• WHERE: Shanagarry, County Cork, Ireland
• HOW MUCH: $160 per night for a double room, including breakfast
• MORE: ballymaloe.ie 

GETTING THERE Rent a car in the city of Cork and drive toward Shanagarry, the closest village to Ballymaloe. You'll get lost navigating the narrow country roads that fork every few miles (seldom with signage), but it's a nice way to see Ireland's misty fields, black-faced sheep, and fairy-tale trees—gnarled old hawthorns on mounds. Or take Bus Eireann from Cork to the fishing village of Ballycotton and ask the driver to drop you off at Ballymaloe—about a 75-minute ride.

BEST MOMENT Sitting down to breakfast and having innkeeper Hazel Allen come by with a mason jar full of thick, yellow cream and ask if you wouldn't like some on your porridge: "It's from this morning's milking." 

WORST MOMENT Feeding apple peels and stale scones to the spotted piglets, knowing that they're destined to end up on dinner plates as cider-brined chops.

LOCAL LORE Myrtle Allen, Ballymaloe's 90-year-old matriarch, is said to have caused "the big bang in Irish food," having begun a nationwide focus on local, sustainable ingredients in the late 1960s after two Frenchmen wrote this in a best-selling guidebook: "The drama of Irish cuisine is not that it's bad; it's that the Irish believe that it's very good."

FAVORITE CHARACTER Darina Allen, Myrtle's tireless daughter-in-law, runs the cooking school that she founded more than two decades ago like a four-star general in combat, issuing directives to everyone around her. She also established Ireland's first farmers' market in 1999 and helps lead Ireland's Slow Food movement. And she makes a mean elderflower cordial, which is killer in champagne.  

WHAT'S GREEN The food. Ballymaloe's employees raise free-range pigs and feed poultry organic scraps from the cooking school. They get all their seafood from nearby Ballycotton. And the on-site organic farm and garden provide improbable-for-the-region fruits, nuts, and vegetables, including almonds and more than 40 tomato varieties.

WHAT'S NOT GREEN The mud you're likely to sink into if you decide to fetch your own breakfast eggs from the henhouse in the morning. 

PLANET-SAVING OPPORTUNITIES Darina Allen teaches "Forgotten Skills" courses at the Cookery School: You can learn to butcher a pig, ferment vegetables, or make butter, cheese, and yogurt. There are also classes in composting, soil management, and seed saving.