Goals for 2019 - Update #2

So there goes June whizzing past us and that's half the year gone already.  Here's how my goals went in the second quarter.

Healthy Eating

I have found that I don't find eating healthy particularly difficult when I'm at work. Mainly because I'm stuck up a mountain away from the temptations of the shops and can only eat the food I've taken with me.  All I have to do is make sure it's healthy.  Also, when I'm at the hostel I tend to only eat the food I've brought along as well, which is made up of mostly fruit and vegetables and only one 'bad' item.

At home I've been good at making large, mixed salads which I can munch my way through throughout the weekend.  This is because it occurred to me that salads are pretty easy to make, healthy and tasty (and yes I do mean that), and really not much more work than getting a ready meal from the shop.  There is also a lot less waste when you make it yourself.

I am definitely still eating a lot more high sugar food than I should be, even for the little treat you should really allow yourself now and then.  It's not necessarily a problem with the work that I do as I burn so much energy, but I still want to work on reducing this to just a treat once or twice week.  Regardless of how much physical activity you do processed sugar really is something you can do without.

Next quarter's mini goal is to get my sugery treats down to two occasions a week.

Reducing Waste

I think it's safe to say that I've been pretty good at reducing my waste in almost every aspect of my life bar food.  And it's not just the snacks I've been buying. It has been unbelievably difficult to get vegetables without a whole lot of packaging wrapped around them.  Fruit has been a lot easier to deal with, but vegetables seem to require it for reasons I don't really understand.

I have been looking into this and have found a few online stores that sell dry food in bulk and plastic free packaging.  So that will be my first port of call when I next need some dry goods.  For fresh food I think it's going to have to be farmers markets and stores.  At the moment I have quite a long drive from home to work and I have noticed a couple of places on route that I think will definitely be worth having a look at.  I'm not sure if they'll have all the food I need with my dietary requirements but it's definitely worth a look.

Next quarter's mini goal is to buy food either in bulk or from a farmer's market wherever possible.

Learning New Skills

Work

As I put in the last goals post I have a drystone walling course booked for July and I'll write more about that then.  The walking that I do during my work day has increased quite dramatically since I started work at Glencoe and that means that walking and practising navigation during my time off is much less likely, just to give my legs a rest.  However, I have been given a few chances to go off route a bit when at work and this has been helping me get to know more about the terrain in the area and what challenges there are when navigating through it.

My current boss is also big on identifying mountain fauna and often shows me the vegetation we pass as we are doing our work so that has turned out to be a great unexpected opportunity as well.  If only I was better at learning names.

My mini goal for the next quarter is just to get the most out of the drystone walling course that I can.

Home

Lastly is my attempted to learn BSL at home.  It started off well and I had gone through the alphabet and numbers, and had begun to look at the signs for different colours when I got into some technically difficulties.  Neither my phone nor my tablet have the software needed to view the video footage showing you the signs.  However my laptop did until it stopped working.  At the moment I am laptop less, and probably will be for a while, whilst I work out exactly what I want to get and can afford.  I did manage to use my local library's computers a couple of times to do the classes but I haven't been able to get there as much as I would like.  That is still an option though and is probably just something I need to block in on a weekly basis.

Next quarter's mini goal will be to get in at least one section of BSL learning a week.

This year has definitely been a less successful year then last when it comes to achieving my goals.  But it's alright to have off years and as long as I keep moving forward I will be happy with what I've achieved.  I may not be as far as I would like but it's still better than where I was at the start of the year.

I hope all your goals are going well.  And, if like me, they're not quite working that your still moving forward the best that you can.

Path Work - June (Glencoe)

If the last three months have been a strange mix of sunny days and snowy day, June has been a month of sunny days and torrential rain.  Admittedly that's a little more normal for the west of Scotland, but it's still been particularly wet compared to normal and this definitely affected where we were able to do the work on any given day.  I'll only be writing about the first three weeks in June for this post as I have another post planned for next week, but the work will be very familiar throughout this month any way.  (I also didn't do a very good job at taking photos this month for some reason.)

This month has been all about the Coire nan Lochan path and carrying on with the maintenance work we had been doing before.  During the first week I was back at the section of path I was working at in May where I had been making the curve in the path more obvious to walkers.  What was needed this time was to use landscaping and stone work to block a couple of areas where landslides had made sections of the hill look like viable paths.  Not only were they not the route we wanted the public to take but they were not particularly safe to use and needed to be removed as a visible option.

This was followed by some packing and landscaping of some work carried out by a colleague last week.  And then it was time to do some winching to get the stones needed onto the path for a future build.  If you ever want a full body work out winching is the way to go.  It definitely gives all your muscles a good working.

The weather the next day meant we had to do some work a little further down the path than initially planned.  Here we completed the revetment we had been working on last month on the hill side of the path to help hold up a section of landslide from taking over the whole path.  It won't stop it completely, but it will ensure that the path remains mostly clear of stones and as a clear route to walkers.  Steps were also added to help hold the surfacing in place and add height to the path.

Then we were back further up the path again adding in some stone pitching to counteract some particularly bad erosion and to rebuild a waterbar that had stopped functioning.  It also needed additional steps added onto the other side of it to help with elevation and to reduce the path's surfacing just being washed down it.

The second week was when I had my little accident and crushed my right index finger between two stones.  Not the best move I've ever made and boy did it hurt, but these things happen.  Thankfully I didn't break it but it will still take a while to heal completely, as is usually the case with fingers.

Before that point I was getting to try my hand at carrying on the  stone pitching and revetment that was being worked on the week before.

After that point (and a day off to give my finger a rest and a check to make sure it wasn't broken) the work was a little bit more sedate based on what I could actually do and mainly consisted of packing stone work already carried out and landscaping.  Unfortunately I wasn't able to finish some of the work I had started but they were completed by the people I was working with.

By the end of the week I had healed enough to be able to extract some stones that would be needed for work later on and move them down to the path.

The last week was particularly damp and windy, and did mean that one day actually had to be turned into an administration day. A total blow to those of us who would always rather be outside.  The finger was also still a problem, especially as I had to carry on wearing the supportive plastic tube to help it heal straight, and it reduced the range of work I could actually carry out.

However, by the end of the week I was still able to do some stone work, including some step rises and revetments, as well as a whole lot of winching.  It turns out I actually quite enjoy winching, there's something weirdly satisfying about it.

Shady Beauty: Refinery29

As I've been using up my makeup this year I've been thinking about what I want my makeup collection to look like in the future and what I want each item to be.  My main concern is how natural the ingredients are and the environmental impact the production of these items have, but there is also the question of the human cost as well.  Looking at mineral foundations sent me researching one of the most common ingredients in beauty products, mica, and I came across this video by Refinery29 called 'The Dark Secret Behind Your Favourite Makeup Products'.  It looks at how children are being used to mine for mica in terrible working conditions with no health and safety to protect them and very low pay.  It also showed the issues behind regulating it and the debate on what the best methods for dealing with this issue are.

This video was part of the Refinery29's Shady series and I decided to watch the other nine videos on the playlist.  These videos aren't really on subjects that are connected to me and the field of beauty I go into, such as hair extensions, skin whitening, and cosmetic surgery.  However, it was interesting to see just how dark something like the beauty world can be and what effect the choices we make when buying items can have on the people on the other end of the production line.  Perhaps the most obvious thing was how the industry is still geared towards a very narrow standard of beauty and, like many industries in our culture, prey on those who are most vulnerable.  It's too obvious to say that this needs to change, but hopefully these exposures will help with the changes that need to be made.

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My favourite video was the one about what beauty is like for homeless women in America.  It highlighted many of the issues faced by women living on the street, but is was good to see the people who were using their time and beauty treatments as a positive force for these women.  Giving them dignity and basic human kindness, even when other help isn't available to them.

And as for my foundation, I think I'll make my own.  After all, there are enough recipes out there - Live Simple and Don't Waste the Crumbs are just a couple.

The Choice of Milks

A few years ago I moved away from dairy milk and started drinking plant base ones.  The main reason was for health, I have PCOS and they recommend cutting out milk for that, but I was also aware of the environmental factors, such as carbon emissions, and water and land use, involved.

It took me a little while to find the plant based milk that I liked as most of the flavours were actually off putting to me.  However, after A LOT of testing I now mainly drink Koko coconut milk, which has the right taste and texture for me and is fortified with calcium, B vitamins, and vitamin D.

Whilst my decision on which type of milk I drink is mainly due to taste I have been wondering recently if my choice in milk is actually the most environmentally friendly one.  So, a little bit of research was needed.

There are, of course, environmental impacts for all the milks available to us and that's not just in the growing.  Something that I had never really thought about before was just how far some of the primary ingredients may have to travel to be processed and then end up in our stores.  However, even when you include things like this plant based milks are still less environmentally damaging than dairy milk. In fact there is a really interesting journal article by the University of Oxford about this called 'Reducing food's environmental impacts through producers and consumers'.  Definitely worth a read.

A little more digging online took me to Simple Happy Kitchen, which do great illustrated guides on information that is good to know when you’re going vegan.  They had done a post on some of the different types of milk available and the environmental impact they might have, with an illustration with the numbers.  In a boring table they look like this (I would definitely go check out the illustration though):

What this shows is that even the worst of the non-dairy offenders still has less of an environmental impact then dairy.  But this article didn’t include the milk that I drink the most of, coconut, and no matter how much research I’ve done I haven’t been able to find actual figures for this type of milk.  If you know them please let me know, I would be very interested to see how they tie up with the other milks.

So, what have I found.  Whilst Soy milk is probably the healthiest, containing the most macronutrients and fats, it has a very high negative environmental impact.  I'm mainly thinking of the large amounts of the Amazon rainforest that has been destroyed to grow this particular plant.  The production also needs quite a large quantity of pesticide.  This, of course, leeches into the surrounding environment, killing ecologically important insects.

Almond milk also has a fairly high environmental impact, mainly in the vast amount of water needed to grow this plant.  Most of the almond growers in the world are actually based in California, which has been experiencing extreme draughts over the past few years.  To keep growing the amount of produce needed even more strain needs to be placed on the surrounding environment to collect the water needed, which is not sustainable.  This milk also needs to be fortified to actually contain any health benefits to the consumer.

Rice milk, whilst not requiring the same amount of water as almond or dairy milk, still requires a fair amount when compared to the other plant based milks.  There also seems to be a risk of arsenic contamination of the rice field paddies, which obviously has health and environmental implications.  Similar to almond milk, rice milk needs to be fortified to make it nutritious to consumers.

Of the two milks I drink the most, Coconut and Oat milk (when there’s no coconut milk available), oat milk is the most nutritious, especially when it comes to fighting bad cholesterol.  In fact, coconut milk also needs to be fortified to make it beneficial to drink at all.  However, even though oat milk itself has pretty low carbon emissions, water use, and land use, coconut milk seems to have the lower environmental impact.  The farms that grow the coconut tend to be eco-friendly using very low amounts of pesticide and herbicide, and only a small amount of water is actually needed to grow it.  The coconut trees also absorb CO2, meaning that they can also play a part in the drawdown of carbon from the atmosphere (I’m guessing this is similar for the almond trees).

The biggest winner of the milks (though again I’m finding it difficult to find any actual figures, help would be much appreciated here) is a surprising one. It’s Hemp milk.  It doesn’t need a lot of water or pesticide, and the way it is grown is generally very environmentally friendly.  Unlike most of the other milks where the whole plant is harvested but only the seeds are used, with hemp the whole plant is used reducing the amount of waste.  The only downside for me is the taste.  I've tried to like it but for some reason the flavour reminds me of fish and I just can’t get my head around that.  


So all in all, after all that research, I’m pretty happy with the choice of milk I've already made.  It might not be the most nutritious without being fortified, but it is one of the most environmentally friendly milks out there.  My other go to is oat milk and that seems to score pretty highly as well.  I wish there was more hard evidence out there, but for now I’ll just have to trust in the information I’ve been given and make changes when more information becomes available.

Path Work - Balmoral Estate, the Mourne Mountains, and Glencoe

So here in Scotland May tends to be our summer.  It really seems like it's the month we get the most amount of sun and the least amount of rain.  Don't get me wrong, the summers in Scotland are definitely warmer, but they are also filed with lots and lots of rain......and midges. However May this year has been as strange as March and April with the mix of very hot days and some very cold wet, regularly snowing days.  Instead of spring we've had an interesting mixture of winter and summer.

We spent the first and second week of May back at Balmoral Estate back beside Fèith an Laoigh.  Similar to the lower section we were working on at the end of April, the actual surface of the path was pretty hard and the main focus was on removing the water off it.

That meant we needed to put in quite a few water bars and cross drains, as well as a few long drains to feed the water to them.  

We were also a few burrow pits to be dug to gain the surfacing needed to help finish off the water features and raise some of the sections out of the damper areas.  We dug a particularly big burrow pit on the last day to completely finish the work.  That was a tough day but completely worth it and a nice way to say goodbye to the site.

Whilst the scenery at that location on Balmoral Estate was definitely not my favourite we did still get to see some wildlife, most notably a newt when it was particularly wet. 

Then there was a completely different location for week 3, the Mourne Mountains in Northern Ireland.  I've been to Northern Ireland a few times but never really to this area so it was great to get an opportunity to see it.  The view of the mountains against the sea is really stunning though, typically, when we got to the top of Slieve Bearnagh the clouds had come down and we couldn't see a thing.

My role in this was to help with some survey work on a lower section of the path and that meant I actually had some time to do some exploring of the area.  Namely visiting the sand dunes at Murlough National Nature Reserve.  Was definitely worth a visit.

The last week before I went on holiday was with a different contractor and at a different location again.  This time it was on  the west coast, on a path in Glencoe called Coire man Lochan and it's a killer on the legs.  It's a good walk but pretty steep and, while you do get used to it after a while (and I'll definitely have time for that), I definitely don't see myself being able to speed up that hill as I was able to do with others.  It's had work done to it before, but the sheer angle of the path means that it gets eroded and destroyed pretty quickly.

Before

After

Steps and revetment added.

Added anchor bar at top

The maintenance work that I carried out was mainly adding anchor bars and revetments to hold the surfacing in its sections, instead of it just shooting off down the path, and adding features which will make the route of the path much more obvious to those using it.  At the moment there are a few braids, but hopefully the work we're doing will allow the vegetation to grow back in those places.

The views from this path are absolutely amazing and makes the slog up and work so much easier.  There's nothing like sitting with a cup of tea on your break staring at that. And this'll be my view for a few months now. Lucky me.