Growing and Harvesting Produce in the Burren – Sea View House Doolin

GROWING & HARVESTING

An increasing number of travelers today are willing and eager to seek out food that they know to be incredibly fresh. They also appreciate ingredients that have traveled a short distance resulting in meals that have been prepared in a manner that is more environmentally responsible.

Here at Sea View House in Doolin we are very fortunate to be able to offer our guests home grown and locally sourced ingredients that we combine in the kitchen to produce dishes with as few as 10 food miles.  Food miles is the average distance all the ingredients in a dish have travelled from where they were produced.

Some of the ingredients that go into our breakfast. Everything is either home produced or sourced locally.

Located on the family farm we have a number of small gardens where we grow a diverse range of produce from apples to onions and rhubarb to potatoes.

Close to the kitchen our small herb garden  provides us with fresh herbs such as thyme, sage, rosemary, dill, parsley and chives, which we use every morning for breakfast. Guests are welcome to browse and sample if they wish.

In our poly tunnel we mostly grow tomatoes. We also grow courgettes, chillis, salad leaves, strawberries, grapes and melons. Seeds are planted in late January and grown indoors until the last of the frost in April. We water every other day with a diluted homemade feed of nettle, comfrey and tomatoes thinning and enjoy organic tomatoes from July right up to the end of October.

On the farm we have a large flock of mixed breed chickens and ducks that supply us with most of our eggs. The chickens are free to roam the farm in search or tasty morsels in true free ranging style.

Autumn brings wild blackberries. This year the hedgerows were bursting with these deep purple delights and when not served in a fruit salad they make a lovely jam that captures the taste of summer.