From chemical to carbon neutral farming in four years

Monday, 04 January 2010 12:57

by Paul Sousek

Property Type: Detached

Ownership Status: Freehold

What eco-improvements did you make to your property?
We are a Cornwall based family run small organic farm selling fresh meat boxes and other farm products. We pride ourselves on the very highest levels of customer service and care and will always do anything we can to help you. We bought Cottage Farm back in August 2005 - soon after I learned about Peak Oil. If you don't yet know about it - try www.TransitionNC.org. We have converted to organic status in the first three years, established a herd of local rare breed Red Ruby cattle and a herd of rare breed Wiltshire Horn sheep and now we supply our neighbours and others with fresh beef and lamb boxes. We also stopped cutting hedges to encourage trees to grow to supplement our little wood and replanted an old orchard with old Cornish varieties of apple, pear, cherry and plum, as well as establishing a soft fruit garden. And we grow own veg, as well as keeping chickens for eggs and geese for special occasions and we're starting to experiment with Permaculture.

At the same time we have almost completed conversion of our house and farm with insulation, draft proofing, light bulbs, appliances, wind up radio, etc, and switching to a wood burner for space heating and wood burning Rayburn for cooking (and heating). We also installed a heat store, which is powered by 40 solar tubes, a wood burner and an immersion heater to provide hot water and we can also use the existing central heating circuit to distribute the heat from the heat store around the house. The immersion heater and an electric storage heater will run off our 5kW wind turbine whenever it is producing more power than our house requires. The turbine will be grid connected, but we also have the battery bank/ controllers/ inverter necessary to switch over to off grid as and when major power cuts become commonplace.

I almost forgot our bore hole water, as well and planting 100+ trees annually to have something to burn in future years. And we produce our own 100% bio-diesel from waste vegetable oil, which we use to run our car, our Landrover and the farm tractor, and to deliver our meat boxes, which means that our deliveries and all our driving is almost completely CO2 free. To help spread the message, I am also a founding member of Transition Cornwall Network and Transition North Cornwall, for which I administer the website: www.TransitionNC.org, which is packed with well over a thousand items helpful in converting to a sustainable lifestyle and to maximising local resilience. Feel free to contribute to the website and ask any questions you may have.

What positive and negative experiences did you have?

We chose to go down this path back in 2005 and so far it is quite apparent that it is the correct way to go and we are very much enjoying our new lifestyle. We are particularly pleased with the success our fresh beef boxes have both nationally (sold via eBay or contact us on This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ) and locally, with free and carbon free deliveries.

That's not to say we did not have various setbacks. Initially I was badly advised and order three small 1kW wind turbines. Unfortunately, these operate on low voltage levels, which meant we would have had to spend a fortune on some seriously thick cables to bring the power 200m back to the house without losing most of it in resistance and heat.

Also, our heat store is a little too small for the dual purpose of both providing hot water for bathing and for centrally heating the house. Ideally, we would have gone for a 1000 litre heat store, but we could not house that type of weight and size in the cupboard upstairs. But all is not lost. At some point we shall simply get another heat store and work the two in tandem with the one we have.

What are the benefits to your home and lifestyle?

Financially we are much better off. We are saving quite a bit: £1,200 / year on water (cows drink an awful lot); £1,300 / year on oil for heating and hot water; £1,500 / year on electricity; £2,000 / year on diesel; £6,000 / year in total.

If you think, as we do, that energy in all its form will be much more expensive in the future, this type of investment is a must. Having also given up flying, we now live sustainable lifestyles and we feel we can look our children in the eye in the knowledge that we are not poisoning the planet for them and their children. Nice feeling that.

What advice would you give to others considering similar improvements?:
Over the next few years energy in general will cost much more. When calculating your 'pay-back' period, you need to double or triple your current energy expenditure. Draft excluders and insulation have the highest priority. A combination of heat store, solar tubes and wood burner works well and will give you almost unlimited volumes of hot water any time of year. Wind turbine and PV panels complement each other very well.