Harriet Fitzgerald turned to her mother Davinia during a recent episode of 64 Zoo Lane and asked if it was possible to eat a giraffe.

“No honey, you can’t eat a giraffe,” smiles Davinia, recalling the conversation. “

“And then she said: ‘Can you eat a hippo?’

“And I’m like: ‘Oh my God, she’s only two and a half and she’s looking at a kids’ cartoon thinking: ‘I’d like to try a hippo.’”

Well, at least it shows that Davinia and her husband Robert’s efforts to teach their three children where their food comes from, by taking their first steps into farming – and charting their adventures on their blog, Married With Cauldron – is paying off.

(Though you’re more likely to find a pair of Great White sows or a dozen Lohmann Brown chicks on their Louth allotment than something from the Serengeti.)

Scents of rosemary and thyme greet visitors to the Fitzgerald family home in a peaceful housing estate in Drogheda, where Rob and Davinia live with the adorable Abigail, Harriet and Malcolm, as well as their Rhodesian Ridgeback dog, Mani.

So far, so suburban. But this is a family that lives and breathes the Irish Country Living philosophy – growing, rearing, cooking, baking and even hunting – on a small scale but with no shortage of passion.

“I don’t stand to inherit a farm anytime soon, but I want to be a farmer and it will happen as soon as I can financially make it happen,” says Rob. “It’s definitely the life for us.”

Both Rob and Davinia are originally from Dublin, but have lived in Drogheda for 16 years since Rob started working as a paramedic.

However, he has been interested in food since he was a teenager; rather than play computer games after school, he’d watch Ready, Steady, Cook, while he wooed Davinia by bringing her on a picnic for one of their first dates.

“I was totally smitten and thought it was too good to be true; a paramedic who was into cooking,” smiles Davinia – who is the baker of the two – as she offers Irish Country Living a freshly baked lemon and thyme bun with Malibu icing.

It was this shared love of cooking that inspired the couple to start their blog, Married With Cauldron, three years ago, originally as a way to preserve and pass on their favourite recipes to their children.

However, since taking on a 60ft x 30ft plot at the local Colpe allotments last September, the blog has started to chart what Rob refers to as the family’s “internship” in farming. To date, this has included keeping chickens, turkeys and quails, rearing two pigs, Bramley and Sage, experimenting with everything from strawberries to sweet potatoes in the polytunnel and, most recently, taking on a second plot to set potatoes, onions, squash and other staples for their kitchen.

As well as dealing with the facts, there is also fun. When Rob wrote about delivering his turkeys for slaughter to the factory last Christmas with a friend, he joked they felt like “Fran and Elmo on a mission for Nidge” with their homemade pen in the back of a Mazda 5, compared to the farmers arriving in their 4x4s.

The Married With Cauldron blog also explores Rob’s passion for hunting, with original recipes inspired by his experiences such as venison steak with garlic and black coffee sauce and Lebanese-style braised rabbit.

A friend, Mick, who is a sheep farmer, allows him to hunt on his land in the Dublin mountains during the season, and having completed a HACCP food safety course, Rob has become very comfortable preparing his hunt for the freezer. Though, considering his grandfather John Joe Fitzgerald was once the village butcher in Ballyporeen, Co Tipperary, it runs in the family.

And family is what their adventure is all about, as they try to give Abigail, Harriet and Malcolm all the benefits of a country childhood while living in town. They are fully involved in the allotment – Rob even built a table for them to do their homework there – and have become little foodies in their own right.

“Prior to us getting the hens, our kids would not really have known where eggs came from,” says Rob.

“And now it’s like: ‘What do you want? Poached eggs, scrambled eggs, omelette?’ and Harriet’s like: ‘Mammy, I’ll have some strapatsada ... and don’t forget the tarragon,’” laughs Davinia.

Between Rob’s demanding job as a paramedic and a busy family life, it can be a challenge to do it all, but the Fitzgeralds say the next step will be renting a few acres to expand their venture before hopefully, one day, buying their own small farm.

“The passion is there, it’s so deep and strong,” says Rob.

“I’m getting the chance to play farmer on a very small scale and do it very realistically of what’s expected of you on a bigger farm. So that’s why I call it my internship, because if I do get my wish and my dream, I’m going to make it happen.”

Though there is one item on the agenda first. And no, it’s not a hippo for Harriet.

“I saw a local contractor who cuts grass the other day and he had a very small Massey Ferguson,” says Rob. “And I said: ‘Look. I think I can get a Massey Ferguson yet to fit in the allotment.’”

To follow the Fitzgerald family’s food and farming adventures, check out their blog at www.marriedwithcauldron.com.