Elizabeth Savage unearths an unlikely link between Iowa and Goleen

Goleen ICA member Elizabeth Savage was born in Iowa, grew up in Michigan, lived in Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia and spent 26 years in the UK — but she no sooner joined Goleen Guild than she discovered just how small the world is.

“I got this wonderful warm Irish welcome. At the very first meeting, Kathleen Downey came up to me and asked where I was from. It turned out her first cousin, a Trappist monk, was based just down the road from where my family come from in Iowa.”

Elizabeth and her husband moved to the Mizen peninsula in 2010. “We wanted to move to a more rural environment and to have some land. We found our farm on Daft.ie. I spotted pictures of the place and said ‘bingo — here we are!’ We’re between Goleen and Schull, half way up a mountain.”