So for some bizarre reason our farm has become a bit Of an outlier, what happened is that our farm is no longer tied to the electric grid. The reason has little to do with the cost of energy electric in particular and everything to do with our slurry and waste treatment plant that has become a bio digester.
The new European rules on clean water are such that when we built our farm installing a bio digester was a very reasonable solution to a ongoing environmental problem It was not so much out of conviction that green energy was better, but we needed to transform the slurry into something that was useable and non-toxic, especially we need to make sure that the water was clean before it went back into the water system That is a big advantage of a Bio digester
The reality is that all our cattle produce enough waste at our farm, produce enough waste that it made sense for us to have some redundancy and two bio digesters with the waste gas we heat our high tunnels, the houses, and all the operations. In addition we generate electricity that provides energy to the farm.
our energy costs are higher than if we took power from the grid on the other side treating waste water from our cattle operation would force us to spend large amounts of money to clean the water. Hence the bio digesters, which do just that, energy is a byproduct of the process. It is not the end objective.
The reason we are no longer tied to the grid has everything to do with the size of our operations. They are too large for a private producer, and we are considered a commercial producer and being tied to the The grid will involve massive cost that I do not wish to incur
We are off grid by default rather than by intent. It’s a kind of a funny situation.
our farm is entirely ecological for one simple reason our clients demanded whether it’s our cheese or butter or our vegetables in all cases are high end clients demand that pesticide be limited that growth hormone are a non-starter and that even antibiotics be used sparingly they are yield consequence to doing this but we’re fine with that situation. We had planned for that situation and that was always our business model.
The truth is that we process manure and waste water from other farms because with two bio digesters, we don’t have enough feedstock. We need two bio digester because one is down about 20% of the time for maintenance and repair.
yet people believe that our first driver was clean energy as opposed to being farmers for a very specific segment of the consumer market, actually professional market. We sell our fruits and vegetables, meat dairy product at a substantial premium to what people pay in supermarkets because that’s the cost of getting high-quality high flavour , fruit and vegetables again we sell our tomatoes to restaurants for almost 4 times the price that you buy them in a supermarket our market is not the high Street. It’s the high-end restaurant and hotel business in the United Kingdom and in Europe.
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