Drover's Cottage Blog
Scramble!
Scramble!
Quite a few years ago, a lady knocked on our door and told us that when she was a child she was evacuated from Leith to live in the farm house during the Second World War. One day, there was much excitement when a German fighter aircraft was shot down and crashed in the moors behind the house. What was left of the plane was removed to the barn beside the house and put under armed guard.
The German pilots who, had sadly, not survived the crash, were taken to Kirknewton Cemetery and buried there.
Fast forward 70 years and a different type of propeller now whirls above our self- catering country cottage. With three 5m blades slicing through the air, our 20kw wind turbine is the latest addition to our plans to create a sustainable self-sufficient holiday cottage. We started with insulation, draft proofing and a wood burning stove. Two years ago we installed a ground source heat pump with-in our own home. This year we commissioned our wind turbine. Next year we plan to convert our oil fired Aga to electricity and perhaps fit some solar thermal panels for our hot water.
The turbine is galvanised metal and looks very bright against the backdrop of the heather and Pentland Hills. It was a planning stipulation as well, that we needed to paint the turbine a more sympathetic colour.
Like any business, the motivation to go green does not exclusively emanate from the moral high ground. At our holiday cottage, we are trying to embraced the triple bottom line of People, Planet and Profit. At home and with our self catering cottage, it feels good to be doing our bit for the environment and I feel we should all be doing more to reduce individual carbon footprints to help combat the consequence of climate change.
We are proud that we are now a net contributor to the grid and once our Aga is electrified, we will be fossil fuel free. It will not be long, perhaps a single generation, before our entire economy will be electrified, generated by a blend of nuclear and renewables.
Each generation has its crisis; for the old lady it was a world war. Our crisis is climate change. I thought it fitting that our wind turbine, a symbol of our climate change crisis if you like, should be a metaphor for a crisis seventy years ago. And you'll see from the photos that we had a lot of fun in the process!
The turbine had already been lowered for us, so it was up to us to managed to get all the painting done within the small window of dry weather.
Poor Harvey was at home for the weekend...so was drafted in to do the art work of the Spitfire insignia!
It was a hard job, fitting all the painting into the dry weather that was available. But, we are very proud of the wee art installation we have created and also quite proud of the bit of history which comes with our house and the holiday cottage.
