He’s earned himself the moniker “The Mindful Farmer” but when Patrick Mulcahy first started practising “mindfulness” it was no more than an eight year-old’s efforts to keep anxiety at bay.

DRIVING through Mitchelstown, a town whose easy traffic is still hard to get used to after being bypassed by the M8, I turn up a cul-de-sac and pause at the gates of Ballinwillin House.