The Green Stuff- Our Philosophy

We live here in a beautiful place in the Peak District National Park, an area recognised by the nation as an exceptionally valuable landscape. We have the opportunity to try and live in this beautiful place in a way that improves our environment, uses our resources efficiently and creates as little waste as possible. We are certainly not perfect but are on a journey towards improving what we do and how we do it.

By farming organically we want to work in sympathy with nature- we don't want to fight or try and bend nature to our needs. Nature provides everything we humans need. 

• We are trying to operate without oil and have consequently reduced our carbon footprint from 41 to 14.4 tons- yeah!!
• We have a new wood boiler providing heating and hot water to all our accommodation and barn.  We are only using oil in our Rayburn now and that has a new burner that uses 30% less oil.
• We have two 4 kw solar Photovoltaic arrays on a cowshed roof providing about half of our electricity.
• Our plans include a unique small biodigester, fed by cow manure to replace the last of the oil- watch this space!

Food Purchasing

• 1st Seasonal Local organic
• 2nd Local
• 3rd UK organic
• 4th UK
• 5th Fair trade
   

• We compost all uncooked food waste in our vegetable garden
•  Cooked food is collected and recycled

Recycling

We have somewhere for you to recycle

• Glass
• Cans
• Paper
• Cooked food waste
• Cardboard
• Food packaging
• *Tetra packs
• Batteries
• Light bulbs

• All the above
• All the farm plastic (including the polythene that wraps the clean laundry deliveries)
• Printer cartridges (the ones we don't re-fill)
• Towels, when your lovely white towels get a bit worn and and marked, we dye them and use them for our family
• All our big stuff when we refurbish, we hand useful things on to others at Freecycle, sofas, bed linen, chairs, kitchen equipment etc

• We purchase local food
• We use local suppliers and contractors
• Our employees are from our community
• We use eco-friendly cleaning products, dishwasher powder and washing powder
• We use new eco product 'fill and shake' cleaner (Against Shipping Water campaign)
• We use rain water for some toilet flushing
• We have dual flushes on some WCs 
• We use wood for heating, we replaced 6 immersion heaters and 2 old oil boilers.
• We have optimum insulation - some of it local sheep wool
• We buy in bulk
• We only use recycled paper
• We can arrange to pick you up from Ashbourne bus station
• We take card payments and pay bills by bacs, lessening trips to the bank
• We communicate by email thus reducing paper

• Local foods and local ready-meals from local environmentally friendly farming- you can walk across the fields - then eat the food produced there!
• Breakfast on big platters so you can take as much or as little as you want, reducing wastage
• Our own homemade jam  
• Cloth napkins to reduce paper waste 
• Our own organic fresh milk (no plastic milk pots here!)
• Long life beautiful orchids or local or garden flowers
• (Lovely) refillable, environmental toiletries
• Recycled kitchen rolls and toilet roll
• *Table mats made from recycled Tetra packs!
• Heating and hot water from efficient new wood boiler and mini district main
• Double glazed windows and insulating window shutters or heavy lined curtains where possible
• All low energy light bulbs
• Wind up torches
• Where possible, we have used low rated appliances to reduce energy consumption
• Energy monitors in the cottages, so you can see how much you use
• Eco friendly washing powder, cleaning products and washing up liquid
• Electric Bicycles, so you can whiz about the lanes and byways without getting too puffed
• Safe storage for your bikes
• A Beechenhill Bag for your lovely local shopping
• Lots of information about local walks, public transport and where to buy local products
• A farm trail so you can get as passionate about our place as we are!

We Support

• Our local community in lots of different ways: We have created www.ilam.org.uk a community website for our village and its businesses- please visit and see if you can use any of the services offered
• Wetton and Alstonefield First Responders, local people trained by the ambulance service to respond immediately in emergencies.  We collect funds to help them buy essential equipment
• Practical Action - technology challenging poverty- a charity finding practical solutions for ordinary people living in difficult conditions
• Friends of the Peak District - an independent charity whose vision is of a living, working Peak District that changes with the time but remains beautiful forever.

• Appreciate our environment
• Book our Elemental Experience in the hot tub, enjoy the natural environment outside at night too!
• Be careful with our resources- eg: don't leave the lights on if you go out
• Enjoy the Peak District by walking, cycling and riding
• Obey the 'Country Code'
• Reduce, Reuse, Recycle!
• Be careful with our septic tank- please don't use chemicals that may kill our friendly bacteria
• Buy local products
• Reuse bags and please don't leave us with tons of rubbish!
• Lobby Government to make sustainable decisions
• Support a charity that is trying to make the world better!

• We are proud to have achieved The Peak District Environmental Quality Mark, they monitor our progress every year
• We are delighted to have achieved a Gold Award for the Green Tourism Business Scheme, they monitor our progress every two years.  We try to improve our practises to improve our awards
• We are very excited to have been highly commended in the Virgin Holidays Responsible Travel Awards- an international award.  There were 2000 global nominations!