About Us

Welcome to Good and Green. We are a family run 3.5 acre smallholding on the gentle hillside leading down to Lough Derg in Ogonnelloe, Co Clare.

We grow a wide variety of salads, herbs, root vegetables and tender tunnel crops. We started to grow for our own family and have extended this to supply fresh produce to our local area via preordered veg boxes that we prepare to order for collection every Friday.

We are by nature a small scale operation and our crops vary with the seasons. Thanks to our tunnels we can grow salad, herbs and spinach year round and have extended greatly our growing season for field crops such as potatoes, carrots and onions. We don’t grow a large volume of any one crop, so availability does vary – we post a list on our website weekly of produce available.

Aswell as our market garden we keep a small number of animals – as much as 3.5 acres can support. At the moment laying hens, ducks, a goose (our gander had to be dispatched due to bad attitude! We did enjoy that dinner I must admit.), dog, cats, pigs and a lamb. The lamb was given to our two eldest sons – Oisin and Cathal. They bottle fed her four times a day initially. This gradually reduced down, but they still feed her meal every morning. She has been named after a cousin – and we have been warned that she is NOT for the table. I feel that there may be shearing and spinning on the cards for next year…?

We have recently welcomed 3 little pigs for the third year – they are the making of the smallholding – reducing waste from the garden (beds of bolting spinach, cabbage leaves etc) to virtually nil, they are currently ploughing and manuring a new plot of land for next year’s veg and are doing an admirable job with their very strong snouts. They are lovely to have around, and great fun to watch… The bit I do feel bad about, but it is their primary function for the family is that they fill our freezer and supply us with excellent quality meat for the year.

All in all we are working to develop a holding that supplies alot of our day to day produce, year round veg, a good quantity of seasonal fruit.

We wanted to make our garden work for us, and, although it is a step by step process, it is doing so very well in the five years since we started to grow. We also wanted our children to grow up understanding food, having appreciation for how it is produced and enjoying the process… that part is a bit hit and miss when we are working 14 hour days during the Spring and early Summer and can’t go anywhere for the day without 2-3 hours of preparation. A night away takes considerably more organising. But on balance, the connection with our home and what it gives us is a great reward for the effort it takes and we hope it will stand to our boys into their futures.