<\/p>\n
For a number of reasons, Ois\u00edn Walsh-Peelo, the musician and founding member of The Fynches, was always going to end up in West Cork. As a child, his parents \u2013 Toni and Mick, an opera singer and a monk-turned-investigative reporter for RT\u00c9, respectively \u2013would take him and his siblings, Ferdia, Tadhg and S\u00edofradh from their home in Ashford to Ballylickey\u2019s Eagle Point campsite for the summer holidays, away from the suburbs of Dublin and into the Atlantic Coast.<\/p>\n
As a teenager, playing hurling for Wicklow, he would regularly come up against Cork players and marvel at their proficiency. So when an opportunity arose to spend months at a time engrossed in the weeds of Clonakilty, he knew he had to take it. \u201cIt was the end of 2020, and I was living in Cabra,\u201d he says. \u201cI loved it there; it felt so vibrant. But the place I was renting was being sold, and an opportunity came up for me to do something other than music.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Walsh-Peelo took a job with some friends he\u2019d met at restaurant\/organic grower Camus Farm, learning how to grow his own vegetables and lean into horticulture, a subject he\u2019d become interested in. He stayed for two years, but, in his words, \u201cmusic took over again\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe hadn\u2019t been able to play for two years, and then when things opened back up, everyone grabbed it by the horns. But I\u2019ll never forget that time, and that community openness which I haven\u2019t really experienced anywhere else,\u201d says Walsh-Peelo.<\/p>\n