Monday 27 September 2010

We are in the headlines this week with lots of local press coverage of our successful wind turbine planning application. It started with a request for a montage turbine image and a few words for the head reporter which went fine. Then came the disappointment of the first spread in the Southampton Evening Echo on their eco pages, headlined with the caption ‘Green light for giant turbines at beauty spot’ with a picture of a dramatic Cornish multiple turbine scene, which was hardly the balanced view we were hoping for. Having sworn never to speak to another journalist ever again I was forced to rethink when The ‘Hampshire Chronicle’ came out on Thursday. Written by the same reporter, we were the lead on the front page with a more sensible ‘A wind of change on the horizon?’ followed by a longer article with a broadly positive report and including some of my input from the phone call. We were also the lead editorial comment, again sensible and positive, even congratulating us on leading the way. Can’t expect much more than that!

We had great two days sunny weather this week when we managed to re-sheet 5 tunnels. We have been waiting ages for just the right weather and Tuesday was perfect. We had our main heated prop tunnel to do which is a tricky one as it is clad with two sheets which inflate with a tiny fan to improve the heat retention. This one took all day and still needs a bit of finishing off. Wednesday was still sunny and started off still but got breezier as the day went on, this is the usual scenario when tunnel covering, everything is perfect until you unroll the sheets! Anyway, the windbreaks around the nursery did enough for us to get 4 covers on in a day which is a record for us and completed all the split tunnels on site, now we can relax.

We celebrated the end of summer with a trip to the local pub for lunch with everyone before some of our hardworking spring/summer crew finish for this year. Slightly tense incase we bumped into any hostile anti turbine locals but had a great meal with plenty of laughs.

Slowing brain function and over-excitement over a trip out, caused slight confusion yesterday. I am back into the weekly trip to the supermarket, but got slightly confused in the preamble when I met Caroline carrying the shopping boxes to the car after I had just loaded them myself. Turns out I had loaded the cat food! Did anyone see the BBC documentary/experiment on old folk a week or two ago (Young Ones)? it was fascinating. Anyone wanting to see how best to keep themselves or others from deteriorating with advancing years should see it. It’s still on the BBC iplayer and well worth a watch.

Eco news

Winter is coming, it’s getting a bit late but we are looking at major insulation installation in the house and where we can, on the nursery. From watching our daily electric consumption over the last 10 months it has become apparent that a vast amount of our use is related to heating. In the office, mess room and loos our total consumption falls by 80% when comparing winter with summer and when the oil consumption in the prop tunnels and house are added, in this accounts for over 70% of our direct carbon footprint. For too long now it has been too easy to avoid looking at these things but as environmental pressures and especially costs start to increase over the next few years it will become a focus point for everyone. Having spoken to a few people we are now recognising that we probably have many more options than we thought. The variety of insulation options have increased greatly in the past few years as have heating systems and fuel choices. We are looking at biomass boilers, probably wood pellets (now produced locally) which are carbon neutral and after the initial higher installation cost are much cheaper to run and a new hot-water heating system. The hot water is an interesting one, it uses a small air-source heat pump to take the heat directly from a warm room (eg the conservatory in summer) and use it to heat the hot water tank. This would be ideal for periods when the boiler is not on and reduces the boiler load when it is. Having now recognised the shockingly bad performance of our 1930’s house which looses heat from all over the place (suspended wooden floor complete with floorboards with wide gaps between them, un-insulated walls, lots of single glazed sash windows, holes in the wall for cat movement etc). At least the loft is not bad, although I have got to give it a good raking! (some of the insulation up there is recycled paper/card stuff that apparently settles over time and needs re-fluffing every now and then).

Have a good week from all at Kirton Farm

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