HELP & FAQs
We love to talk about what we are trying to achieve here at Bumblebee Cottage and we love to listen too. We have had hundreds of chats from locals who have given us the history of where we live and where we grow and who have inspired us to get to where we are today.
Our FAQs below will answer some of the burning questions (no pun intended) but feel free to drop us a line if you have a question, or product request or suggestion of your own (don't forget to follow us on social media too: Instagram, Facebook, Threads and Tik Tok).
Also, once a year, we intend having a fund-raising effort for a local charity here in Cornwall and so if you'd like to recommend a cause, especially a cause that ties in with what we are trying to achieve with the use of chemically free grown food, please send us your suggestion for consideration.
COTTAGE QUESTIONS
Yes and no. The cottage isn’t open for unannounced visits, as it’s also our home, but we are going to run a number of cookery and ‘grow your own’ courses for a short period each summer, as well as working party stay-overs in the orchard. Keep an eye on this website and our socials for further information.
We purchased the cottage itself in 2014 in a very dilapidated and overgrown state. We have spent since then restoring it back to it’s former glory by revealing hidden inglenooks, and replacing rotted oak timbers etc. We previously owned another cottage in the same lane prior to purchasing Bumblebee Cottage.
When we purchased the cottage we were keen to learn who’d lived there previously. We discovered that a popular gentleman by the name of ‘Ted’ had lived there decades earlier and had been a keen bee keeper. Whilst we acknowledge that Ted kept Honey bees, we felt ‘Bumblebee Cottage’ sounded better.
Yes we do! We currently have around 50,000 bees in a single hive in the orchard and we have created an ecosystem within the orchard for the bees to thrive, chemically free. We have planted over 100 lavender plants, several dozen fruit trees, plus ‘wild’ indigenous hedging flowering shrubs like wild rose.
If you’re a fan of Doc Martin or Poldark, both TV series were filmed around here in this, and neighbouring villages. The cottage is around a mile as the crow flies from the sea at Trebarwith Strand and is around 25 minutes from Bude, Bodmin and Padstow. Of course, the most well known local feature is the quarry, some 200 metres away!
SHOP QUESTIONS
Currently no, with the exception of our honey (but the bees take the credit for that!) Our sauces though are made from our own chillies which are hand picked from our polytunnel and then turned into professionally created sauces at a food factory near Truro. Other products which we use in our courses and videos (like our rubs) are pre-blended and supplied to us and we package into consumer sized units for sale.
No, unfortunately not. However, if you live locally in the village, or Port Isaac, Tintagel, Camelford or St Kew, we have a free delivery option to select on our website and we’ll drop your order at your front door!
At the moment, no. This is because of insurance issues and difficulty sending some items like the sauces, which are a liquid in glass bottles.
We can accept cash for local deliveries, credit and debit cards (we have a card reader and our website also accepts these, and bank transfer.
You certainly will be able to, yes! We intend attending a number of local markets and we’ll post these details on our social media in advance. Additionally, we also supply a number of local stockists which are listed on our stockists page!
GENERAL QUESTIONS
We’ve grown chillies for years and year, here in Cornwall, in the South East where we lived previously and also in Spain where we lived for a number of years. We use chillies and garlic in nearly every recipe we cook and we love the difference in heat and tastes between varieties.
That’s an interesting question, and it’s probably an answer we’ll keep changing. For ‘taste’ and indeed heat too, we love the Naga. It has a lovely natural rich smoky finish to it. But we also love the fun element of Padrons (where 1 in every 10 or so are hot etc but the rest are mild) and of course we love the fact we are successfully able to grow some of the World’s hottest, right here in Cornwall like the Carolina Reaper, 7-pot, Bhuts and Trinidad Scorpion!
We do! We sow our seeds under propagation lights on New Years Eve and plant out into the polytunnel in late Spring. We rarely have a frost here but chillies do like a nice rich soil and warmth and don’t really like prolonged periods under 10 degrees.
No! We have never used directly added any artificial chemicals or additives to our soil structure and we like to make or use our own chemical free ‘feeds’ like comfrey tea (comfrey is a plant that we grow, purely to steep in water and use as a liquid feed) as well as utilising local washed up seaweed.
This really depends on the spring or summer that we’ve had and also any pests that may be prevalent. But generally, we can start the harvesting from around August and right up until Christmas time if we don’t have any sudden cold snaps. All our chillies are hand picked by ourselves.