Laura O’Rourke is up at six o’clock every morning and has completed a full day’s work by the time the rest of us are breaking for lunch. This is because she has to have her freshly-baked goods and preserves delivered to local shops by 1pm. But this wasn’t always Laura’s routine. In fact, until 2009 Laura was engaged in a very different type of work, which began in the “other” recession.

“There were no jobs when I finished college in 1986,” says Laura. “We never considered looking for jobs here.” College for Laura (who hails from a sheep and dry stock farm in Delvin, Co Westmeath) was Athlone Institute of Technology where she studied civil engineering. She moved to London at 25 but went into architecture as it offered more work than engineering at the time. She later sat exams to become an architectural technician.

She carved out a career in London but also used her time there to save, and a year and a half later she took off for Australia where she spent a year in Surfers Paradise on the Gold Coast, stopping in India and Thailand on the way and Hawaii and LA on the way back.

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When Laura returned to Ireland, she worked in housing developments in Dublin, met her husband Michael, and, after seven years, moved down to Galway. She sent eight CVs out on a Friday in 1998 and got called for an interview on Monday with Simon J. Kelly & Partners Architects, the largest architectural firm in the west. She was there for 11 years until – well you can guess what happened next.

“I knew for about two years previous it was coming. As early as 2005/2006 you could see housing was the first thing to go,” says Laura.

It was time to think of an alternative.

“I always baked as a teenager,” says Laura. “We had hens at home so there were always eggs to be used up. I’ve always made my own bread and I’ve enjoyed trying out new recipes.”

Encouraged by her sister Brenda Kiernan, Laura set up a stall at a market in Claregalway during Christmas 2009 and it was very successful. Some months later, a sign she had put up and flyers she’d distributed caught the attention of Home Farm Butchers in Oranmore. They asked her to make breads and apple tarts and she now supplies them with a full range that includes jams, chutneys and cakes.

Ever since, her business, officially branded O’Rourke’s Farm, has slowly but surely been building momentum. Laura purchased a double-oven cooker pre-recession and, given that the HSE was satisfied with her kitchen as it was, the only other investment required was a good food mixer and processor, baking tins, wire cooling trays and large saucepans.

In Christmas 2010, Laura started supplying jams and chutneys to Grealy Stores (Costcutter) in Maree and has expanded the range there since, while the latest outlet providing shelf space for O’Rourke’s Farm is Sheridan’s Cheesemongers in Galway city, who currently stock her crab apple jelly and plum and apple jam (which got first prize at this year’s Tullamore Show).

And all this time, Laura has been participating in markets around the Galway area, where she sells everything from carrot bread to courgette bread, and lime cake to hazelnut cake (which Irish Country Living can confirm is divine).

But as if all this wasn’t keeping her busy enough, Laura, along with her friend Marlys Coffey, also runs cookery classes for children during school breaks and over the summer in the community centre in Maree, which they have been allowed to use free of charge. Laura and Marlys also offer baking classes at children’s birthday parties.

Exhausted? So are we. And we haven’t even got to Laura’s “longing” to publish a cookery book or the many orders she takes for artisan and bespoke occasion cakes and breads.

Laura has great support from her children – well from Eabha (13) at least, who loves helping out at the market. Evan (10) on the other hand, “can’t even be brought into town shopping,” and Sean (“who is 14 going on 20”) is more interested in helping out husband Michael on the suckler farm, which has also been home to turkey flocks for the past few Christmases.

Architecture and baking may seem worlds apart, but they’re not as different as you might think.

“A friend said to me there was actually a similarity in my architectural work compared to what I’m doing now,” says Laura.

“There’s a lot of laborious work involved in architecture before you have something creative. It’s the same with baking.”

Laura has plans to expand and her background in architecture may explain why she’s eyeing up her husband’s shed. She hopes to convert it into a purpose-built kitchen which would allow her to produce a larger quantity and offer cookery classes on her own premises.

“I’m at maximum capacity at the moment, which is a little frustrating,” she notes. “This is my year to expand.”

But Laura is not interested in massive expansion as she feels there’s a risk the homemade quality will get lost, and producing food that is, and tastes, homemade is her priority.

“Many groups and organisations talk about expanding and becoming multinational. They’re not as interested in local. Jobs are the buzzword. But there shouldn’t be that pressure. I feel there’s a lot of room for people like me.”

Laura also poses the question – what is homemade? She says there is no definition for it and that labelling on homemade produce needs to be looked at. For example, if a “homemade” product has travelled a distance to reach your local shop shelf and has the life span to do so because it contains ingredients like flour enhancers, can that really be called homemade?

So, considering the challenges, would she go back to architecture in the morning if she was offered a job? She says that, based on last year’s figures for the business, she’s earning approximately half of what she did as an architectural technician (though notes that if she was still working in that role her pay would certainly have decreased).

But while the revenue isn’t a draw yet, Laura says: “I have less travelling expenses and I’m at home when our kids leave and come home from school. I don’t need to dress for work as I did before and I’m my own boss.”

Sounds idyllic to us.