Tanglewood Farm & Food Studio is a 20-acre working farm, professional cookery school, outdoor fire kitchen, and woodland spa in the west of Ireland's Hidden Heartlands, and the future home of Holistic Chef Academy International. It brings farming, cooking, nature, and education together in one working landscape, with a simple mission: to reconnect people with food and nature through practical, grounded learning.
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Our Vision & Core Values
Tanglewood is built on a clear principle: meaningful food education begins with the land. Food education means understanding how food is grown, how healthy soil is created, how ingredients change with the seasons, and how to cook them well. Learning happens through practice, grounded in soil, season, and lived experience.
Everything we build is guided by three core values.
- Nature's Intelligence means working with living systems and respecting soil health, seasonality, biodiversity, and ecological balance.
- Human Connection means growing, cooking, learning, and sharing knowledge together.
- Holistic Education connects farming, cooking, health, nature, and wellbeing rather than treating them as separate subjects.
What We're Building
Tanglewood is developing around four connected elements: a working regenerative farm, the Tanglewood Food Studio, an Outdoor Fire Kitchen, and a Woodland Spa. Each has its own purpose. Together, they create a complete environment for learning about food, farming, cooking, and wellbeing.
1. A Working Regenerative Farm
The farm is the living classroom at the heart of Tanglewood. Across 20 acres, we are developing a productive landscape based on regenerative and organic growing principles, with permaculture helping guide the overall design. Organic market garden, agroforestry, rotational grazing, composting, orchards, native hedgerows, wildlife ponds, and woodland all have a role to play.
Our aim is to grow food while improving soil fertility, restoring biodiversity, and creating healthier ecosystems. Livestock will also become part of this system, helping manage vegetation, cycle nutrients, and regenerate the land. Students and visitors will be able to walk the farm, harvest ingredients, observe how food is grown, and follow its journey from healthy soil to the kitchen.
2. Tanglewood Food Studio
Opening in 2028, the Tanglewood Food Studio will become the permanent home of Holistic Chef Academy International. The professional teaching kitchen will host small-group courses for home cooks, aspiring chefs, professional chefs, and hospitality teams. Teaching will focus on wholefood, seasonal, and health-driven cooking, fermentation, preserving, sustainable kitchen practices, and ingredients grown on the farm or sourced from trusted local farmers and growers.
Our cooking is centered around wholefoods, seasonal produce, and ingredients grown on the farm or sourced from trusted local producers. Our approach is guided by quality, provenance, seasonality, respect for ingredients, and reducing waste. Professional programmes will include private chef training, ski chalet and superyacht chef development, sports performance cooking, dietary-specific cooking, and sustainable hospitality training. Our established cookery programmes from Phuket will also find a permanent home at Tanglewood, bringing years of international culinary experience back to the west of Ireland.
3. The Outdoor Fire Kitchen
Fire will be an important part of how we cook and teach at Tanglewood. The Outdoor Fire Kitchen will include a full live-fire cooking setup alongside wood-fired ovens, charcoal cooking, cast iron, smoking, and open-flame techniques. This will be a primal cooking experience, built around heat, instinct, and direct contact with the elements. Homegrown produce, wild-foraged ingredients, and seasonal foods from the surrounding landscape will move straight into the fire kitchen.
Seasonal farm dinners, practical workshops, and guest chef collaborations will bring people together around the flames throughout the year. Cooking this way develops patience, judgement, and a deeper respect for the ingredients and the land they come from.
4. Woodland Spa
The Woodland Spa is designed around deep immersion in nature, rest, and recovery. Tanglewood includes three acres of established native woodland, with walking trails, quiet resting places, and a rare native aspen grove. These woodlands connect with ten acres of newly established agroforestry, creating a wider landscape for forest bathing, reflection, and slow movement through nature.
Our guided woodland experiences will draw on Buddhist walking meditation practices, encouraging guests to move slowly, observe quietly, and reconnect with the natural world. Throughout the woods, simple resting areas will offer places to sit, lie down, and be still beneath the trees. The experience will be intentionally off-grid and screen-free. Time in the forest, away from digital noise, creates space to slow down, regulate the nervous system, and restore attention. Within a secluded part of the woodland, the spa will include a wood-fired sauna and cold plunge. From Autumn 2027, our Fire & Ice experiences will combine sauna, cold immersion, forest bathing, and nourishing food cooked over fire.
Who We Serve
Tanglewood is for people who want to understand food more deeply and develop practical skills they can use in everyday life or professional kitchens. Home cooks will learn to grow, harvest, prepare, and cook with the seasons. Professional chefs can deepen their craft through regenerative sourcing, health-focused cooking, fermentation, live-fire techniques, and more sustainable ways of working.
Professional training will also support hospitality teams, private chefs, ski chalet chefs, superyacht chefs, and other culinary professionals looking to broaden their skills and rethink how they source, cook, and serve food. Our local community is an important part of Tanglewood. We want to make good food knowledge accessible to families, young people, growers, and local cooks, building practical skills that support healthier lives and a stronger local food culture.
Whether someone joins us for a single workshop or a professional training programme, the approach remains the same: small groups, hands-on learning, and skills that can be taken back into the home, kitchen, or community.
A New Model for Food Education
Modern food culture is increasingly disconnected from the land, the seasons, and the practical skills needed to grow and prepare real food. Too often, farming, cooking, health, and wellbeing are treated as separate subjects. Tanglewood brings them back together in one working environment. Food grown on the farm moves into the kitchen. Seasonal produce shapes the way we cook. Fire builds practical skill and confidence. Woodland and outdoor experiences bring nature back into the learning process.
Education happens within a living landscape, where students can see how soil, food, cooking, health, and community are connected. By bringing together farm, kitchen, fire, and forest, Tanglewood aims to offer a practical new model for regenerative food education in Ireland.
The Tanglewood Regenerative Farm System
The 20-acre farm is being developed as one connected regenerative landscape, where food production, biodiversity, education, and land stewardship work together. The 5-acre homestead will form the heart of the project. It will include an organic market garden, greenhouses, fruit orchards, the Food Studio, Outdoor Fire Kitchen, and Woodland Spa.
Across the wider farm, agroforestry will bring trees, food production, grazing, and wildlife habitat into the same landscape. Native hedgerows, wildlife ponds, meadows, woodland, and habitat corridors will strengthen biodiversity and make the farm more resilient over time.
An apiary will support pollination and produce honey shaped by the surrounding landscape, including local bog heather. In addition, grazing animals will play a practical role in the farm system by helping manage vegetation, cycle nutrients, and build soil fertility. The system is designed to be circular. Compost feeds the soil. Healthy soil grows food. Trees create shelter and habitat. Animals return nutrients to the land. The farm supplies the kitchen, and kitchen waste returns to the farm. Nothing operates alone.
Rooted in Place
Tanglewood Farm Food Studio is also a family story. Founder Jamie Raftery is the third generation of his family to care for this land in County Galway. After more than 25 years working in kitchens around the world, he is now bringing that experience home. His career includes a decade in Michelin-starred restaurants. After that, Jamie spent a further decade focused on holistic cuisine, culinary education, and healthier food systems.
He is joined by Thara Thanmanithara, whose Thai culinary heritage and work with Holistic Chef Academy bring an international perspective to the food, teaching, and hospitality at Tanglewood. Together, they combine global experience with a strong connection to place. At the same time, the project remains firmly rooted in family land, local food, and the west of Ireland.
Human Skill. Intelligent Systems.
Tanglewood is built around practical skill, lived experience, and hands-on learning. Food is grown in soil. Cooking depends on judgement, attention, and craft. Teaching happens face-to-face, in the kitchen, on the farm, and outdoors.
Behind the scenes, intelligent technology will support planning, administration, personalised learning, and Holistic Chef Academy's international online education. Technology helps us work more efficiently and stay organised. It supports the learning experience, but it never replaces human judgement, creativity, or connection.
Skill. Judgement. Attention. Presence.
Timeline
Tanglewood Farm is evolving in phases, with the farm, learning spaces, and visitor experiences coming online over time.
- 2023-2028: Regenerative farm development continues, including organic conversion, agroforestry, soil restoration, biodiversity, and essential infrastructure.
- Autumn 2026: The first guided farm experiences and forest bathing walks begin.
- Autumn 2027: The Woodland Spa opens, introducing Fire & Ice experiences with wood-fired sauna, cold immersion, forest bathing, and seasonal food cooked over fire.
- Spring 2028: The Tanglewood Food Studio begins its soft opening, with the first cookery courses and professional training programmes.
- Autumn 2028: Holistic Chef Academy International becomes fully operational from its permanent home at Tanglewood.
- 2029 onward: The next chapter focuses on establishing Tanglewood as a recognized center for regenerative culinary education in Ireland.
Join the Journey
Tanglewood is taking shape slowly and deliberately, season by season. Follow the development of the farm, Food Studio, Outdoor Fire Kitchen, and Woodland Spa as the project grows from the ground up.
Be part of the founding community: Subscribe for farm updates, new course announcements, Fire & Ice experiences, seasonal events, and behind-the-scenes stories from the land.