Operation renovation: ‘I might be a city slicker but I’ve always yearned for a life in the country’

When we picture our dream house, it is often a romantic one — a period home or beautifully restored farmhouse in a bucolic countryside setting, with some chickens thrown in for good measure. In Ireland, it’s estimated that there are about 200,000 farms of between five and 50 acres, much of them working farms, some abandoned, and those that are tired and unloved, ready for a new generation to breathe new life into them..