Tumour scare as a child saw Cork farmer turn to 'mindfulness'

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.

“I was due a big operation. They thought I had a brain tumour. And then there were the challenges of growing up on a small farm.

“I would go off on my own and try and think things out. I would sit by my favourite tree and put little boats on the river to take my problems away.

“Kids that age have an awful lot going on in their heads and people don’t realise it,” Patrick says.

The brain tumour possibility came about because of a continuous flickering in his eye.

Patrick recalls how he was carted off from Limerick to the Mater Hospital in Dublin for the operation and overheard the doctor telling his uncles and aunts who were gathered in the corridor that he didn’t know if their nephew would pull through.

During the night, fear got the better of him and Patrick fled the hospital. He was picked up by the gardaí 36 hours later on a side street off O’Connell St.

The operation went ahead and the doctors found nothing but he did have to wear a helmet to school to protect the scar. He was subjected to bullying by some older boys. Then his aunt Eileen returned from the USA for her first visit in 33 years and quickly put the notion of a tumour to rest.

“Sure grandad Patrick had that all his life,” she said. “It was a stigma in his eye.”

Nowadays Patrick puts the coping skills he used during that anxious time to good use on his farm in Mitchelstown.

Having retired from his career as a garda, he runs Ballinwillin House with his wife Miriam. It’s the only combined organic farmed venison, wild boar and goat farm in Ireland and the UK and meat from the farm is used by many of Ireland’s top chefs.

The property is also home to a boutique B&B, the music festival, Indiependence, a custom-built cellar stocked with wines from the family’s Hungarian vineyard, Chateau Mulcahy, a “Thinking Path” and a personally designed garden with areas devoted to forgiveness, mindfulness and meditation. He encourages visitors to leave their mobile phones at the front door.

“A lot of people are homeless now in their mind. They have nowhere to go to escape social media,” he says.

Patrick was awarded the Rémy Martin Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2019 Cork Business Awards at the weekend.

“I speak a lot about the connection between healthy food and a healthy mind,” he says. “If you have healthy soil, you have healthy animals, healthy food and a healthy mind.”