Cèilidh Nam Freumhan

Author: TartanVegan

  • The Joy of Learning to Write Grant Applications

    The Joy of Learning to Write Grant Applications

    Since I just opened an Etsy shop—with one product so niche that most people would never think to search for it—I have started applying for small business grants. I have a slight advantage as a female veteran, but that only gets my foot in the door. A strong application still has to stand on its own.

    One of the biggest hurdles will be the fact that I don’t have any revenue yet. Convincing a committee that my business has the potential to grow—and eventually become profitable—won’t be easy. Such is life.

    That said, I have a business plan that I genuinely believe in. My budget projections are also refreshingly simple because, at the moment, I have virtually no overhead. I work from home, and my current products are digital. Even when I begin selling physical products, I’ll be starting with materials and equipment I already own, including some supplies that I’m literally growing in my garden.

    One thing that gives me confidence is that I’ve written an RFP (Request for Proposal) response before. An RFP is how government agencies and other organizations request bids for a specific product or service. Writing one requires answering a lot of detailed questions, but it also results in a substantial library of material that can be reused. By the time I finished mine, I had about fifteen pages, and roughly twelve of those could be adapted for future proposals.

    I’m hoping that experience will pay off with grant applications as well. My contracts professor always said, “Why invent the wheel?” As long as I build a strong foundation now, each new application should become a little easier than the last.

    My goal is simple: secure enough funding to purchase professional equipment for the physical products I want to make. I think having the right tools from the beginning would dramatically shorten the learning curve and allow me to produce higher-quality work much sooner.

    I don’t know that grant applications will become a regular topic here. They’re not exactly thrilling reading. But if I ever receive one, you can be sure there will be an extremely excited post about it.

    Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to read Small Business For Dummies.

  • My Very Beginner Thoughts on Whisky

    My Very Beginner Thoughts on Whisky

    Disclaimer: I am not an expert.

    So, I write this post based on a love of whisky.

    Back when I had multiple topics in one commonplace book (which sounds horrible now), I had a dedicated section on whisky. I learned about the distillation process, the different types, and the various Scotch-producing regions.

    I spent some time learning about the different regions of Scotland because I am very particular about those. Out of my three favorites, two are Highland. One is a blended malt, and one is a single malt. I am surprised that a blended made the list, but you like what you like. My third favorite is a Speyside single malt.

    Well, before I get too far into this, my favorites are The Sassenach (Highland), Glenmorangie (Highland), and The Balvenie (Speyside).

    The region I never want crossing my lips ever again is Islay (pronounced eye-luh). If I wanted to drink a campfire, I would just put a burned log in my mouth.

    So what is peat, anyway? Peat is partially decomposed plant material that has built up in bogs over thousands of years. Some distilleries burn peat during the malting process, and the smoke infuses the barley with those earthy, smoky flavors. That is why many Islay whiskies taste like smoke, campfires, iodine, or even the ocean. Plenty of people absolutely love it. I am not one of those people.

    Next came the different types.

    Blended malt – A blend of two or more single malt Scotch whiskies from more than one distillery. The Sassenach is produced by Galloway Spirits and is a blended malt.

    Single malt – Mashed, fermented, distilled, and matured at a single distillery in Scotland.

    Single cask – As the name implies, this whisky comes from one individual barrel. The run is typically very limited, usually around 200–300 bottles. I was lucky enough to find a single-cask Balvenie a few months ago that was absolutely fabulous, and I was sad to see the end of it. Since single-cask releases are limited, this one even came with its own bottle number.

    Yesterday, I got my hands on the Harrison Ford Glenmorangie. I have been a fan of Harrison Ford since the early ’80s, and because I also love Scotch, I clearly had to buy this. It was aged in Portuguese red wine casks (I only drink red wine, so that was a bonus), and Mr. Ford asked for more “bite” in this edition. I am not quite sure what that means because I found it very smooth.

    I have looked at other types of whisky, of course.

    Bourbon must be made in the United States, though it is most commonly associated with Kentucky. It must contain at least 51% corn in the mash bill, be aged in new, charred oak barrels, and be bottled at a minimum of 80 proof.

    Irish whiskey must be distilled and aged in Ireland. It is made from cereal grains, aged in wooden casks for at least three years, and bottled at no less than 40% ABV.

    Well…those are really the only ones I care about, so I will end with this:

    You can spell it “whiskey” or “whisky.” It depends on the country of origin. An interesting rule of thumb I found is that if the country’s name has an “e” in it, the spirit is usually spelled “whiskey.” If it does not, it is usually spelled “whisky.”

    I choose “whisky.” I like consistency.

    Of course, the best whisky is the one you enjoy, regardless of where it comes from or how anyone else says you should drink it.

    bottle of glenmorangie whisky
    Harrison Ford’s whisky is only second to actually having Harrison Ford here.
  • My Garden Compendium Has Already Changed

    My Garden Compendium Has Already Changed

    The garden compendium was originally meant to be a catch-all. It included medicinal herbs with drawings, uses, and recipes; planting, care, and harvest instructions for all of the herbs and vegetables I planted; a diagram of this year’s layout; a planting calendar; and a journal of what I did, what happened, and how I could fix my mistakes.

    That plan hasn’t changed. The notebook will continue into next year, or however long it takes me to fill 300 sheets.

    What has changed is everything else.

    Originally, I wrote herb recipes on the back of each herb page. It didn’t take long to realize that a tincture is a tincture, my handwriting was getting messier, and my fountain pen was ghosting through onto the drawing on the other side. So the recipes are getting their own section, but only for the preparations I’ve actually made with herbs from my own garden. The herb pages themselves will stay as a high-level overview with drawings and uses.

    Then there are the medicinal herbs.

    I have become fascinated by them and have been researching them like crazy. That rabbit hole is deep enough to fill 300 sheets all by itself, which wasn’t the original purpose of the compendium. I wanted this notebook to be something I could leave behind someday—a record of the garden that my descendants could flip through and (hopefully) ooh and ahhh over.

    So, naturally, I’m making another notebook.

    Medicinal herbs deserve one of their own. The subject is practically endless, and if you’ve been reading my blog for any length of time, you’ve probably noticed that I’m incapable of leaving well enough alone.

    I’ve also started color-coding the page edges. The notebook only came with two ribbon bookmarks, which isn’t nearly enough anymore. By highlighting the edges of each page based on the section—herbs, vegetables, diagrams, journal entries, and so on—I can find what I’m looking for without even opening the book.

    And finally…

    I did the one thing I swore I wasn’t going to do.

    I started an Excel workbook to track planting and care information for vegetables I haven’t even decided if I’m going to grow yet.

    Just in case.

    table with seeds, twine, and scissors for gardening
    Photo by Micheile Henderson on Pexels.com
  • The Garden Doesn’t Care About My Plans

    The Garden Doesn’t Care About My Plans

    No matter how much research I did before planting my garden (and I’m certainly not finished), there were still plenty of surprises. Some things completely failed, while others did far better than I ever imagined.

    I organized my garden into separate beds based on companion planting, water needs, soil type, and a handful of other factors. It definitely created more weeding than I would have liked, but I needed to see what worked and what didn’t.

    In some beds, none of it seemed to matter. I planted starts at the right time, paired them with their companion plants, and they promptly died. I direct sowed whatever I could, and sometimes nothing came up at all. I even moved some of those stubborn plants into bins with fresh potting soil. A few are thriving, while others are either refusing to grow or have become an all-you-can-eat buffet for whatever animal keeps digging them up.

    Then there are the pleasant surprises.

    The borage is so big that I’m honestly not sure what to do with all of it. I’ll keep tossing the flowers into salads, and the rest will probably go to seed. It’s one of the best bee attractors in the garden, though, so it’s earned its place. It also doesn’t hurt that it’s gorgeous.

    The calendula is massive. I’m drying flower heads for a future tincture, chamomile for tea, and I have dill coming out of my ears. The lettuce just keeps producing, and the carrots have done far better than I expected.

    All that being said, the garden has been a fruitful learning experience. (Fruitful. Get it?)

    As the season goes on, I’m no longer fighting the garden. I’m letting it show me what works, what doesn’t, and how I can make next year’s garden even better.

    And as the universe is my witness, I will not let the quince from hell win.

    stock photo of a calendula head
    Photo by Prashant Gangwar on Pexels.com
  • I Like Knowing Things

    I Like Knowing Things

    One of the things I’ve realized this year is that I don’t really collect hobbies.

    From the outside, it probably looks like I bounce from one thing to another. Gardening. Bookbinding. Norwegian. Citation templates. Herbs. Cocktails. Ancient history.

    They’re all over the place.

    To me, though, they’re all the same hobby.

    I like understanding how things work.

    The garden has made that clearer than anything else. Before this year, companion planting was something I’d read about. Soil composition was something I’d heard people discuss. Medicinal herbs were mostly names in books.

    Now I get to watch it happen.

    I’m seeing why one bed dries out faster than another. Why some plants seem happier next to certain neighbors. Which herbs attract pollinators and which ones don’t. Which vegetables struggle through a heat wave while others barely notice. It’s no longer just biology in a textbook. It’s biology happening in my backyard.

    That’s probably why my garden is organized the way it is. It isn’t the most efficient layout, and I’ve certainly spent more time weeding because of it. But separating plants by water needs, companion planting, shade, and other variables lets me see what works and what doesn’t. I’m treating the garden as one giant experiment.

    The same thing happens with my other projects.

    I didn’t start making notebooks because I thought notebooks were too expensive. I started because I wanted to understand how books are made. Every mistake teaches me something, and every notebook gets a little better than the last.

    I originally started learning Norwegian because I had a reason to. Somewhere along the way, though, the language became the reward. I enjoy the grammar, I enjoy listening to it, and I was ridiculously proud of myself for using it in Oslo, even if it was only a little.

    The citation bundles might be the clearest example of all. I don’t enjoy formatting bibliographies. I enjoy solving problems, and I kept thinking about how much easier graduate school would have been if I’d had something like this on my desk.

    Maybe that’s why all of these projects seem connected to me, even if they don’t to anyone else.

    I’m not really collecting hobbies.

    I’m collecting understanding.

    woman surrounded by books and studying on her bed
    Photo by MART PRODUCTION on Pexels.com
  • The Best Vegan Meal of Our Vacation Wasn’t Inside the Park

    The Best Vegan Meal of Our Vacation Wasn’t Inside the Park

    Recently, the fam and I took a trip to Southern California to ride some roller coasters. Before we even left, we knew the main park had two restaurants with Beyond burgers. At this point, that’s pretty much what we’ve come to expect.

    I was actually excited that one of those restaurants was Johnny Rockets. The location I went to in Vegas had a full vegan burger, so I figured this one would be similar.

    Nope.

    The park version was a Beyond patty on a bun. No cheese. No sauce. Just a dry burger and a handful of ketchup packets. Like a lot of amusement park “vegan” options, it was…fine. We weren’t hungry anymore, and that’s about the best thing I can say about it.

    The water park was even worse. They stopped selling the Beyond burger there about a year ago, so our options were basically pretzels or chips. We figured we’d grab some fruit instead, except the fruit cup at the main park came topped with whipped cream. Apparently, even fruit isn’t a safe bet.

    We rented a cabana, which came with its own menu, and decided to order the fruit platter. About an hour later, our $36 fruit platter arrived.

    It was a plastic clamshell full of moldy purple grapes.

    That was it.

    By the time I added the margarita I’d ordered, we’d spent almost $60 on moldy grapes and a drink that may or may not have contained alcohol.

    Unfortunately, this isn’t unusual. Disney World had a lot more vegan options than Magic Mountain, but “more options” doesn’t necessarily mean “better food.” We had vegan sausages in two different places that were so dry they somehow made the amusement park burgers seem moist.

    The biggest lesson we’ve learned from traveling as vegans is simple: bring your own food whenever you can.

    On our second day, we packed sandwiches, left the park for lunch, and honestly enjoyed them far more than anything we’d bought inside. They were healthier, tasted better, and cost a fraction of the price.

    Thankfully, the trip ended on a much better note.

    On our last night, we found a local restaurant with an entirely separate vegan menu—not just a Beyond burger with the cheese removed. They had loaded fries, buffalo tots, and the best vegan Philly cheesesteak I’ve ever had. Honestly, it was one of the best meals I’ve had, period, and I’m not usually someone who gets excited about food.

    So while the roller coasters were worth the trip, the theme park food mostly reminded me why we pack sandwiches. Sometimes the best meal of the vacation is the one you bring yourself—or the one you find after you’ve left the park behind.

    orange and teal rollercoaster
    Not from the park we went to, but looks super cool.
  • How Many Notebooks is too Many?

    How Many Notebooks is too Many?

    I first learned about commonplace books while reading the second book of A Discovery of Witches. It sounded like such a cool idea.

    I immediately found an unused notebook in my inventory and started carrying it around.

    I had been told that one simply writes down anything interesting. Unfortunately, I wasn’t finding anything interesting at first, and every time I wrote something down, it felt forced.

    A few months ago—maybe a year, time has ceased to have meaning—I started a bullet journal again. Instead of writing down things I needed to do or making trackers, it slowly turned into a commonplace book.

    I started devoting entire sections to things I was interested in: four pages on whisky, seven pages on Gàidhlig grammar, and assorted bits of trivia that appealed to me for reasons known only to my brain.

    Eventually, I had to start making separate notebooks. I simply had too many interests to fit into one.

    As far as I can remember, I currently have notebooks for:

    • Baseball
    • Gàidhlig
    • Norwegian
    • One for a game I am playing but refuse to admit to publicly
    • Religious studies
    • Gardening adventures (which covers enough topics to qualify as several notebooks by itself)

    And I still have many blank notebooks waiting to be filled.

    So how many notebooks is too many?

    Like the question of how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop, the world may never know.

    Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com
  • Finally Some Small Bounty

    Finally Some Small Bounty

    After weeks of weeding and sending good thoughts into the universe, I finally have some legitimate progress in my garden.

    My calendula and borage are starting to bloom. It’s a small thing, but it is so nice to see something that isn’t a weed.

    blooming calendula
    Calendula!

    The borage is starting to bloom, too.

    borage blooms
    The borage is starting to bloom!

    Speaking of weeds…

    I took a picture of something growing all over the garden, and Apple told me it was black nightshade. I wasn’t convinced, though, and looked up potato plants instead. Last year, I’m fairly certain I pulled up tiny potatoes when I cleared the beds out.

    volunteer potato plant
    Unwanted potato.

    As it turns out, potatoes are part of the nightshade family, so Apple was mostly correct. I also found some datura, which is a very toxic member of the same family. Even though the flowers are pretty, it is not welcome in my garden, just like the potatoes.

    datura flower
    Deceptively pretty datura.

    My vegetable beds are finally clear of weeds, so at this point I just need weekly maintenance. Right now, I’m working on weeding everything else so nothing can steal nutrients from the things I actually want to eat, and definitely yanking out those darned nightshades.

    Except tomatoes.

    Tomatoes are yummy.

    For the record, potato plants stink for some reason.

  • Middle Age is Realizing You Can Just Learn Weird Things

    Middle Age is Realizing You Can Just Learn Weird Things

    I think a lot of us are taught that life follows a fairly straightforward path: go to college right after high school, find a career, and work forty or more hours a week until retirement. I never really followed that plan, and for a long time I felt like I had somehow done life incorrectly.

    As I have gotten older, though, I have realized that the things I didn’t do made me different in a way that I actually appreciate. I have always been curious, and I finally feel like I have given myself permission to simply learn things because they interest me.

    So these days I find myself learning crafts, bookbinding, languages, gardening, and even some homesteading skills. There is always some new rabbit hole waiting to be explored.

    Not always having steady work has certainly been stressful, but it has also taught me that life is about more than giving decades of yourself to an employer who may never appreciate you the way you deserve. There is value in creating things, learning things, and following your curiosity.

    At this point, if something sounds interesting, I want to try it. Some people may think that is strange, and perhaps it is. But I enjoy it, and I like the idea of keeping my mind active and open to new experiences.

    Maybe I am making up for lost time. Or maybe I am finally becoming the person I was always meant to be.

    Either way, I think Hannah Montana had it right:

    “Life’s what you make it.”

    Photo by Paweu0142 L. on Pexels.com
  • I Finally Did It

    I Finally Did It

    I had an idea for an Etsy product several weeks ago, but life happened and I had to put it on the back burner for a bit. But! I finally finished it, created my Etsy store, and listed my first product.

    I have felt very overwhelmed during this process. Yesterday, I decided that I didn’t need an entire shop. I didn’t need ten products, or perfect branding, or a grand plan stretching years into the future. I just needed one product. Just the first one.

    And just like that, I took the tiniest step imaginable to share something I made with other people.

    I don’t care if my shop goes viral. I don’t care if I become the next Martha Stewart, but with study guides. I simply wanted to take that first step.

    Honestly, I think that’s the hardest part of any new project. Not becoming an expert. Not making hundreds of things. Just being willing to begin.

    So today, I am celebrating one tiny step. The rest can come later.

    And if anyone is curious, my little corner of Etsy can be found at Tartan Vegan. I welcome feedback, suggestions, and gentle corrections as I continue learning.