Bees, bats and biodiversity - seems to be a good title for this month’s news as we have been busy on all these topics!
Suzy has completed a beekeeping course with a couple of friends from church (three church families are now keeping bees) and we started with one hive but have just set up a second (which came as a flatpack and took a while to construct). We all look forward to some honey later in the year.
We've taken part in the Devon Bat Project for the second year, by having the bat detector in our garden for three nights - we look forward to receiving the results - last year we recorded eleven different bat species. We’ve added flowers to encourage pollinating insects and the meadow field should also provide a good habitat for a wide range of creatures.
Many of you will know that we have been eco-champions for many years, encouraging everyone we meet to be more aware of the damage that humanity is doing to the environment - so we are delighted that this is now such a high priority subject. We are no longer referring to climate change but climate emergency. Even before we moved to Devon we had decided that all our projects and plans at Tinhay Retreats would take into account our environmental impact - we continue to keep this at the fore in our thinking.
On another of our fields, we are also planning to plant an orchard of apple, pear, plum and cherry trees - using locally sourced, traditional varieties. As David Attenborough has reminded us - we all have to take action now, so we encourage you to get planting trees, bushes, flowers wherever you can!