GIY (Grow It Yourself) founder Mick Kelly returns to our screens with a six-part series, Our Farm: A GIY Story.

The series follows the transformation by GIY of an ancient derelict walled garden at Curraghmore Estate, Co. Waterford, into a full-scale working regenerative farm.

Our Farm: A GIY Story has been billed as a "hopeful, honest and sometimes uncomfortable story" about whether local organic food systems can truly work in modern Ireland and what it takes to make them survive.

Viewers will follow the GIY team as they battle pests, weather, funding crises, staffing pressures and customer churn, while trying to build a viable veg box scheme, restore historic land, care for animals, and grow food for their community.

It is a story about food, but also about "resilience, hope, purpose and the future of Irish farming", according to the producers, Scéal Creative.

Wider national issues explored in the series include:

Ultra processed food (UPF): Now making up 47% of the national shopping basket and rising, according to GIY.
The shopper’s moral dilemma: How do people navigate organic versus non-organic, local versus imported, healthy versus convenient, affordable versus ethical?
Cost of living versus good food: Is buying local, seasonal and organic realistic for most households today?
Regenerative agriculture: Can small-scale veg farming survive in a convenience driven, import-led food culture?
The decline of the Irish vegetable sector and whether veg box schemes offer a viable local alternative.

Our Farm: A GIY Story is a "real-time experiment in rebuilding a broken food system from the soil up", according to the producers.

Mick said: “Creating this farm was important because we wanted to prove that local food systems can genuinely work, not just in theory, but in the real world, at scale. But it was just as important to bring it to the air.

"We want people to see what goes on behind the scenes with a small farm trying to bring local, seasonal, whole foods grown in living soil to customers, and to see the real power and influence they have with their food choices.

This series is about giving people the confidence to make small, but powerful changes to their food choices," the GIY founder said.

Our Farm: A GIY Story will launch on Tuesday, March 3 at 8:30pm on RTÉ 1 and run for six weeks.