A sustainable environment
Green Awards
Depden Care Farm is delighted that our commitment to the environment was celebrated at Suffolk County Council’s Creating The Greenest County 2023 Awards. The Care Farm won the Green Small Business Award and was also Highly Commended in the Green Secondary School category.
Governance
We have enshrined our environmental ambition in our Governance policies to ensure that environmental concerns and impacts are considered in all our decision making and activities at Depden Care Farm and within the Trust that governs it.
Environment Champion
We have appointed an Environment Champion on the staff team to support the promotion of environmental awareness among staff, volunteers, farmhelpers and visitors and encourage them to work in an environmentally positive manner. Charlie is great at holding us to account.
Sustainable Home Grown Produce
- We run the farm along organic lines, although cost prevents us from being registered organic. We do not use pesticides.
- Our small groups of pigs and sheep produce seasonal, slow-grown meat. Produced using low-intensity methods, we don’t use herbicides or artificial nitrogen on our fields and paddocks and our animal feeds are sourced from Suffolk farms where available
- Many of the vegetables we grow are old or rare varieties not usually available in the shops helping to preserve the gene pool and give people a chance to try veg varieties they may remember from the childhood. Connecting people more closely to the food they eat.
- Our orchard contains 67 different varieties of apples, pears, plums, gages, damsons, quinces, medlars, apricots, cherries and peaches – many of them are local and heritage trees sourced from the East of England Apples and Orchards project.
- All our produce is sold to local people in our Veg Shed stall helping to reduce air miles and reduce our community’s carbon footprint. Last year that jamjar collected over £6,000 for our fruit, vegetables, meat, birdboxes, birdtables, chutneys and jams. All grown or made by us on site.
Recycling and Re-use
- We all strive to minimise waste through re-use and recycling where possible. Last summer (2022) we installed new recycling bins and ran a campaign targeted at waste in our pack lunches. Together with our healthy eating programme that has helped reduce the waste our lunches produce from 2 or 3 bags of recycling a day to less than 1.
- We reuse plastic plant pots and seed labels until they are too brittle to use. Many are donated from our local community, which would otherwise go to landfill straightaway.
- We reuse timber for fencing, farm repairs and our environmental projects wherever we can.
- Last summer we engaged Biffa to provide our recycling service. Our recycling bin is emptied just twice a month.
Waste Reduction
- We create our own compost for use on the market garden.
- We have installed a massive 2500 litre tank which collects rainwater from our HQ building as well as numerous water butts collecting water off sheds and outhouses. Water is used for irrigating the market garden in summer and for cleaning tools and equipment.
- We seek to reduce energy consumption wherever possible. Our HQ building was upgraded last year with additional insulation and new LED lighting.
- Our sheds and animal houses that need lighting all use LED lamps.
- Our new small-animal house has been insulated throughout.
- Timer switches, thermostats and movement sensitive switches are used wherever possible.
Environmental Learning Programmes
Enabling our service users to become more environmentally aware, giving them the knowledge to make environmentally friendly choices and the tools to make a real difference to their lives is an important strand of how Depden Care Farm is run.
- A popular activity is working on our wildlife walk. We create bug hotels, hedgehog houses and different wildlife habitats to attract a variety of creatures onto the farm. Encouragingly, many people have reported that they now love doing this at home too.
- We have construction of a splendid wildlife pond complete with wheelchair accessible pond dipping platform. It’s deep in the middle to enable newts to do their mating dances, has shallow sides for native bog plants and a beach area to allow safe access and egress for animals and birds.
- Our service users regularly construct bird boxes, bird feeders and bird tables for sale in our roadside stall. Many have been erected around the farm.
- Every year we work with local community volunteers to tidy our local churchyard to maintain it and its wildlife habitats.
