Sustainability Pledge

As part of our commitment to sustainability, we look to protect and improve the environment as much as we can in the way we run our holiday farm, after all, it’s our home too. 

Below we discuss how we go about achieving this, and our plans for the future.

Waste & Recycling:

  • We have a very clear to follow recycling system for our guests to follow.  We fully explain in our guest welcome information folder how and where to separate different types of waste. 
  • Our waste is collected from by a licensed waste trade carrier and recycled responsibly. 

Heating and Lighting:

  • 3 of our holiday properties are headed by a ground source heat pump with solar panels producing electricity. 
  • We use low energy LED light bulbs and encourage guests to turn of lights when they are not needed. 
  • We set the thermostats in each property to 20c, typical room temperature. 
  • During periods of un-occupancy, we turn off the heating to save energy. 
  • Hot tubs are also turned off during periods of un-occupancy. 

Water:

  • We collect rain water from our outbuildings and use this to water our plants in the summer and provide drinking water for our animals. 
  • We have water pump which pumps water from one of our fishing lakes to use to water our kitchen garden and greenhouse. 

Home Produce:

  • We home grow as much fruit and vegetables in our orchards and gardens as we can, we use this in our cafe and it’s also available for our guests to buy when we have a glut of produce. 
  • When we have excess fruit and vegetables we use it as food for our pigs, chickens and goats. 
  • We don’t use any pesticides on our edible crops. 

Grounds & Garden Maintenance:

  • We compost all garden waste and once well decomposed, we spread the compost back onto the garden. 
  • When we prune branches from trees we chip the wood to create bark, we then use the bark to spread on the garden to naturally suppress weeds. 
  • We are in the process of upgrading all of our petrol fuelled garden machinery to battery operated equipment. 

Property Maintenance:

  • We use reclaimed building materials wherever we can. 
  • We try to repair equipment as much as possible rather than buying new.
  • We  up-cycle furniture to use in our holiday properties and The Apple Tree Kitchen – our Farm Cafe. 

Office:

  • We keep printing/using paper to a minimum and email where ever possible. 
  • We use re-fillable ink bottles in our printer instead of single use ink cartridges. 
  • Waste paper from the office is shredded and used as bedding in our chickens nest boxes.

Local Suppliers:

  • We support local where ever we can, particularly with our suppliers of  The Apple Tree Kitchen. We use our local milk lady  who delivers our milk, a local bakery and a local butcher. 
  •  We promote other local businesses to our guests to help support the local economy. Our guest information welcome folders give a comprehensive list of local places to eat and places of interest to visit. 

Biodiversity:

  •  As well as routinely planting ornamental trees and shrubs in our gardens which support wildlife and provides nesting sites for birds, in January 202o we planted around 1,500 trees to create 4 acres of native woodland.  These trees are now beginning to mature, they will help off-set our carbon footprint and increase our bio-diversity on the Farm.  
  • When managing our orchards, we create log piles from branches and  fallen trees which are natural habitats for insects to live and feed from. 
  • We have an orchard regeneration programme where we annually access where we need to replant fruit trees. The benefits are 2 fold in that young healthy trees will produce more fruit to use, and fruit trees are ‘super hosts’ for wildlife. 
  • We mange all our grounds, gardens, woodland and orchards using minimal herbicides. We just spot spray weeds growing on our paths to keep them accessible for everyone. 
  • We feed the wild birds on a large scale; Woodpeckers, Gold-Crests, Jays, Buzzards, Kingfishers, Herons, Blue Tits, Great Tits, Robins and the occasional Red Kite have all be spotted in recent times. 

Future Plans:

  • We plan to install solar panels on the roof of a farm building, the electricity provided will be used to power 2 properties, our holiday office and a storage room used to  run freezers for our Cafe. 
  • A electrical vehicle charging point for the use of holiday guests will be will installed to run off the solar panels. 
  • We plan to start recording the bio-diversity we have on the farm to identify the range of species we have, see if changes occur and whether our bio-diversity levels increase. In particular we plan to record sitings of wild birds.