Internship training day at Cloughjordan & Redwood Market Garden
Internship Coordinator Una Wycherley shares the latest on the 2025 OGI Internship training programme, including a recent visit to Cloughjordan Community Farm and Redwood Market Garden in County Tipperary.
The interns had a jam-packed and inspiring day on Tuesday 6th May! We kicked things off in Cloughjordan with a great session led by Paula Pender, covering the principles and standards of organic horticulture. It was a really engaging and informative start to the day.
Afterwards, Pat Malone from Cloughjordan Community Farm gave us a warm welcome and shared some encouraging words about the range of careers in the organic sector. It was a real boost for the interns to hear how broad the opportunities are in this field and to see a community farm in action.
In the afternoon, we headed to Redwood Market Garden, where we were lucky to catch Conor mid-way through covering his new tunnel after this year’s serious storm damage. It turned into a brilliant learning opportunity — the interns got to quiz him on tunnel construction, tightening plastic, and ground prep. Conor also showed us his other tunnel in production and spoke about the challenges he’s faced this season, including delays in planting tomatoes until the new tunnel was up.
There’s a huge amount of work happening at Redwood to rebuild and keep things on track, and we really appreciated Conor taking time out of such a busy day to share his knowledge and experience with us. It was especially inspiring for the interns to meet someone who changed careers, completed the OGI internship in 2015, and has since gone on to build his own successful business.
Massive thanks to Conor — a brilliant example of what’s possible after the programme!
