Wellness - Farm Bathing at De Gud Farm
The Healing Power of the Farm Landscape
You don't have to live on a farm to understand the benefits of spending time in nature. Everyone know it instinctively and science has confirmed it. At De Gud Farm we have developed our own expression of this idea - Farm Bathing.
Farm Bathing is immersive, mindful walking through a working farm landscape. It draws on the same wellbeing principle as Forest Bathing but applies them to the particular sights, sounds, smells, and rhythms of an Irish tillage farm - the turning of the soil in spring, the green of a young crop pushing through, the sweep of a kestrel over a wildflower field, the quiet of a Scots pine avenus on a winter morning.
Three loop walking trails radiate from De Gud farmyard through the fields, hedgerows, stream valleys, and native woodlands of the farm. Each trail offers a different landscape experience and connects, for those who wish to walk further, to the south Cork coastline - Rocky Bay and Nohoval Cove are within easy walking distance of the farm.
Lorraine Hogan Good - Artist in Residence
Lorraine Hogan Good holds an Honours Degree in Fine Art from Crawford College of Art and Design in Cork. She is a practicing visual artist and documentary filmmaker whose work is rooted in the natural world and in the particular light, colour and character of the west Cork landscape.
At De Gud Farm, Lorraine offers small-group fine art classes drawing on the farm's landscape, flora and natural heritage as source material. Classes are suitable for all levels - from complete beginners to experienced painters - and are available to guests staying on the farm and to day visitors. The farm's hawthorn, wildflowers, veteran trees and seasonal colour provide an exceptional range of subjects throughout the season.
Original artworks and high quality prints by Lorraine Hogan Good are available through lorrainehogan.com
Nature Inspires Art
There is something about working close to the land that opens the creative mind. The changing light over the fields, the movement of birds across a winter sky, the texture of old lime render on a two-hundred-year-old stone wall - these are not just farming details. They are the raw material of art. At De Gud Farm, farming and creativity have always lived side by side.