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Love Letters to the Land; Gartur Farm

This week I took part in the exhibition "Love Letters to the Land" at Fodder and Farm, Gartur Stitch Farm, Port of Menteith in the middle of Scotland.

I was showing with a couple of other artists whose work is inspired by the land - Eilidh Weir and Celia Ramon.

The exhibition was in an old barn - whitewashed walls with swallows swooping in though the large doors. I give a tour of my pieces in this video and Eilidh can be seen hanging hers in last week's blog post.

Hanging the Love Letters to the Land exhibition at Fodder and Farm

This week I have been hanging my embroideries in a white washed barn, as part of Forth Vallery Art Beat - an Open Studios trail. The barn is part of Gartur Stitch Farm near Port of Menteith in Scotland - an education led regenerative smallholding which is host to Fodder and Farm, an events company specialising in local food, making and community.

It all brought up a lot about whether I am an artist - self trained, working in textiles and with local materials . . . .

In this video I discuss all that and you can see us making decisions about what art works to put where - and get a close up of the amazing quilt making of Eilidh Weir of All that is Braw.

Simple crusty no knead bread

When I began making bread - in my early twenties, living in Glasgow, working in an office job that I was growing out of - I was a champion kneader. I took all my stresses out on that ball of dough.

At the same time my Dad was extolling the virtues of a 'no knead' bread that he made every week - it was bread, technically, but it was bread with the texture of a rock. That probably was one of the reasons that I bought into the idea that to have a light, edible, delicious loaf of bread, you needed to knead.

Then, running my own business, baking bread became something that I fitted into the corners of life and I had to simplify the whole process if I was going to do it at all. My children weren't keen on the heaviness of my Dad's brand of bread, and I gradually developed an alternative, cutting down the kneading, ramping up the amount of liquid.

Four years ago I learned how to make sourdough bread with the amazing Kat Goldin at Gartur Stitch Farm, but as bread is the only thing I bake regularly I keenly felt the waste as I discarded the discard. Then sourdough baking became popular and I found I just couldn't bring myself to do it any more - a BIG personality flaw - and my poor starter languished. However, if you want to learn to bake sourdough bread simply - go see Kat!

What the sourdough did demystify for me however was "the Dutch oven' which I had seem mentioned in so many books - I had assumed that it was a rare and specialist piece of equipment. When it actually turned out to be an old lidded pan that could go in the oven that made everything easier - I already had a couple of those, too chipped for regular cooking, hanging around looking burned and taking up space.

So, when I went back to baking with yeast 2 years ago, I spent time honing my technique until it became simpler and simpler, more and more forgiving - stirring rather than kneading.

Now bread making is a ten minute process in total - with some time for the dough to rise (from 3 to 24 hours) and 50 minutes in the oven.

If you fancy having a go here is a video - the only remotely tricky bit is having the courage to leave the dough really wet which is what makes it light.

You can also get a download of the recipe here.

How to grow sweet peas from seed

Sweet peas have always been a plant that grows well here - they love the cool damp summers, the long light days of June - and reward me with bucket upon bucket of blooms. When I had a flower farm and grew organic cut flowers commercially I used to grow thousands of stems for weddings.

If you are growing them yourself, this is the perfect time to sow sweet peas - they have time to grow great healthy roots but don't hang around getting root bound. They are pretty hardy - and though you shouldn't plant them out into the garden until the frosts are pretty much finished, they don't need a heated greenhouse. If you have somewhere sheltered to keep them, tucked by a wall, in a cold frame you can germinate them on the house and then move them outside.

I love pottering around in the greenhouse it this time, sowing sweet pea seeds and looking forward to a Summer full of scented cut flowers. It stops me from sowing other seeds for which it is far too early!

I have recorded a YouTube video showing exactly how I sow sweet peas