Ty Madoc Cider and Sustainability
Our priority on the Cider Farm is to develop our sustainable practices until we are carbon negative, contributing more to the environment than we take. We believe in taking nothing but photos and leaving nothing but footprints - and this is how we are achieving it!
01
The drinks
Each year we aim to make our cider and perry making process as sustainable as possible. All of our packaging materials are recyclable. The fruit is from our own orchards, harvested by hand. We use a quadbike to transport bags of apples from our orchards to their final squeezing place, but that's the limit to our heavy machinery.
The pressing process itself is as low impact as we can make it - our press is hydraulic, with energy coming from our photovoltaics. From there, the juice is stored over winter where it ferments at it's own speed. We do not heat our fermentation sheds, and (climate change willing!) the product rarely goes above 14 degrees celsius from the time the fruit is picked to the time it is bottled.
02
The Land
Ty Madoc Cider Farm currently acts as (roughly!) 1,300 trees worth of carbon sink. From these trees we are taking further grafts to continue to develop our own orchards and revitalise others in the local area. Orchards are vitally important to the UK's biodiversity - as they are essentially simple forests, they provide a safe haven for numerous kinds of wildlife. Unlike forests, our trees are more widely spaced and this enables more sunlight to reach the floor. Not only do orchards provide a home and a food source for wildlife, a study by Natural England in 2004 surveyed the wildlife of six English orchards, and found over 200-300 species of mosses, liverworts, lichens, fungi and invertebrates.
.jpg)
.jpg)
03
Bees
Our helpful little friends thrive in the orchards. Large commercial ciders only contain 35% juice with the rest being water. This means that the number of orchards around the UK is diminishing - which is bad news for our bees. We keep hives all over our property, with the bees making sure that our trees are pollinated early in the season. Our fuzzy friends are hard workers, so they also pollinate all of the local wild trees and flower which then support other insects, which then support birds, bats, mammals and everything up the food chain that needs food and shelter. We use honey from our hives in our farm produce, but only when the bees have plenty for themselves.
04
Plants with Purpose
Our aim is that you can walk around the farm and see something useful everywhere you look. We grow all of the botanicals that we include in our soaps, our oat bags and our food. All of our packaging has been carefully chosen and designed to be reusable or recycled. Our water is heated by solar, and our herbs are dried the same way. In the mountains of Mid-Wales, we have a front seat to the impact that climate change is having on our weather and landscape, and we are paying attention.
Our commitment to sustainability is progressive - we are constantly on the look out for ways to build on what we are doing. If you have any questions or would like to discuss this further with one of our team, please contact us.
