Monday 10 January 2011

What a stunning sunny morning it is, a great day for getting out there and communing with nature in whatever way takes your fancy. Hopefully everyone else will think the same, take a peak in the garden, get down to their hairy pot plant supplier and voluntarily empty their wallets. We are seeing a bit of tentative activity on the nursery with a few sales, decisions being made on price points and reports of trays available for return. This does give us a growing sense of urgency and excitement as the new season approaches, which is a great way to get the juices running again after the Christmas break.

We have several expert label printers beavering away churning out lots of wooden labels in anticipation of the sales to come and I’m thankful that last year we splashed out on a second printer for the task as it does give us a bit more flexibility on this big job. With each label going through several stages, cleaning, printing on two sides (one label at a time), bundling and treating, it’s quite a performance compared to buying off the shelf plastic alternatives, but the results achieved are worth it.

The rest of us are busy repairing broken wooden trays, cutting back plants and finishing upgrading the polytunnels to operate with trolley paths rather than gantries. We still have loads of other winter jobs to complete, like installing the new irrigation pumps, pipe-work and control system, rearranging despatch to improve efficiency, upgrading nursery drainage and tunnel access and getting started on the turbine installation work. Even in the office we have been getting ready by updating the software systems to cope with the new VAT rates, and revamping the stationary designs to reflect the focus the business now has on the hairier side of things. With such a huge change in the business over the last 4 years it is great to see the whole thing coming together in such a coordinated way. We are by no means perfect and we still have lots of ideas about how to do things better, but it does make going into a new season, in difficult times, a very positive and exciting time for everyone.

Eco news

This week I was able to update our ‘PLATO Sustain’ spreadsheet for the final month in 2010. This logs our basic sustainable stuff, waste levels, energy and water use, transport, recycling levels etc and it makes very encouraging reading. Although some of the calculations are not fool proof (the carbon footprint is a lot more complicated than many might hope) it does give a good indication of progress and provide a platform for further improvements.
Carbon footprint down by 14% in 2 years at the same time as turnover has increased by 31%.
Waste levels over the same time have dropped 23% (in volume) and we recycle 86% of that waste.
Water consumption down 14%.
As rising prices of energy, waste and water make a bigger impact on overall costs to everyone, we are hoping that being on top of our game early will benefit us hugely in the long-term and make us feel good about it too!

Where do we go from here? Wind turbines could potentially halve our total carbon footprint, updating irrigation will save more water, harvesting water would reduce carbon hungry mains use, update lighting and heating systems to carbon neutral fuels, more insulation. It’s one step at a time, we can’t get it all sorted straight away, but we all need to start somewhere.

Have a good week from all at Kirton Farm.

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