Credits:
Kaitlyn by Kathryn Estry
Circle Mats for Designers by Kathryn Estry

part of our Ireland 2008 trip album

jrnling:
This afternoon we stopped at the farmhouse of Tom Joyce, an Irish sheep farmer up in the hills above Clifden. He actually doesn’t farm any more, having just sold off 400 acres and his two sheepdogs. He was born in 1940, and has two young sons, 8 and 10, but they live in Denmark with their mother because the schooling is bad in his area. He said they had just been here recently to visit him for a couple weeks. Seems very sad to me, as now he is living all alone.

He took us on a drive over part of his farm, and showed us a cottage he rents out. He is a very intelligent man and talked a lot about the natural history of the area – bogs and so forth. Showed us swallow burrows in an excavated esker alongside the roadway. Showed us a megalithic gravesite that he said is oriented so the sun shines into the middle on midsummer morning. Close to that were famine graves from 1840s –only 3 people survived from a village of 23 families. He is descended from famine survivors in another area of the country.

Tom took us back to his house for tea and biscuits. Sat and talked for about an hour – mostly he and Tony. Tom had a very interesting way of speaking – not exactly monotone, but very “straight” – and with very little emotion. He said “T