Gary and Louise Jodrell Fulfill Their Dream: A Perfect Blend of Farm and Home in Wexford
The Dream of a Farm Comes True in Wexford
For Gary Jodrell, moving with his wife Louise to a smallholding near Enniscorthy, Co Wexford, is a kind of fulfillment of the dream his father Tommy never realized. Jodrell’s dad grew up on a farm in Derbyshire but his ambition to run it never came to fruition.
The family holding was compulsorily purchased and the M6 motorway was built on it in the late 1950s. “We were always looking for a smallholding in the UK,” says Gary. “But unfortunately, they don’t come up very often. And where we used to live, they just cost an absolute fortune.”
Gary’s side of the family are all farmers, and out of the whole family, his dad is the only one that didn’t get a turn with a farm. So (a smallholding) was just something he, or we, wanted. I was brought up with it because my cousin’s got a farm, and we used to go there a lot. It is sort of in your blood. And then Louise said, ‘Oh, what about Ireland’, so we looked, and this came along.
The Ideal Location in Ireland
Accountant Louise has roots in the south-east, as her grandmother hailed from Graiguenamanagh in Co Carlow. The idyll they eventually found was four acres of hillside land with a partially converted cow house on it near the village of Rathnure, close to Enniscorthy.
Louise used to come to this area a lot as a child. “School holidays and so on. She had an auntie here and her grandma still had a house here. “The land and the view we’ve got in front of the house was the thing – the view over Wexford is just spectacular. Until you’re walking through the gate, you don’t realise it. Everybody that comes, you know, even delivery drivers from Tesco, they reverse in through the gates and come onto the yard and go ‘Wow, I didn’t expect that’. On a clear sunny day, you can see the boats coming in at Rosslare.”
Making the Most of the Land
The exterior of Tally Ho, which features solar panels and a B3 BER
When they got to work, the couple fostered two donkeys from a local sanctuary and set about keeping hens, a practice Gary had to give up when he admitted defeat to some very smart scavengers. “The crows realised they could wait for me to feed the chickens and then wait for me to disappear. Then they used to go and take the eggs out while the hens were feeding,” he says.
Tour of a Sustainable Farmhouse
Inside, Gary and Louise have transformed the smallholding into a comfortable, sustainable home over the past three years. They installed central heating and rewired the property. They also rearranged some of the interior accommodation. The big living room used to be a kitchen.
Gary fitted and tiled a new bathroom downstairs, and built a plant room in what was originally a toilet off the utility, to facilitate the heating and solar systems. The house boasts a B3 energy rating, and the couple sell power back to the grid when the weather allows.
The kitchen features cream shaker-style units, a double Belfast sink, and solid oak countertops. There’s a two-oven Aga that Gary installed himself and an island unit with a windfall beech top from a tree trunk he found buried in one of the fields.
