From rearing beef cattle and turkeys to practising and teaching yoga, farmer Gerard Keohane is focused on wellbeing and a good work-life balance, writes Emma Connolly.
AGILE is a good word to describe Gerard Keohane, based just outside Clonakilty, although he says himself that ‘unorthodox’ might be a better fit.
He’s certainly agile when it comes to his approach to farming, having embarked on his career as a dairy farmer, and later pivoting to a suckler operation with a small herd of pedigree Aberdeen Angus.
Top: Gerard teaches a drop-in yoga class every Saturday in Darrara Hall. Above: he keeps a herd of suckler cattle on his farm outside Clonakilty. (Photo: Andy Gibson)
And as a trained yoga instructor who teaches a weekly Saturday morning class in Darrara Community Hall, he’s physically agile and conscious of his health and wellbeing.
Up until around 16 years ago though life looked very different: Gerard was a busy dairy farmer, with a herd of around 60, who also had a beef enterprise. Working with his late father Donal he was making a decent living.
‘But we were at the stage where the parlour needed investment and I just started to question what I was doing, and realised that in terms of lifestyle it just wasn’t sustainable. I was working long hours and felt really tied to the farm. But it wasn’t just that – more and more bureaucracy was starting to creep in and it was taking the joy of farming from me,’ he said.
He made the decision to exit dairying and starting from scratch, he built up a suckler herd, and it’s something he never once regretted.
Today he has a mix of Belgian blues, simmentals and eye-catching red limousins.
He’s also bringing back to life his grandparent’s orchard, is working on an organic vegetable garden and rears organic turkeys. Then of course there’s his love of yoga.
‘I first came across yoga at least 20 years ago when one of my sisters brought a flyer home about a class in Bandon. I was never really big into sport but I was curious about yoga and said I’d try a class,’ he said.
He was instantly hooked and attended the class every Wednesday evening for many years.
‘There was a really nice balance to those classes, humour, and it was non-competitive. I really enjoyed that time for myself, and while I was usually the only male in the class it didn’t bother me in the slightest. At some point our teacher mentioned a workshop that was taking place in the city, and I went along for a part of it, and while I was there yoga training was mentioned. The idea took root, and I went along to the first weekend which as it happened was in Bandon and it just took off from there,’ he explained.
Over the next three years Gerard underwent intense training from experienced teachers and qualified as a yoga teacher in 2015 – although he’s quick to point out that there’s always more to learn.
He teaches a drop-in, 90-minute class every Saturday morning from 9.30am to 11am in Darrara Hall.
‘I mainly teach hatha yoga, which is a relaxed style, but it depends on who is in my class. Rest is paramount to yoga and for the first few minutes of each class we lie down and give ourselves permission to switch off. I also incorporate breath work in each class and we always finish with some relaxation. For some people this the hardest part of the class but in order to be able to do the positions that require strength, this is absolutely necessary.’
Gerard practices yoga most days – but not every day – and usually in the morning as he’s an early riser.
‘You can’t force it. What I do depends on how I’m feeling – I could do something very physical, or something more basic.’ Yoga has also greatly improved his quality of sleep.
‘Naturally during calving season I’ll be up and down but I do my calving in summer time – which is a bit unorthodox, but then again I’m unorthodox in a lot of what I do! I think it just makes more sense this way with calves out to grass sooner, some even born on grass, and less labour needed.’
Yoga also helps to manage stress levels. ‘I do think that the stress involved in everyday farming is a real thing, and so is the mental health of farmers, and yoga is a tool that can help, in the same way it can help everyone. It provides the perfect way to switch off and get out of your head. Things don’t tend to worry me as much as they would have before, up to a point, thanks to yoga.’
The discipline of yoga has also been applied to his diet and nutrition. ‘I didn’t eat a very balanced diet before but now I take a hunter/gatherer approach and concentrate on food that’s grown or comes from the ground,’ he said. ‘I’d also eat my main meal in the middle of the day as I found it was more in tune with my circadian rhythm, and I’d recommend a book about eating according to your blood type, which I found very helpful.’
Gerard even goes so far as to rear his own organic turkeys, for his own use. ‘I buy 12 chicks, at around six weeks, every September and rear them on an orchard here that my grandparents had, and that I’m working to bring back to life.
‘The turkeys are free-range, eating wild garlic and whatever else is growing there, and fed organic food. I keep them for myself, freeze them, getting 48 portions from them in total.’
Gerard has never been afraid to take control of his own well-being, changing track when needed. After switching from dairying to suckler farming, he adjusted his enterprise again after some close calls with cattle.
‘I’d have had a few warnings from cows who had just given birth and would have had to make a run for it a few times, so I reduced my numbers a bit, again to make sure I was in control,’ he said.
His Saturday morning class in Darrara Hall (an ideal venue, run by an excellent committee he remarked) is going from strength to strength and two charity classes he held between last Christmas and New Year raised an impressive €900 for the day care centre in Clonakilty hospital, where he also teaches weekly chair-based yoga class.
He cites something a previous yoga teacher said to him: that yoga is the best health insurance policy you’ll ever take out. ‘I still don’t really know how it all this happened, but it did, for a reason,’ said Gerard, who admits to being spiritual like his late mother Bernie, who he said would have been very open to the idea of yoga.
‘I do think yoga found me and it’s changed my life for the better. I’d encourage anyone to turn up and try it out for themselves, they won’t regret it.’
Gerard’s day-to-day wellness tips:
- Go barefoot indoors. Feet are often the most neglected parts of our body and by taking off shoes and socks it helps energy to flow up and down the body.
- Also when walking, put the centre of the heel down first to encourage good posture and alignment of the spine.
- Try this simple ‘4-2-6’ breath exercise – breathe in through the nose for four, pause for two, and exhale for six. It’s a great way to deliver a feeling of calmness in moments of stress.
- If you have issues with your back, sleep with a firm mattress which is much kinder to your joints and ditch the pillows as they can strain your neck.
- Try balancing a book on your head – this restores your spine into its correct position. A lot of our day-to-day activities cause us to hunch forward – driving, sitting at a desk, scrolling on the phone etc – and this simple act will take the spine back into neutral.
- Hop (carefully!) on a trampoline for a few minutes. It’s not just for kids and is a great way to help with balance, as well as helping to strengthen muscles.
