The Mindful Farmers Daily Diary Day 52

Good morning everyone and welcome to Ballnwillin House Farm once again. Anther beautiful morning on the farm but The Mindful Farmer has had to use all of his mindfulness techniques to bear after I heard the news last night that the first wild boar were born in Donegal last week since 800 years ago. Now, nearly the whole country knows that we have been farming wild boar in Ireland since 1995 and before that in the UK and Hungary. RTÉ hadn’t done their homework here even though they have been on the farm several times filming them but anyway that’s where the mindfulness comes in. The rest of the family had heard the early news bulletin and were trying to figure out how to break the news to me and when they did I got an initial shock, but then I thought “how am I going to break the news to Biffo and Lulu about this and the storm and controversy their Grandma and Grandad caused when they first arrived in Ireland on December 6th 1995 making real history but enough of that. Our wild boar at Ballinwillin House Farm are part of the family now with many pictures on the Hall of Fame honoring them and likewise the deer and goats and all the animals bring me joy, farming and meeting them daily. I learn a lot from animals just being who they are. They live nearer to the earth and deeper within the earths soil. These wild animals know the world in a way we never will. We seldom manage to be where we are but they are always looking out from the here and now. I would now this morning, and day 52 of lock down on the farm, I would like to rest in the beauty of their being and in their company, feel the earth breathing with us all. Thank you my friends, my beautiful comrades, my deer, my wild boar, my goats, my hens.

Continue to pray, bless and heal each other.

The Mindful Farmer

Patrick

The Mindful Farmers Daily Diary Day 51

Good morning everyone and welcome once more to Ballinwillin House Farm, another beautiful, earthy morning. I must say I enjoyed another great days work on the farm yesterday just tidying up around areas that had been neglected over the winter period and the stormy spring. I am so lucky I inherited a great work ethic from both my parents  and the saying back home when someone arrived on to the farm was always “God bless the work and God bless all here”. We now cherish these lovely words and we must go back to using them again with a warm and sincere heart. They also said that “the beauty of your soul shines through in your work and how you approach it. The light shown through in your work should also bring warmth to those who walk with you and around you.” Don’t let your work over exhaust you, it should release refreshment, inspiration and excitement to you and when your days work is done with satisfaction may the evening find you gracious and fulfilled and you can enter the night blessed, sheltered and protected. May your soul calm, console and renew you. It is important we all enjoy our work and following on from that enjoyment we will rest easy. What a wonderful gift it is to be able to rest easy.

Continue to pray, bless and heal each other.

The  Mindful Farmer

Patrick

The Mindful Farmers Daily Diary Day 50

Good afternoon everyone and welcome once again to Ballinwillin House Farm. Another beautiful morning on the farm and in the garden. I firmly believe that the life at Ballinwillin House Farm is very conducive to practicing mindfulness in normal life but now especially during Covid19. Today is day 50 and earlier I did my Gratitude Meditation and then I thought about day 50 and the following thoughts came to mind:-

Am I half way there? On a journey to nowhere,

 with no lamp at my feet, can I trust who I meet?

 I thank God for the farm and pray we all come to no harm.

 To be born is to be chosen, so never let our hearts be frozen.

The Mindful Farmer, Patrick

But it is hard to believe that we survive, we struggle on at day 50. The earthquake that has lasted 50 days has really hit us and rocked our beautiful island. It has done the same to every other country - no where has escaped this massive tremor. It has brought misery, death and disaster. But it has also brought good news everywhere, acts of kindness, humanity, community. It will renew our earth, our world, that I am confident of. We now need an attitude of faith and prayer to see that the spirit is hovering over all this chaos and that new life is coming forth, and soon. We must rejoice in this suffering at our own personal level because we know that deep down suffering produces perseverance, produces character, hope and love.

Continue to pray, bless and heal each other.

The Mindful Farmer

Patrick

The Mindful Farmers Daily Diary Day 49

Good morning everyone and welcome once more to Ballinwillin House Farm to another beautiful Sunday morning where we will go for a little tour of the garden and see what beautiful new flowers we have to see this week and also the ones who have given us such joy but are fading reminding us that we cannot smile all the time either but we could be constant. It is always nice to speak to you in the morning stillness while the earth is fresh with glistening dew. I always feel that the morning air has more penetrating strength than any other time of the day. It is like getting freshly made bread, it lights a flame with the dew of hope. Now this morning we have seen all the lovely plants and trees but to truly see something we must look at it for a long time. It is not just good enough to passively say “I have seen this beautiful garden”. We must be the things we see, we must get to know that tree, that flower, look at its colour until its red or pink or blue becomes as real as you can hear it. Imagine the world within the buds, blossoms, leaves and flowers. We must take our time and touch the very peace they come from. If you love nature then why are you asleep? Have a beautiful, restful Sunday. I feel a lovely, mindful retreat coming on soon at Ballinwillin House Farm. It seems the perfect thing to look forward to once we are back to normal.

Continue to pray for normality, continue to bless and heal each other

The Mindful Farmer

Patrick

The Mindful Farmers Daily Diary Day 48

Good morning everyone and welcome once again to Ballinwillin House Farm. Another glorious morning here and my orchestra of bird song is serenading me as usual. Today I would like to talk to you about the month of May. My Mam always loved May. She used to say that May brings great joy. She also used to say “now that the freshness of spring is slowly giving way to the beauty of early summer at Ballinwillin House Farm.” A new beauty appears almost daily filling everywhere with colour, flowers open, leaves unfurl and all the trees begin to put on their “summer clothes”. Each day brings something new, the farms and the gardens are busy with the surge of all types of growth. What we have to be careful of is that we are not too busy in the garden or the farm and to enjoy natures beauty and abundance. Take time out to sit, stare, meditate for a while. Enjoy the beauty and hear the murmur of Mother Natures heart. It is also important in this month to tune in to the beauty of our own lives and to discover the joy there is in loving and grateful hearts. The wonder of the month of May will never be lacking in this world of ours. What may be lacking is wonderment!

Continue to pray for the end of this virus. Continue to observe all the rules. Continue to bless and heal each other and keep your heart smiling.

Have a lovely May Day

The Mindful Farmer

Patrick

The Mindful Farmers Daily Diary Day 47

Good morning everyone and welcome to Ballinwillin House Farm, a beautiful morning once again. This morning I would like to talk to you about the following three issues:- belonging, simplicity and happiness and the way these thoughts came to me as as follows. Earlier this morning after my meditation and a few hours farm work I came in for my breakfast. Miriam had made a fresh brown soda bread and I cooked a few wild boar rashers, some wild boar pudding, wild boar sausages and venison sausages. I just had a hankering for a good fry up and some fresh eggs I had collected from the hens earlier. It brought me back to my early childhood in West Limerick when my father and I would be out and about very early on the farm and then we would arrive in starving and Mam would have a beautiful breakfast all ready with all the home made foods just like what I am having this morning, all home made and from our organic farm. I feel nostalgic and proud and grateful for having learned all these skills from my parents who worked morning, noon and night that we might have a better life, but did we? We have made huge advances in technology, transport, aviation etc. This so called commercial edge of progress has cut away a huge region of human tissue and webbing that held us in togetherness with each other. The result is we have fallen out of belonging, abandoned our simplicity and sacrificed our happiness. That is why my heart reaches back to my childhood this morning. It makes me so happy to re live those days as I and we are now doing on the farm. It is a wonderful feeling when the two hearts meet - the one of the child in West Limerick and the one of a senior aged farmer in North Cork. It is a beautiful feeling, so beautiful that I can even re live the old smells of the farm, the meadows, the farmyard and the kitchen and the re loved home of happiness and plenty and now re live them this morning at Ballinwillin House. I feel that all this is un-lived in me will blossom into the future an that is the wish I have for all of you this morning and into the future. Continue to pray, bless and heal each other and keep smiling.

The Mindful Farmer

Patrick

The Mindful Farmers Daily Diary Day 46

Good morning everyone and welcome to Ballinwillin House Farm. Well, we got plenty of rain yesterday and during the night. The fields, the land and the earth is rejoicing. Every year, no matter what the conditions are on the farm during any of the seasons and they will vary, be it too much rain, too many storms, too much sun - now there’s a situation, but nature will always balance things out but we must be listening and when we listen to Mother Earth on this farm, on any farm, the harmony of the farm reflects the eternal peace that all human beings long for.

As a farmer you become very aware of mortality as you deal with it each day on the farm and we accept that and understand all its meanings. But there is always hope on the farm and it is believing that there is a beauty and meaning in our life. Right up to the last moment and when we depart this earth hope expands by our re-joining our ancestral and spiritual ancestors. What have we learned? We have learned that we find beauty in the ordinary and suddenly we realise that no such person or thing is ordinary.

Go forth today to bless, pray and heal each other and keep smiling

The Mindful Farmer

Patrick

The Mindful Farmers Daily Diary Day 45

Good morning everyone and welcome to another new day on the farm at Ballinwillin House. Yesterday we had quite a busy day on the farm, fencing, post driving and wire erecting and cutting up an old tree that had fallen on the fences. Some of these trees are nearly 300 years old and it is sad to see them go but the storms in January and February were just too much for them to bare anymore. But we have planted new ones in their memory, just think how much will happen in the world in the next 300 years and what changes we will see. That’s what fascinates me about nature and the farm and how nature and the farm welcomed our change to organic status going back the years and also how the trees, land and nature welcomed the change to farming deer and wild boar on the farm. It all seemed to fit in a rhythm with nature and evolved seamlessly when we decided to do so back in the 1980’s. My father used to say that every beginning opens up the gifts of growth that are stored up for us and to refuse to begin and take that risk can be an act of self neglect. Wise words? I think so. Risk can be our greatest ally. If we are to live a truly creative life we always need to look critically at where we presently are, have we become stagnant? When I decided on this farming venture the beginning of course was innocent and I had no full idea of where it would lead me but it led me all over the world and back here to the farm seduced into growth and saluting the challenge to begin. Never be afraid to begin.

Continue to pray, bless and heal each other.

The Mindful Farmer

Patrick

The Mindful Farmers Daily Diary Day 44

Good morning everyone, The Mindful Farmer here again. I hope you had a restful and mindful night and are ready to embrace the gift of a new day. As I sit here this morning having already completed my morning meditation, then a few hours farming, I am now having a little rest as I speak to you. If we listen, as you are doing now, the earth can soothe our troubled hearts, refresh our weary limbs, soften our hardness and redirect us where we are lost. If we allow the sacredness of the earth to surprise we will not be sad or withdrawn or bitter or worn out and we will retain our vigour and our zest for life. The world will become an inexhaustible source of delight, textures, colours and sounds just like you are hearing here this morning. The world, our world, yours and mine can be a bottomless well full of wonder and surprise which we can draw from daily to recharge our spirits.

So be calm, be refreshed while you are resting there and that is why I devote my gardens at Ballinwillin House to Mindfulness.

Continue to pray, bless and heal each other. These three will conquer Corona and are will on their way to doing so.

Have a great day.

The Mindful Farmer

Patrick

The Mindful Farmers Daily Diary Day 43

Good morning everyone and welcome once again to Ballinwillin House Farm. I had a beautiful day of rest yesterday and spent a large part of the afternoon walking the fields and admiring nature and the animals. Today I want you all to say a prayer and a thought for all the people who are exhausted, be it nurses, doctors, gardai, everyone on the front line and also the people and families who are confines to restricted accommodation, students, teenagers, children - it is affecting us all. Exhaustion and stress take hold when the rhythm becomes hectic and at times takes on strain until it reaches breaking point and all unattended stress fall in on your soul like an endless and increasing weight. The light of your mind becomes dim and issues that you would normally take in your stride is now closing you down. This is where your breathing comes in. Focus on your breath, in and out slowly and repeatedly for as long as it takes to bring you slowly back to calmness. Calmness can claim you into it’s being of caring arms once again. Gradually you will return to yourself and you will feel a new and returned warmth in your beating heart and the joy that dwells in you and in us all will light up again. If we nourish the spirit in silence through meditation and prayer wee will enable our true spirit to enfold and as our spirit unfolds, we can grow to be our better and true selves. Remember only the heart knows how to find what is precious.

Continue to pray, bless and heal each other as it will guide us back to the future like a lamp at our feet in the dark night.

The Mindful Farmer

Patrick

The Mindful Farmers Daily Diary Day 42

Another Sunday and another day of Sunday rest. Good morning everyone, The Mindful Farmer Patrick here on a dullish morning so far on the farm but all the animals are looking great and very happy and I am very excited. I had 100% take  in the egg department this morning but hopefully I am getting to grips with this problem but early days yet. Yesterday was a beautiful sunny day here and in the evening when I had the lawns cut I was able to stay in the grass with the grandchildren, we had a ball and their parents were delighted as they were so tired  at 7pm they were begging to go to bed and then we had a little celebration. John cooked a beautiful dinner with venison fillets cooked medium rare, mushrooms and fresh onions washed down with a glass of Cabernet Franc. It is a nice thing to do at the end of the week and to give oneself a little pat on the back and acknowledge our survival of another week in lock down. It is good psychologically as well and you sense you are freeing your heart and parking all your worries and problems for a while and you let joy roam freely inside you. Then at around 10pm I went out to the garden and did a gratitude meditation for a while, lying down with full body contact with Mother Earth and thanking her for all the gifts of the past week and then bed early for a good nights rest and when I woke up this morning around 5.30am I felt great and full of energy for the gift today.

Continue to pray, bless and heal each other and have a lovely Sunday

The Mindful Farmer

Patrick

The Mindful Farmers Daily Diary Day 40

Good morning to you all and welcome once again to Ballinwillin House Farm. When I think about 40 I can only think this world fasted for 40 days and 40 nights, now we haven’t fasted for 40 days and 40 nights - at least I haven’t anyway. But we have suffered for 40 days and 40 nights. We have isolated , we have been on our own and the very best and honoured citizens of this state have cocooned for 40 days and 40 nights. People who have given their life to Ireland and I refer to the over 70’s people who still have a major role in the wisdom march of our great country. Yesterday I asked you to prepare and make in your minds eye your writing bureau and now we are going to sit down on our beautifully made pine bench and open up the bureau and pull out one of the drawers with your particular problems in it. We are going to read it over, reply to it carefully and mindfully roll it up and before placing it back into its little drawer we are going to breath love, healing and understanding into it and then place it lovingly and carefully back into the drawer and lay it at the feet of Mary and Jesus and tomorrow we will review the situation. Sometimes it may take a few days or weeks but the answer and the healing will always come clearly. Ironically I have been asked by a friend to refer to one of the messages in our Thinking Path that has helped them a lot and it is as follows:- “it is ironic that so often we continue to live like paupers though our inheritance of spirit is so vast”. We must pray reverently that our spirit and the contact and reverance of our ancestrial spirit is honoured and respected and it is very important to remember that regardless of all our differences in religious, language and concept, there is not heart without this inner divine reference.

Another important message for today is Stop Food Waste Day. I believe present circumstances will make us more mindful about food waste and appropriate distribution.

Sorry for being so long today - I had a lot on my mind and even more to share maybe later in the day. Who would ever have thought 40 days of lockdown and isolation - but in spite of it all continue to pray, pray, pray. Bless and heal each other and keep smiling.

The Mindful Farmer

Patrick

The Mindful Farmers Daily Diary Day 39

Good morning everyone. Today is day 39 of lockdown on the farm. Anther beautiful morning here in Ballinwillin.

This morning I am responding to a number of calls and requests about anxiety that people are suffering from the arrival of Covid-19. Anyone who coaches mindfulness, meditation or who speak about it and practices it on public platforms, we all have our own techniques and individual methods that work for them and more importantly the people we help. So for today I am going to give you all an exercise - I want you to make, in your minds eye, a writing bureau cabinet, you know the one I mean, the one you would sit into, take out your writing pad and then right in front of you there are all the little pockets or drawers that you can open up, put whatever into them and then close up again. I want you all to use your imagination in making this and make it as thoughtfully and beautifully as you can imagine. Make it special as you are going to use it a lot. Now there a project and tomorrow I will start your first exercise session. In the meanwhile, believe in your dreams and don’t disconnect yourself from the energy of your life force, which is love. Of we shut the doors on our dreams we turn out the lights of love and the faith in believing what reason does not believe.

Continue to pray. Bless and heal each other and wear that smile.

Warm regards

The Mindful Farmer

Patrick

The Mindful Farmers Daily Diary Day 37

Good morning everyone, The Mindful Farmer Patrick here. It is a beautiful morning here this morning and all the animals seem to be convinced that spring is now in full swing as they dance in the fields. I say my animals, or my animals  me. We are as one and always, and they bring me joy, but it is more their farm than mine but for today we will agree to share the same space. The joy for me in developing this farm and moulding it into the beautiful habitat for wild animals into a domain of aesthetic shelter and nourishment for them and for me. It is important that the animals and the earth are able to trust the intention of the farmers hand, cultivating it, moulding it and nourishing it. My job is to produce healthy green grass during growing season and then in harvest time I gather the golden honey scented hay into the barn for their winter feed. This harvest feeds all the animals through the darkened heart of the winter but they don’t mind, their minds are easy and nearer to the earths heart, deeper within its silence. Animals know this world in a way we never will.

Continue to pray, bless and be kind to each other.

Have a great day!

The Mindful Farmer

Patrick

The Mindful Farmers Daily Diary Day 36

6 days of lockdown on the farm due to Covid 19. The start of another week and we will approach it with confidence. Yesterday was a very relaxing day for us all. We all walked the fields in the afternoon at different times. It was great to see the grandchildren playing in the fields just like little lambs or baby goats or baby wild boar dancing around. Then in the evening time we had a beautiful venison steak dinner washed down with a nice bottle of Canernet Franc names Clos De John Patrick from our cellar in Hungary. It was a very lovely way to finish off a pleasant day. My love of food and wine is a perfect balance for my life here at Ballinwillin House. It is a long way from growing up in West Limerick to owning a vineyard in Hungary under the Chateau Mulcahy brand. I have been very lucky in life and I am very grateful for that and that is why I practice the Gratitude Meditation a lot. I would like to think that I am always awake to the wonders of life and when I meditate all intentions and worries stop. It is a time where I can set my heart free to the field of dreams, my dreams. We can and should all dream. I can see what the gifts of years have given me and my family, things your efforts could never earn and very importantly in this pandemic, the health to enjoy who you want to be. It often feels like a mind to mirror mystery.

Continue to be safe. Pray, bless and  mind each other. Breathe in power and energy for the week ahead. I feel we are on our way.

The Mindful Farmer

Patrick

The Mindful Farmers Daily Diary Day 35

Good morning everyone on this Sunday morning and my favourite day of the week when we all should take a rest and some time off. As always on a Sunday morning I like to take you on a tour of the garden and see what colour we have to see today. The beautiful flowers on the trees, the smell of the wet grass, it permeates all things that they may not die, they remind me I am alive. When I came in from the farm this morning I could not help but notice no cars in the car park, no guests in the bed and breakfast, no banter at the breakfast table. I am really missing our wonderful guests at Ballinwillin House but I am really looking forward to meeting them all again and what we all have to look forward to once Covid 19 lockdown is over.

I suppose during these times it is reasonable to say that when we take time for silence and for prayer that we give ourselves a chance to remember who we really are and what life is really about. It is also a time that is made special and glorious by a sense of ones presence and ones self. Our health requires relaxation and remember “the softest things in the world overcome the hardest things in the world”.

Continue to pray, bless and heal each other.

The Mindful Farmer

Patrick

The Mindful Farmers Daily Diary Day 34

Good morning everyone, The Mindful Farmer Patrick here. A fine soft morning here, that’s how they describe it in rural Ireland anyway. Beautiful, soft rain dropping  easily from the sky and all plants opening up joyfully to rescue its nourishment. A friend asked me to speak about rain last evening and also darkness and one of the messages on the Thinking Path says “when it rains look for rainbows, when its dark look for stars”. Well you know, I could see no stars in the sky last night but I know they were shining. I could not see any rainbows yesterday but was I blind? Where did my eyes linger? What dreams did I create? What differences did I notice in the ones closest to me? What and who did I neglect? What visitations did I get from the past and the future and there are many other questions where I would have failed and the final question is why was I given this day? My answer is as follows:- hope is daring and couragous and it has the audacity to reach a hand into darkness and come out with a fist full of light and convincing me and you that all will be well and all will  be well and all manners of things will be well but you must have that belief. This morning as I walked through the fields spring was in the air and in the fields I found a new courage for the day ahead, a new hope and I was able to pray. But if you are too angry to pray, sometimes it helps to turn to nature, for in nature we can find release that renews hope. Dream with the sunrise. Continue to breathe. Be the best you can be and you will be fine.

The Mindful Farmer Patrick sending sending hope and energy to you all.

God bless you all

The  Mindful Farmer

Patrick

The Mindful Farmers Daily Diary Day 33

Good morning everyone, The Mindful Farmer Patrick here again. It is a little wet here this morning in Ballinwillin House Farm. Yesterday again another very busy day, putting more deer into groups and out to spring grass, moved some wild boar into new paddocks and grouped some goats and their young kids into age groups. But all good healthy work also calling and delivering to Neighbour Food markets and sincere thanks to the people who are ordering these foods, it is a great help to enable us to survive.

What I am going to talk about this morning is planning and how we think we have control. I now think to myself what an eejit you were to be making all these plans. Where are they now? There is very little in our lives that we have full control over, even if we try and plan carefully, even the safest of people. But we can control the way we think and our attitudes and these can change everything.

What has been will be again!

What has been done will be done again and there is new under the sun.

This is new and the time to bring our own personal creative power to birth and we must be creative and fruitful as a precious person and unique in Gods eyes. We must be who we are called to be. Be content with what you have. Rejoice and in good time the world will belong to you again.

Continue to pray, bless and heal each other.

The Mindful Farmer

Patrick

The Mindful Farmers Daily Diary Day 32

Good morning everyone. The Mindful Farmer Patrick here. This morning I am coming to you a little earlier for the following reason, each morning I meditate for a while in the garden to welcome each day and show gratitude for a new day, a new dawn and for you all to listen to the dawn chorus. I just listen and be still. I usually do this barefoot so that I have the perfect connection with earth and nature and last night we were having a discussion here and Aoife made a very good point as she said “you know Patrick, you speak a lot about nature and being outside in nature and its lovely but what about the people who live an appartments or town houses and cant get out into nature?”. So with that in mind we are going to do the following:-  when we have retreats here I was giving a present to the participants when they are departing and it is a sketch of the 3 gardens - The Mindfulness Gardens, The Meditation Garden and The Forgiveness Garden and the surrounding Thinking Path with its little messages pinned on to the mature trees and this is sketched inside a head. My point here is that when people leave the retreat they take this garden with them and when they are at home and they take a little time to meditate or say a prayer or whatever, this is their garden for the rest of their life and they can go there as often as they so wish. It is put in a lovely frame for them and signed by The Mindful Farmer. So today we are putting the gardens up on The Mindful Farmer Facebook page and then each day you can in your minds eye go into the garden from your home, or where ever you are. I hope this will help you in this difficult time. This will be your inner garden and it will help you be patient with yourself, it will help you develop an inner strength and to embrace the beautiful seeds of beauty that we all have within us. Sometimes, especially in the difficult times, there are dark corners in our lives which we try to ignore but in the sanctuary of our garden and our hearts we can make room for the transforming power of love to grow within us and radiate through us.

Continue to pray, bless and mind each other.

The Mindful Farmer

Patrick

The Mindful Farmers Daily Diary - Day 31

Another beautiful morning, good morning to you all. We had a great day yesterday. We weaned kid goats and put the deer in Johns mountain out to spring pasture and I took away stags as their antlers are growing now and in 6 to 8 weeks time they will be getting dangerous and need to be on the home farm where we have special handling facilities for them.

This morning as I was meditating my own mother came very forward in my thoughts and prayers standing in front of my mind and this old saying to my mind “you only have one mother so patient, kind and true. No other friend in all the world will be the same to you”. Her voice was the first sound I could hear before I could see. Your nearness filled the air, an umbilical garden for all the seeds that dropped into the garden. The longing that followed into our infant hearts. You nutured and fostered us as we grounded our roots that could grow nowhere else. You formed us from depths beneath your heart. You know us inside out. No deeds, no seeds, no works or others could ever erase the depths of your goodness and beauty. Thanks Mam and all Mums. Where and what would we be without you all. Save us. Continue to pray, bless and heal.

The Mindful Farmer

Patrick