Sustainability at Pitt Farm

We are lucky to live and work in an unspoilt location and we do our best to ensure we make a minimal impact on the environment. To us, sustainability is more than just ensuring that we recycle our rubbish (although we make sure all of our guests have clear instructions to ensure that we can be as effective at that as possible!).

Sustainable Buildings

The use of redundant farm buildings as a holiday cottage complex is the ultimate in recycling and reusing. As we continue to improve and update our cottages, we ensure that where we can we use local tradespeople with sustainable materials with energy efficiency at their core.

In our cottages we use low energy lighting and when we replace appliances we make sure they have a high energy efficiency rating.

Wherever possible we use cleaning materials that have no adverse environmental impact.

Sustainable Energy

Heating and hot water in the cottages is provided by a central biomass boiler with two large, super-insulated thermal stores. The wood used by our system is supplied locally from a government approved sustainable source and generates at least 60% less greenhouse emissions than an oil or gas system.

We also make use of solar energy with a small array on the south-west facing roof of Mullen Cottage.

We have our own licensed private wastewater treatment plant which minimises the transportation of waste water (as we do not have a mains drainage connection). Once treated much of our waste water is returned to the water courses.

We recycle rainwater for our animals and to keep our gardens looking fabulous.

Sustainable Grounds

We manage our small woodland carefully to maintain healthy indigenous trees which contributes to a reduction in CO2 but also creates an ideal environment for wildlife.

We try where possible to reuse and/or repurpose redundant materials and wood from the site.

We are gradually replacing a small number of overgrown non-native conifer trees / hedges with indigenous species.

Sustainable Tourism

It’s easy to get an online shop from a national supermarket but there are lots of small businesses that will supply local food to your cottage from vegetable boxes to BBQ packs. Before ordering your online shop, please do think about using one of these businesses. We provide details of these in our pre-arrival email and are happy to make further suggestions and recommendations to our guests.

We love using diverse local businesses and would love you to support them too. We have listed a few of them on our “eating local” page. We use a local catering business to supply items for our welcome pack.

The eggs, ice cream and some other items in our small honesty shop are made locally (the eggs courtesy of our very local free range hens).

Our hand-soaps are in refillable containers to reduce plastic waste.