobile home - we even built the cheese kitchen before the house."
Although they no longer make cheese commercially, they still keep a few goats and grow most of their own food, while Hans shares his skills full-time at the Organic Centre and Gaby is a naturopath, specialising in herbs.
Most jobs - no matter how rewarding - involve doing the same things on a regular basis, but people who "opt out" often have to be more versatile.
"We've always done lots of different things," says Gaby. "We had three children so we had to work. I was originally a nurse and I've always been interested in healing. After studying and practising reiki and reflexology, I went to college to become a herbal practitioner. I also teach classes in how to grow and use herbs and food for healing, because I want to empower people to get healthy, to look after themselves."
Gaby and Hans aren't the only ones who manage to make money from their passions. When Peter Sherlock isn't taking care of his organic farm in west Cork, he's coaching cricket in local schools. What started as a hobby for the Australian cricket fan - he's manager of the under-13s Munster cricket team - has become a paying job and is just one of the ways he supports his family.
"You have to be very resourceful; to develop what strengths you have and be flexible," says Peter, who has built his livestock up from one cow to 15 (with three Jerseys for milk), and from three lambs to 15 sheep. "It's do-able or we wouldn't have been able to sustain it for 10 years, but you have to get something organised with money. You have to pay tax and have transport.
"This kind of life is hard going - it's not as romantic as it looks. It's more intense than a nine-to-five job because you're working the whole time. Doing everything on your own is quite demanding and sometimes you have disasters. You do lots of work and it's all destroyed: someone leaves a gate open and sheep or pigs get into the vegetable garden, or a cow gets into the polytunnel.
"Holidays are virtually impossible if you have animals," says Peter. "I had my first holiday in nine years when we took the kids to India 18 months ago."
One of the priorities for Peter is his children. "It's really important for me to be with the kids. We came here from England to have more freedom, peace and quiet than we could get there."
Three of his children don't really leave home to go to school - they attend a community school which he built on his father's land. "My wife Freya and I thought about home-schooling but children need more resources and social contact so we got together with other families and set up this project."
Most parents thinking of jacking in a conventional lifestyle either do it when their children are very young - or have left the nest altogether. Teenagers may not adapt well to rural life: the 18-year-old daughter of one Dublin couple who bought a farmhouse in Co Roscommon cried all the way from the city - and was stunned to find no streetlights outside the house.
Dennis Hawke spent 10 years waiting for his children to grow up while planning his escape from factory life in Co Tipperary, but believes his dream was worth the delay. He's growing organic vegetables and thinking about getting sheep on his 13 acres in Co Donegal. "I'm doing what I want to do and not what I have to do. I enjoy every day - especially not having butterflies in my stomach before I go to work. The first few months are hard - particularly not having a big pay cheque coming in, but you get used to it." Dennis thinks you need "a certain mindset" to give up a permanent job and go it alone: "You have to be fairly self-sufficient."
You also have to be determined. Even when Guy and Tessa Marsden got off the ferry in Dún Laoghaire with hardly any money and a truck overloaded with furniture and animals - and the ducks escaped in the car park - they didn't have second thoughts about finding an alternative way of life. "We knew my job in computers wasn't compatible with our married life, so we looked for a way of life and then sourced work to finance it," says Guy, who is from Dublin.
"For us, it's about finding a holistic way of life. It's about being rather than doing. Balance is the most natural thing in the world and that's what we're trying to do: find balance by integrating our aspirations with our lifestyle," says Guy. Part of the couple's farm near Parkes Castle in Co Sligo is given over to hazel woodland while the rest is organic pasture for their horses, sheep and cattle; now Tessa is considering going into organic flower production. They're also concerned about global as well as local environmental issues and Guy has just returned from his annual stint volunteering with APSO in Africa.
In the TV sit-com, the zany good lifers try to grow all their own food and exist without an income - but in 21st-century Ireland, opting out doesn't have to mean self-sufficiency, poverty or even soggy brown rice. In many cases, one half of a couple goes out to work - having found a job with a "feel-good" factor. Guy, for example, lectures part-time in IT and forestry while Tessa is responsible for the animals, including the geese which attack anyone going near the vegetable patch.
What Tessa loves most is getting up to hear the dawn chorus and checking the animals are happy - then having the rest of the day free.
"What's the point of rushing around all week and going to a health clinic at the weekends to detox? Why not have detox as part of your life? It's great to have time to talk to people. I love having the freedom to stop what I'm doing. If people call in, we'll drop everything to sit here and have a cup of tea."
Although this way of life can be hard work and financially precarious, most good lifers are not attracted to the security of a pensionable nine-to-five job. When Mary Luthers took a History of Art degree, she never expected to become an organic sheep farmer on 30 acres near Benbo in Co Leitrim. "I love the variety. I could never get a job in an office now," she says. Along with taking care of her 25 sheep, she sells organic eggs from her 120 hens, grows enough veg to feed her husband and five children most of the year, sells jam made from her surplus fruit, spins wool and makes cute sheep mobiles.
Mary doesn't have a lot of freedom, though. The woolly lamb glued to her side when she visits the "hennies" five times a day needs bottle-feeding every four hours. Rural life isn't for the squeamish, she says. "The lamb's mother was having problems so I put my arm up inside her - lots of blood and goo - but I couldn't get the lamb out and neither could the vet. So she had a Caesarean and then wasn't up to feeding the lamb. This one's a pet now, so we won't eat it.
"When you first move to the country you don't realise that growing food is harder than it looks and that there are animals out there against you. We started with about six hens but a fox came and killed them.
"We weren't going to let that beat us so we got more; then the mink came and got most of them. Now we have an electrified fence but still have to take them in every night and let them out every morning."
Like Mary, I moved to the country with little idea of how to grow anything. My naïve notion about gardening was that you simply put seeds in the ground and picked lettuce, onions and tomatoes a few months later. After coming back from a holiday to find flourishing seedlings reduced to sad stalks, I had to find out how to fight slugs as well as weeds and boggy soil. Learning the hard way is - well, hard. I wouldn't have made so many mistakes if I'd known where to go for advice at the outset.
For people who want to get a taste of la vita bella - to test out their "running away" fantasies or to learn how to live in a more sustainable fashion, the Organic Centre is running a one-week course later this summer.
"People are interested in this course because health and good food are big issues," says Hans. "For a better quality of life, instead of going on a typical summer holiday, you can take a week out of your life and have a learning holiday instead."
During the course, Hans will teach cheese and yoghurt-making ("it's easy") and how to preserve vegetables. Gaby will teach wholefood cookery and how to grow and use herbs for culinary and medicinal purposes, while other experts will discuss organic fruit and vegetable growing. Potential good lifers can also go on nature walks, visit an organic farm and spend an evening relaxing at the Ard Nahoo Health Spa.
When I don't know how to do something on my half-acre, or I'm thinking of starting a new project (in moments of madness I've thought about getting hens, a lamb and a pig), I get out my stained copy of the smallholder's bible, The Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency. Written in 1976 by John Seymour, who lives in Co Wexford, it's stuffed with good-humoured, common-sense advice on all aspects of doing-it-yourself. And the message from the father of self-sufficiency? "Happy grub-grubbing! (Better than money-grubbing any day!)"
'Learn How to Live the Good Life' runs from August 2nd to 6th at the Organic Centre, Rossinver, Co Leitrim. The centre is open to visitors and the café is open at weekends and bank holidays (11 a.m. to 3 p.m.). For a brochure of one-day courses call 071-9854338. See also www.theorganiccentre.ie