HONEYBUNS
Naish Farm, Stony Lane,
Holwell, Sherborne,
Dorset, DT9 5LJ
The bakery - 01963 23597;
Accounts number - 01963 23706;
Fax us on - 01963 23479; Email us on - thebee@honeybuns.co.uk
Bee Green
As a rural business, we feel it is important to contribute to the local community and look after our environment. A little bit of thought and not much expense can make a big difference.
Tasty cake made with locally sourced ingredients is only part of what we are trying to do at Honeybuns. There are so many other projects we can now tackle by investing some of Honeybuns' profits.
These projects include:
1. Our new nature reserve. Situated right at the
end of the yard, there is a fenced off parcel of rough ground which we are
going to plant with meadow flowers to encourage butterflies & bees. We're
also going to create a small wildlife pond for newts, frogs and other creatures.
There will also be room for some raised herb beds made from the farm's abundant
supply of old railway sleepers. We can then grow enough herbs for the Bee Shack
Cafe and also show visitors where their seasoning comes from!
Nick Vining (who used to farm here) and Charlotte, our uber-talented bakery
manager and wild-life enthusiast will start work on this in February 2007.
We've already cleared the area in readiness. We've picked up many tips from
visiting Pam Lewis's wonderful wildlife garden, Sticky Wicket. She is a particular
expert on creating wildflower meadows. Please see www.stickywicketgarden.co.uk for
inspiration.
2. Operation Goldfinch is our ongoing mission to encourage more of these beautiful little birds to feed and feel safe on another set aside strip which runs out to the back of the bakery. We do not formally count up numbers, but we've noticed a definite increase in sightings since we allowed the finches' favourite food, thistles, to spread. It might look a bit untidy to visitors, but once we've explained why we're allowing this patch to run wild, they agree that it's a wholly good thing. What's not to love about encouraging more birds to make their home at Naish Farm?
3. Tree planting. Matt very gamely replanted 200
metres of hedging which had been grubbed up several years ago. We chose a conservation
mix of quick thorn, black thorn, field maple and dog rose with the aim of creating
a wildlife corridor right up to the front door of Naish Farm! Matt was seen
carrying his digging implements and torch down the drive to finish his planting
after finishing a day's work in the office and he was often out there in the
grimmest of November's
wind and rain. Two years on and we've got what is beginning to resemble a proper
hedge and we're looking forward to eventually seeing nesting birds in there.
Nick is also in the midst of making some very sturdy fence protectors for some
young horse chestnut trees. They are being planted in the field behind the
Bee Shack as part of a longer term project to re instate a number of indigenous
hardwood trees to Naish Farm.
4. We are in the process of devising our "BeeGreen Plan" for 2007. We cannot deny that as a rurally situated business, we are inevitably generating a volume of traffic. As regular road runners (and Em a horse rider too), Matt and I are keen to respond positively to this issue. Having secured planning permission to convert some of of the redundant farm buildings to bakery use, we are planning to increase our dried goods and frozen storage space to enable us to significantly reduce the number of ingredients and packaging delivery vehicles that currently come to the farm. In a way, we think it helps that we live on site, as it is in our interests, as well as other Holwellians, that we aim to reduce traffic as much as possible. Work on the new buildings has begun already and we are far more in favour of converting the existing barns etc instead of building new ones. We were surprised to find that it is often more expensive to convert than to build from scratch but the carbon foot print is much less if we learn to adapt what already we have. Aesthetically, we are also keeping the farm looking like... an old farm, which we believe is a good thing. Other aspects of our BeeGreen Plan include a car share initiative for our team and running our Bee Shack Cafe entirely on sustainable energies (wind and solar).
We also use solar powered security lights, compost all composatable waste and harvest rainwater to water our beds of peppermint and other culinary herbs.
We are always looking at ways to recycle more of our waste.Currently,our cardboard is handled by Perry's recycling and we are delighted to be working closely with the Poole Adult Supported Employment team, they come and collect our foils and recycle them. They also collect our scrap paper which is shredded for animal bedding. This makes us all feel a bit less guilty about all of those typos/scrunched up bits that otherwise end up in the bin.
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