BERLIN — He is the father of 12 and his children cling to him now, a small riot of laughter beneath ponytails and crewcuts, conjuring for him the simple pleasures he enjoyed as a boy in County Roscommon, Ireland.

Gerard Beirne absorbed his life-shaping lessons at the knee of his grandfather in that home across the Atlantic Ocean — a bare-bones place without plumbing, without electricity. A home powered by love.

“They were joyful,’’ he said, sitting outside on a late spring morning as his kids ran through his rolling fields here just off Route 62. “They were happy. They had each other. And that’s all they had.’’

Gerard Beirne now knows, somewhere deep in his DNA, that that’s all you really need.

On this Sunday morning, his kids will bring him breakfast in bed. They’ll present him with bright-and-priceless artwork done in kaleidoscopic Crayola. They’ll sing him songs and shower him in kisses.

And that’s more than enough.

“He’s fabulous,’’ his oldest child and namesake, 15-year-old Gerard, told me the other day, taking a break from late-morning chores. “He’s even-tempered. He’s always pretty cool when you do stupid stuff. He tells us what we should have done. He kisses us every morning. He tells us he loves us every night.’’

Then the boy paused, smiled, and said: “We’re the luckiest kids in the world.’’

That’s a seven-word Father’s Day gift any dad would treasure.

The remarkable story of Gerard Beirne’s journey to the center of his large and loving family is made all the more remarkable because it very nearly didn’t happen.

As a young man, he had come to America for adventure. He worked a minimum-wage job on a small farm in Wenham. He found himself briefly in Topeka, Kan., selling shrubs and fashioning Christmas wreaths.

He considered it a youthful diversion from the life he’d envisioned, making his way in the emerald fields of north-central Ireland.

Instead, time passed. He found his passion, working in the apple orchards of Belchertown and Topsfield. It was solid, fulfilling work that, in 2000, led him here to Berlin as manager of a 100-acre orchard.

And then one Sunday at an early-morning Mass, he saw something that would change his life. Her name was Sheila Olohan.

“She was just beautiful,’’ Gerard Beirne recalled. “And she had this smile on her.’’ Somewhere, between the readings from scripture and prayerful song, a heart fluttered. It was his.

At first, he kept his distance. There was an age difference. Twelve years. Proceed with caution, he told himself.

“Sheila was going to college and I was running the orchard,’’ he said. “We had apples and peaches and pears, and Sheila was working here during vacation from college. But I’m a little bit older than her, so I had to hold the reins back a little bit.’’

But not for long.

At an orchard Christmas party, Beirne attempted to sing “O Come All Ye Faithful,’’ only to freeze into mortified silence. Olohan stepped into the breach, belting out the lyrics and — after the whole room joined in — she wordlessly sent Beirne this eye-contact message: You owe me. Presently, he repaid. He remembers exactly how it went.

“I’m going back to Ireland in four months,’’ he recalls telling himself. “What’s the point of starting something now?’’

And yet. He walked her to her car. A light, mid-December snowfall was dusting the surrounding fields. He leaned in for the first kiss for which she had been secretly waiting.

What followed was a first date at a fancy restaurant in Boston, a discreet courtship in Brighton, where Olohan was pursuing a master’s degree in education at Boston College, and an uncharted future.

The remarkable economic renaissance known as the Celtic Tiger was roaring back in Ireland, a lure for Gerard. A going-away party was scheduled in a social club hall in nearby Clinton. The couple weighed the long-odds realities of a trans-Atlantic relationship.

“The party was on a Friday night,’’ Gerard recalled. “And I think it was the Sunday night before I went to see Sheila and it finally dawned on me: Buddy, you don’t have to go to Ireland. Ireland will always be there. But Sheila may not be.’’

They were married on the feast day of St. John in St. John the Evangelist Church in Clinton on Dec. 27, 2001, and honeymooned in the Caribbean on the island of St. John.

Upon their return, a pregnancy test confirmed what Sheila’s morning sickness had indicated. She was expecting.

“He’s 37, I’m 25, we had lived enough,’’ Sheila said. “We were ready.’’

Little Gerard was born at UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester on Sept. 22, 2002. “It was powerful to see how much connection Gerard had to the baby,’’ his wife said. “For me, birthing them is hard. But after the baby is born, you should see his reaction.’’

That reaction has something to do with Gerard Beirne’s connection to nature, to the earth, to the plants, to the flowers. To that long-ago moment when he watched his grandfather go about his day and learned what’s important. And what’s not.

“The child is a gift from God,’’ he said. “And having Sheila as my wife has made life a joy. . . . I have been given a lot. I’m going to make sure that I don’t lose this chance.’’

The chances have kept coming, nearly a child a year since Gerard’s birth 15 years ago. In short order came John Paul, Thomas Patrick, Joseph Benedict, Sheila, Bernadette, Mary Therese, Gabriel Martin, Bartholomew Isaac, Raphael James, Anthony Augustine, and Lucy Faustina, now just 4 months old.

The Beirnes have learned to celebrate life’s little milestones. The feast day of one of their children’s namesake saints may mean ice cream with supper. When dad comes in the door at night after a hard day’s work, he’s greeted with a cheer the neighbors can hear.

“I’m present with my children,’’ Gerard told me when I asked what kind of father he’s become. “I know my kids. They’re everything to me.’’

When their little daughter Sheila was born — their first girl after four straight boys — a special little door opened in Gerard Beirne’s heart.

“She had me wrapped around her finger,’’ he said. “She had a connection to me that I don’t think I even deserved.’’

A first girl. Another gift from God.

And then, heartbreak.

When young Sheila was diagnosed with Leigh syndrome, a neurological disorder that is often accompanied by the progressive loss of vision and movement abilities, her father prayed for a miracle.

“We’re going to fix this,’’ he remembers thinking. “I was completely convinced.’’

On March 28, 2013, the family traveled to Lourdes, the French town in the foothills of the Pyrenees mountains, where Christians believe the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared in a grotto in 1858.

“We got in on Holy Thursday for little Sheila’s birthday,’’ her father recalled. “I never cried a tear until I got to Lourdes about any of it. And, boy, I cried enough when I was there.’’

Weeks later, on May 11, 2013, Sheila Beirne died at age 6, her name forever enshrined in the rollcall of children her parents unfailingly maintain, in which she is known today — five years later — as “Sheila, 11, in heaven.’’

As we sat on the porch of the farm store last week, Gerard Beirne’s hands were blackened by the earth he still works to support his family. His children approached for a hug or a quick scalp rub.

It’s a brief respite. There are landscaping jobs to complete. There are 35 acres of wooded and open fields and 32 acres of apple trees to attend to. He owns this land. He’s paying the bills. He’s trying to grow the business. Still, his work does not consume him.

“I’m the wealthiest man I know,’’ he said, looking out over a rolling green field. “My wealth is at the kitchen table. This is my wealth.’’

He checks on the children throughout the day. If Sheila, who is home schooling the children, needs help, he’s home. If his kids need him, work can wait. She knows the father of their children isn’t perfect. For one thing he is perpetually late to things: “It makes me crazy.’’ Still, she knows she lucked into something special.

“There’s one prayer he says on Sunday morning, driving to church,’’ Sheila said. “He says: ‘Help me.’ And he says this in front of the kids. He says, ‘Dear God, help me to be a better husband and a better father.’

“That’s pretty powerful. Every Sunday. He never says he has all the answers. . . . He never acts like that guy.

“But he shows them that a man apologizes. A man helps. A man washes dishes. A man cleans diapers. A man does these things. He reads to his kids. You should hear the stories he tells around the campfire at home. It’s powerful. And he’s not taking photos for Facebook. He’s not taking selfies for everyone to say: Look at me. I’m such an awesome dad. He’s not that guy.’’

No, he’s a father.

And this is his day.

Thomas Farragher is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at thomas.farragher@globe.com.