Spring feels on the verge of being sprung, with the slow quiet dark of winter poised for the leap. Seeds are being sorted, separated, sown and sprouted; the dexter cows are eager for a galloped separation to the hill whereas the Muirshearlich blackface hill sheep have slowly been sorted in close for in-bye sprouting of… Continue reading Spring feels on the verge of being sprung
I have been curious to look at our personal carbon footprint, and having done so thought I would share it on the blog. Hunting around for a good personal carbon footprint calculator I came across the super useful Carbon Independent site run by Ian & Margaret Campbell. I resonated in particular with the explanatory notes on each… Continue reading 2018 Doughies Family Carbon Footprint
I recently listened to this podcast - an interview with Greg McKeown (@GregoryMcKeown) the author of Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less. And it got me thinking about the essential and non-essential within my own endeavours. I as much as the next person can get side-tracked or speed-tracked into the pursuit of the urgent but often frivolous. To date… Continue reading Essentialism
Its New Years eve. The animals are fed, the croft chores are done. And I'm sat inside contemplating life over a coffee. I find the approach of a new year an excellent time to think back on the year that is behind and forward to the days, weeks and months which lie ahead. So here's a… Continue reading 2018 Review & 2019 Plans
Rustle the top left hand edge of a map of Scotland, and chances are your fingers will briefly touch Uist. As excitedly reported in the rye-volution post, doughies along with some other local crofters were planning a technical and networking journey to learn from crofters about grain growing, harvesting and drying. A journey to the edge of… Continue reading A journey to the edge of the map
A rye revolution - a rye-volution A remembering of lost skills - a rye renaissance. It's coming guys - local lochaber grain - slow and steady like a slow rising sourdough. Three little rye rises to share:- 1. A photo of our 2018 rye trial plot - still learning (low density due to germination/weather) but… Continue reading Rye-volution Renaissance is Coming
Quite quiet on the doughies blog of late, and I thought it was high time for a mid season splurge of words by way of update. Bakehouse Update So our bakehouse has quietly grown in the interim. I reckon we have now gone from nano to pico to micro [and can now officially be labelled… Continue reading Sourdough Baking & Growing Update
The food we eat, the food we buy, is a choice. We all universally make this choice regularly (sometimes unknowingly) even when we might not feel we have a choice. And the choice is not always easy. Imagine yourself in the aisle of an un-named store close to where you live, and have a think… Continue reading Choice
There can be no lie, we do like rye. And we think the time is nigh, for some variants to try....(ok sonnet over, here's a few upcoming rye bread variants which we are going to have a go at over the next few months:-) Something pink - a Beetroot & walnut Rye like this. Ideally… Continue reading Rye Variants
A plastic free sourdough microbakery. Can it be done? I think yes, but we are not quite there yet. Although our outflow is plastic free (un-packaged returnable crates of unwrapped or paper bagged sourdough), there remains some single use plastic lurking in our incoming supplies. So I've gone about identifying it, and thought about the next… Continue reading A Plastic-Free Sourdough Micro-bakery
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