Craft vacation in France

Planet

Our guest house is fully sustainable and works closely with nature to ensure all species needs are met, and that new species are encouraged and supported to thrive. Our land is fully organic, and has been for 30 years, our streams are maintained and supported and our aim is to become self-sufficient in vegetables and most fresh produce in the next few years. We have introduced hedgehog houses, bird nesting boxes, insect houses, bee friendly plants and flowers plus insect houses. We have a webcam camera on favourite animal paths through the property and so far have captured video of deer, badgers, foxes, red squirrels, hares and wild boar. Our home is heated mostly by wood, with fallen trees collected, sawn and split, and we plan to make outdoor seating from some of the fallen oak trees on the property. We also have substantial rain butts to capture water, used to water the garden in the hotter summer months, and have established a bore hole/well to support our swimming pool.

People

We do all we can to support the local community surrounding our property by buying and sourcing as much produce as possible locally. This enables us to spread the tourist income to those most in need. For example we rear our own free-range chicken, we buy our beef from our neighbours local Parthenay cattle and we support local co-ops and individuals who grow vegetables on our behalf as we are busy establishing our own market garden. We employ local staff and recycle everything we can - whether that's food waste (which we keep to a minimum) or garden waste. Our recycling options are our family dogs, our chicken and as a last resort, our compost heap! Wherever possible we support local animal charities. We are busy establishing our own shop where we will showcase local crafts made in the community and sell them to our guests.