Dunshane looks to expand
Expansion on a couple of fronts is on the minds of the people who run the Camphill Community at Dunshane, outside Kilcullen.
The community is negotiating grant funding towards the building of another house on the 28-acre estate where it was established 22 years ago. In addition, it hopes to buy more land to extend its farm.
The planned new building will help with the aim of providing the 20 residents at Dunshane with individual rooms of their own.
When the project comes through, it will be the latest in a number of facilities which the community has built over the years to provide for its residents and co-workers.
Camphill asks prospective co-workers to stay for at least a year, but quite often they stay longer. Although they are quite happy to have young people who haven't yet begun a career, the ideal are people in their 30s who might already have established a career and want to make a change, or take a break from it.
Self-sufficiency is a basic element of the Camphill ethos, hence the need to acquire more land. In addition to growing food, and plants for same through the nursery, all the willows used in basket-making are also grown on the property. The farm operation has just been put under the direction of a trained biodynamic farm graduate from Holland.
The development in recent years of conference and meetings rooms, by a 'hospitality group' within the Dunshane operation has added further income-generating ability as well as serving another of the Camphill key tenets, integration with the wider community.
Dunshane was the original Camphill in this area, and from it came the Bridge Camphill Community in Kilcullen, and the more recent farm initiative at Grangbeg between Kilcullen and Dunlavin.
Brian Byrne.
