Tutors
Suzie Cahn
Suzie Cahn runs a Garden and Permaculture Design business and is also a Director of Carraig Dulra teaching farm.
She says that she is one of the lucky people, in an increasingly urban world, who have been able to develop a deep connection with nature through a frequently unstructured natural childhood by the sea and in the Irish countryside. She was exposed to a Steiner based community living through a strong family connection with the Camphill movement. (Her Grandmother was a founding parent of Camphill in Ireland) Without knowing it at the time, throughout her teens she was got to experience to bio-dynamic agriculture, eco-building and intentional communities and working with the natural landscape. She is a mother, Permaculture Designer and Educators, and an Artist and a Art Therapist working with nature, evolving into an Eco Psychologist.
Suzie says her passion is reconnecting adults, young people, families and children to the learning, healing and creativity found in both nature and art.
She has grown produce for her family since she had her first tiny plot on which to do so and has brought an organic and wildlife community garden and teaching programs to schools and community gardens. She gives workshops and lectures on many topics and in many settings: Hospice Foundation, art therapy training programs and others. She set up a local group called Wicklow Community Gardening Group in 2006 which carried out its aim of developing community gardens throughout county Wicklow. She has served on several boards: CREATE, community rep Wicklow County Partnership, and currently GIY.
She loved the family's six months WWOOFing on the road in Europe in her beloved 1971 VW camper in 2005 "Living inside other peoples lifestyles was amazing and so helpful in choosing what to do ourselves after what I called our 'mid-life crisis gap year.' After twenty years trying to live an ethical, eco life and to spread that ideal, we needed to recharge. It was becoming harder not to give in to hopelessness in the face of massive global environmental crisis' such as GMO, loss of bio diversity, global warming, and unimagionable levels of pollution from everything we do, even from our attempts at healing ourselves through medicine, not to mention running out of oil! " In 2014 the family went off again, this time driving a van (to be donated to the Mongolia Charity GoHelp) across England, France, Germany, the Czech Republic, Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan to Mongolia. She says "this time the trip was about reminding ourselves of our easy lives in Ireland even in "austerity" and contributing what we could to permaculture and education projects and a children's charity along the way."
Suzie hopes that her work and that of Carraig Dúlra continues to inspire and support people and communities developing personal and local resilience under the permaculture umbrella ethics of earth care, people care and fair share.
Suzie's blogs can be found at:
http://meitheal.net/6plusWwoofVanClan/
Contact: info@dulra.org
Hannah Mole
I bring a unique skillset to my design and teaching work as I draw on:
- 10 + years of applied Permaculture design practice across Ireland, working on public and private land and community based projects, both solo and in collaboration with other organisations.
- 20 + years of practical experience that comes with co-managing her family farm in Roscommon, including the development of multi-functional woodlands, permaculture-designed food production systems, various animals, my tiny home and lots more.... plus 2 years volunteering at an established Permaculture farm in France.
- Additional learnings from skill-specific trainings such as Regenerative Agriculture, Forest Gardening, Organic Market Gardening and Commercial Organic Seed Production to name but afew.
I offer a Permaculture design consultancy service, my Permaculture design experience so far encompasses household, garden (-staple crop food production, edible landscapes, community gardens), small-medium scale farming (human scale, animals, vegetable crops, woodlands) personal (using permaculture to guide personal focus, reflection, efficiency, business/livelihood), community network building, and appropriate scale shelter (low impact, low cost, high efficiency).
I'm currently expanding my work from a self employed sole trader towards a locally based community of practise which can scale up the quantity and breadth of Permaculture design work we can offer together while also providing live learning opportunities and potential pathways to regenerative livelihoods for others.
I have been teaching Permaculture in Ireland since 2010, in that time I have been working with community groups, land owners & individuals, facilitating workshops with those who want to learn how to use permaculture to improve the eco-efficiency of their landscapes, work & lifestyles.
I love the richness of collaboration and my courses bring together tutors, practitioners and various folk who together weave a diverse web of learning for participants as well as forging new connections and nurturing local resilience and relationships.
I use a creative teaching style, exploring Permaculture through interactive action learning, challenges, hands on practical projects, investigation, reflections & games.
I am also a tutor for people doing a Permaculture Diploma via the UK Permaculture Association.
Community is important to me, I'm involved in local community initiatives such as a seed saving collective, transition towns group and an ecological gardening group. I'm also involved in the national informal and grassroots Permaculture network in Ireland and I've been privileged to host the annual All Ireland Permaculture Gathering at our farm as well as being active in the core organising team.
I did my first PDC in the U.K with Designed Visions in 2009, while living and working on a permaculture farm in France. I later did an advanced design course with D.V. too, and in 2010 I returned again to successfully completed a 'Training of Permaculture Teachers' course following which I did some apprentice teaching on Permaculture Design Courses in the UK.
I was awarded a Diploma in Applied Permaculture Design from the UK Permaculture association in summer 2015.
My website is www.earthcare.ie
Instagram and Facebook: earthcare_permaculture_ireland
Mike Cahn
Mike comes from an IT and business background, and has particular interests in local food, DIY skills, natural beekeeping, bushcraft and technology that people can understand and emergent self-sustaining human systems. He is involved in the construction and maintainence of most of the non-living systems at the farm, including the Ram pump, water collection systems and outbuildings.
For over 10 years he ran a local website/IT business exclusively using a community built "open source" system for its work, and was active in the Irish open source community.
As an educator, he has taught primary school children in rural Vermont, high school teachers learning about computers in the classroom when it was a new thing, high school students aboard an environmental education schooner in Long Island Sound, college students under the original author of the BASIC programming language, business people and Irish Travellers.
At Carraig Dulra he teaches DIY skills, bushcraft and natural beekeeping, and will launch into long explanations of ram pumps at the drop of a hat.
He is keenly interested in local food, and has started several different projects to bring people and their food closer together, including an ethical/organic market in Wicklow Town, an organic wholefood buyers group, a local food box (OOOOBY), and an ethical/organic shop in Glenealy, Co Wicklow (which also became a hub for other like-minded people).
Steve Finnerty
Steve is living off grid on a 1.5 acre homestead in Tipperary. He is a vegetable grower on an organic farm close to home and also runs a small business, Sustainable Living Solutions. Steve did his PDC at Carraig Dulra in 2018 and completed the Holistic Teacher Training course in 2019. Steve has a wide range of practical skills from growing food to tiny home building.
Steve Golemboski Byrne
Steve Golemboski-Byrne owns Lackan Cottage Farm with his wife Claire, and has lived off grid for 12 years. With a diverse background that ranges from software engineering to construction, he's used his experience to advise on a wide range of off grid projects across Ireland.
His approach has always been to experiment and develop systems at Lackan in order to inform his teaching, and to offer others the chance to see working examples, especially of energy related projects.
Now he and Claire continue to offer learning opportunities at Lackan, and Steven's company Off Grid Kit specialises in consultancy and supply of off grid energy systems.
Ciara Brehony
Ciara is an artist with a particular interest in community work as social sculpture. Over the last ten years in particular she has been involved in a number of projects that have looked at how we feed ourselves, how we educate our children, and how we house ourselves. The People Care ethic of permaculture is her particular passion.
She is a founder of Common Ground Bray, a local co-operative, community-based group dedicated to promoting a co-operative, mindful and ecological lifestyle, with a particular focus on food sovereignty and how we feed ourselves.
She is also a founder of the Wicklow Democratic School, Ireland’s first democratic school for self-directed education, and Common Ground Community Led Housing, whose vision is of a new paradigm for housing, living and working in Ireland.
Margaret Connolly
Margaret grew up on a small farm near Carraig Dulra. She is a local historian, and has uncovered details of the lives of the surrounding area from the 17th century up to the early 1970s, when the close-knit farming community that lived in the townland disappeared in less than a generation.
Aaron Bailey
Aaron Bailey joined the Cultivate team on an internship in early 2015 after finding a facilitation course was being offered right where he wasn't looking - in his own community. Aaron has supported many facets of the Cultivate work program over the years and is now foucused on bringing them all together with the community-focused festival 'Elements of Change'. Alongside Philippa, he co-coordinates the Permauculture Design Course, and, loving the social side of Cultivate, often works with Davie designing and facitating regular courses and events.
As one of the few young adults in Cloughjordan Ecovillage he envisions his involvement in Cultivate and Cloughjordan to be effective rural regeneration by supporting all age demographics to appreciate the benefit of community. Living a diverse lifestyle in community, Aaron's other livelihoods include teaching the Youth Mindfulness programme to primary school students and co-coaching the Cloughjordan Li Ching Wu kung fu/kickboxing club.
Philippa Robinson
Philippa Robinson has worked as part of the Cultivate team since 2005, primarily as a project coordinator & overseeing the budgets. She is also a capable venue manager and played a key role in the running of both of Cultivates' Dublin Centres - Temple Bar and St. Andrew Street - renting the spaces and hosting many large events and festivals.
Prior to her work with Cultivate, she had established a career as a programme coordinator and researcher in television production, including 5 years at BBC Bristol.
Philippa is the permaculture course coordinator, ‘people care’ person for Cultivate's annual PDC and has been a student of permaculture for 15 years, and has been Cloughjordan Ecovillage's allotment coordinator for 6 years.
Joanne Butler
Joanne Butler is coordinator and facilitator at OURganic Gardens in NW Donegal. She has been growing food for her family for over 10 years and involved in community gardens since 2013.
Joanne currently holds talks in growing your own food at OURganic Gardens and in the community gardens around Donegal. She is also Chairperson of Donegal Community Garden Network, a member of Community and Gardens Ireland and involved in the Environmental PPN and NW Organics.
Joanne did her PDC in 2016 at Cloughjourdan and is now eager to get a more hands on approach to Permaculture and sustainable living.
Dave Beecher
Dave grew up on his Grandmother's dairy farm in Co. Cork, Ireland, which later became a suckler herd.
After a career in structural engineering, spanning Ireland, Australia and Canada, he spent a year working in International Disaster Relief, during which he realised that he wanted to address the issues at a causal rather than symptomatic level so he returned to Ireland to immerse himself back in agriculture. This time taking a regenerative approach to mitigate both carbon emissions and the impact of climate change as well as addressing general human and environmental health.
Dave has studied with/worked alongside Zach Wright, completed Hugh Lovell's advanced course, and the 5-day course with Jairo Restrepo at Ragman's Lane Farm (Biofertilisers and a lot more), has completed a year long course with Jim Cronin in Market Gardening, is just completing Elaine Ingham's 'Life in the Soil' course, and naturally has explored much other related material too.
Dave has taught all over Ireland and with Regen.AG in the UK.
He is currently a member of the Danú Farming Group which has been awarded funding through the European Innovation Partnership programme and the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine in Ireland to carry out a 5-year Biological Farming Transition Programme.
John Duffy
John is a career-changer to farming following 10 years in international oil & gas exploration. His particular interests centre on the natural capital of woodlands, Regenerative Agriculture and Holistic Management.
He is currently working to develop a regenerative farm model for the West of Ireland context.
John is a firm believer that a creative and regenerative approach to agriculture can reverse the decline of rural Ireland.
Gareth Conlon
Gareth's expertise includes working with groups and permaculture in a development context. He has a Masters degree in Development from Kimmage Development Studies Centre, with significant field experience in Africa. Gareth has been working with Development Perspectives since 2008, and brings fresh insights into permaculture's role in the development arena.
Courtney Tyler
Courtney's expertise includesprocessing and preserving, and retain and online business. She runs Hips and Haws Wildcrafts which offer everything from fermentation workshops to folk herbalism. Her passion is to make a living being creative and essentially doing what she loves. And to help others to achieve this too!
John Dolan
One key area of John's expertise is water in the landscape. John is a Permaculture Consultant, living in a self-built home and a converted polytunnel in West Cork. He specialises in wetland and marginal land conversion and restoration. Hear him speak and view his home in this awesome video!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2y8k2VOMGws
James Carroll
Designer maker James Carroll creates hand crafted furniture pieces from his workshop in the Wicklow mountains. He has an intuitive instinct for seeing the potential beauty in items and materials often discarded or passed over by others. He works in green wood as well as recycled items.
Using traditional Irish craftsmanship executed to the highest standard, he brings these pieces to life. Through meticulous attention to detail, combined with quirky and original finishing touches, he infuses a sense of energy to these pieces and gives them back their soul.
Wendy Nairn
Wendy Nairn has in excess of 30 years extensive practical experience growing vegetables both for resturants and for her own consumption. A wonderful enthusiastic experienced and incredibly knowledgeable teacher, she is also a founder and committed member of the organic movement in Ireland. Wendy is passionate about producing fresh nutritious vegetables using sustainable wildlife friendy methods. She teaches a number of courses in county Wicklow where she is well know for her extensive knowledge of organic sustainable methods of growing.
Orlaith Murphy
Orlaith was one of the first participates in Carraig Dulra’s organic garden complete course in 2006. A keen allotment grower, Orlaith has a level 3 diploma in Horticulture from the RHS. She also has completed courses in Forest Gardening and most recently Geoff Lawtons Permaculture Design Course.
She is currently teaching organic gardening with the VEC in North Dublin and Tallaght and has a passion for cooking sumptuous meals with her home-grown produce. Orlaith brings an infectious enthusiasm for the Kitchen Garden lifestyle to the course.
