Our Story
Meet Fiona & Michael
Fiona and Michael are the 5th generation to live and farm at Cloughan. Together, they blend a deep respect for heritage with a passion for sharing food and farming with others.
Fiona, founder of the award-winning Cookery School, brings expertise, warmth, and creativity to every experience. Michael tends the land, caring for the animals and preserving traditions passed down through the generations.
Cloughan Farm is their family home — and they look forward to welcoming you as part of it. as part of it.
Fiona’s Story
Farming Heritage
As a young girl reared on a busy farm, I was just as likely to be out driving tractors in the fields as I was cooking and baking in the kitchen.
From a very early age, my beautiful mother Eithna and my Granny Egan had me up on the kitchen table or standing beside them, teaching me how to make brown bread, apple tarts and sponge cakes. My father Eamon gave me an incredible love for farming, the soil and nature. Those early days didn’t just give me a love for food and farming; they instilled a wonderful way of life in me.
From Farm Kitchen to Cookery School
At Cloughan Farm, we offer food, farm and gardening experiences that connect people with where food begins. Because we’re a working farm, visitors don’t just enjoy the cooking and baking, they experience the journey from field to fork. It’s authentic.
I love teaching and encouraging people to grow their own food and discover the joy that comes from harvesting something they’ve nurtured themselves. Whether it’s sharing family recipes, revealing baking tips and kitchen secrets, harvesting rhubarb from the kitchen garden for a tart, roasting a leg of Cloughan Farm lamb or cooking a juicy Dexter ribeye steak, everything we do connects back to the farm and our heritage.
To see visitors’ faces light up as they open the oven door or take their first bite as we gather around the dining room table is just beautiful. It brings me right back to where it all began. When you love what you do, it never leaves you. Seeing visitors take those recipes home to share with their own families is simply magical.
Michael’s Story
Farming Has Always Been in My Blood
I’ve been a passionate farmer for as long as I can remember. Being born and raised on a farm, both of my parents encouraged my love for the land from an early age. From trips to the mart to buy my own calves to rearing pet lambs on the bottle, I was given every opportunity to live and breathe farming.
I bought my first Hereford heifer calf at the age of nine for €42 and sold her a year later for €720. She was such a pet that I could sit on her back and she’d wander around the yard like a donkey. Selling her allowed me to buy two more calves: a Hereford bull and a Friesian heifer, who later became my first cow.
Real connection to the seasons
Around the same time, I started rearing my first ewe, Darky, a Suffolk lamb with a twisted neck. I’d cycle down the lane every day to feed her milk. Once, she darted out in front of my bike and I ended up in the ditch trying not to hit her. Despite her difficult start, Darky went on to lamb every year, although she always needed a little extra help.
From that young age, I never dreamed of becoming a farmer because, in many ways, I already was one. For me, farming is about freedom and a real connection to the seasons. Today, we keep cattle and sheep, rearing around 80 dairy-bred calves each year and bringing them through to beef production.
I’m especially proud of our native Dexter cattle and Galway ewes, one of Ireland’s oldest sheep breeds. What I enjoy most is sharing farm life with visitors and seeing them feed calves or bottle-feed lambs for the first time. It reminds me just how lucky I am to do what I do every day.