Hairy Footprint

Morning all,

Cooled off a bit this week, pretty grey and foggy here with the sun struggling to show its face. Even colder next week so bracing ourselves for that. Topped up the oil tanks this week, ready for heating the prop tunnel through the worst of the cold and the LED lights are adding a few hours to the day-length to keep the micro-prop stock growing away. It's not quite like spring in there but brighter and warmer than outside. Oil price was not too bad but we had a bit of a shock with the new electric contract signed up for this week, which starts in January. The cost for the year will nearly quadruple, although we should get a couple of thousand knocked off with the 21p energy cap in place for the first 3 months. It would be quite handy if they extended that but somehow I doubt that will happen. Sadly we did pick the cheapest option on offer, rather than the renewables option which was over £1,000 more. We decided we would be better off putting the £1,000+ saving towards installing some solar panels which we are hoping to do very soon. Another scary part of the bill was the daily standing charges which have risen from a few p to nearly £5 plus a new charge to us of a daily 'capacity charge'. That maybe the result of going to a Mickey Mouse operation for the cheapest deal (British Gas!). In the light of that increase, the smugness levels caused by having the turbines on site rose dramatically this week.

The little VW electric car we ordered in the summer of 2021 which has had its delivery delayed several times already, has just been moved again to late March 2023. We've nearly lost interest now, the excitement of  getting a new bit of kit has now worn pretty thin. Not even bothering to look forward to the delivery day any more, as it probably won't happen then either. Hey ho, worse things happen.

Made major progress this week on understanding and sensibly working out our complete Carbon Footprint, so we can map our path to Net Zero. I had a Zoom meeting with our advisors who are making major changes to their spreadsheet, so users can see exactly where all the carbon values have been put, among the huge number of categories where costs can be allocated. If anyone out there is doing this exercise I wish you luck, it's a major undertaking, but we have to start somewhere.

In the old days working out your carbon footprint revolved around your use of fuels, energy, water & waste (now called Scopes 1 and 2). You worked to reduce all these things, and pick more efficient or effective investments, and then hopefully your footprint reduced. Now we are all supposed to include Scope 3 which means putting a carbon value on all other purchases (materials, goods and services) to get a more complete picture. This is very much the right thing to look at, because for many businesses a very high proportion of their footprint will be created by their suppliers. However it is a nightmare to achieve a remotely accurate result, because so few people have a carbon value for their products or services so everything gets generalised and averaged out.

I haven't been sent the updated report yet as it is still going through the last stages of approval, but I know we have already reduced our footprint from the first report by 60 tonnes, simply by the assessors getting the maths right. On top of that there should be other major reductions with some reallocating of categories to get more realistic figures (our incoming young module plants went into 'agricultural produce' which turns out was very high carbon due to the element of farm animals in the calculation). I also have a carbon report on our own coir pot production and transport, which produced a net sequestration of carbon rather than net emissions, which should also produce a big swing in our favour. I am hoping it won't take too long to improve the accuracy of the sums and we could find ourselves with a very small carbon total to offset, then we just have to pick one or two projects to invest in to cover that offset. I'm almost excited, despite the still daunting spreadsheet and thought that this will need updating every year or so.

Wooden Box returns.

We have a barn full of dried, cleaned and stacked boxes which is very satisfying. If you have any more empties you would like us to pick up just drop us a line.

Availability list highlights

Winter and spring flowering Cyclamen coum are now available in small numbers with more coming on stream for later. Most are in bud with some colour showing.

We have a good range of Helleborus in stock, to stretch those Autumn sales.

The Christmas Rose Helleborus niger Advent Star have loads of flower and bud now. Not a lot of flower yet on the orientalis types but they are full of winter promise.

Best wishes  from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries