As farmers go, Ultan Walsh is highly unusual - he's a vegetable grower who is happy with how business is going, and his farm diversification project is bouzouki making.

Neither Ultan nor his wife, Lucy Stewart, come from a farming background, though back-garden vegetable growing is something their parents and grandparents always did.

"After working for four years at University College Cork as a research scientist in plant-microbe interactions, I leased land for growing veg to supply restaurants in Cork city, with the vegetarian restaurant, Cafe Paradiso, being our most important customer," said Ultan.

"After two years leasing land we sold our house, bought nine acres near Nohoval and lived on the land in a caravan for three years before building our house. We're 20 years growing on a commercial scale - two years on leased land near Minane Bridge and 18 years here in Nohoval," he said.

"We grow a wide variety of vegetables," Ultan continued.

"We have an acre of polytunnels where we grow asparagus, aubergines, tomatoes, peppers and beans and every year we have 2ac of outdoor vegetables including onions; beet; courgettes; squash; broad beans; sweetcorn; and potatoes."

"We also have an acre of apple trees; almost all the crop gets made into apple juice."

Business is good, according to Ultan, who sells mostly to restaurants.

"There is a high demand for good-quality vegetables so we have little problem finding customers," he said.

"This shop has been crucial for selling our produce during the stringent restrictions on restaurants during the pandemic."

Apple juice isn't the only thing that Ultan makes. A keen music man, he not only plays multiple instruments - the bouzouki, mandolin and fiddle - but he makes them too.

`'I specialise in the making of bouzoukis, though I make mandolins occasionally too. I also restore fiddles and have plans to build my first fiddle soon," he said.

A bouzouki is a wooden instrument similar to a guitar, but with a rounder body.

"The Irish bouzouki is an increasingly popular instrument and the demand is quite good at the moment," Ultan added.

"It takes about a month to make one, so I can only make five a year between the months of October and April when I'm less busy on the farm.

"Lucy still works full time on the farm throughout the year but I take a bit of a backseat during those months when I'm in the workshop.

"Half the bouzoukis I make are sold within Ireland and the rest outside of the country. They have found homes throughout Europe, the US and Canada."