Category Archives: Education

It all ended well

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Another Monday, and just when you think you are immune to surprises we walked into several.

Number One, a note asking me to clean up the desk and trays.

After biting back several terse and witty retorts I have cleared the desk and trays by putting every bit of paperwork that isn’t mine and filing it in a bin bag.  It’s a lot tidier now, I’ve done as I have been asked, and I’ve now made it someone else’s problem.

Number Two, a continuation of the tidying theme. I walked into the kitchen and found all my ingredients had been tidied away. Again, I thought we’d moved beyond this obsessive tidying behaviour. It isn’t cleaning, it’s just a compulsion to move things. So, as I got ready for the visitors I had to re-stack the shelves so that my ingredients were all to hand, just as they had been on Saturday night.

And finally, Three. Vicki was walking past the chicken coop in the barn (the one where we’d previously found the keets) when she heard cheeping. This time it seems to seven chicks. Seems like someone else decided to lay eggs on the top again. During the rescue mission two of the chicks fell to the floor and were promptly set upon by the chickens who live there. Fortunately they weren’t injured and all seven are now under a heat lamp.

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Yes, it’s been a day of unexpected happenings…

After all that the visit from the Guides, the pizza, the Butterfly Count and the climate measuring all proceeded according to plan.

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The Incubator Diaries (Part 1)

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I’ve been fighting off involvement with the livestock since we arrived on the farm. After years of working weekends and bank holidays, and being called out on emergencies I left farming about 20 years ago and didn’t want to be dragged back in.

However, I’m doing a bit more as time goes on, and recently bought an incubator (as I may have mentioned last week).  The idea is that we will be able to do more with visiting kids if we have young chicks and a bit of science to offer. At the moment I’m a little lost. Compared to the industrial machines I used to work with a plastic box holding 20 eggs doesn’t seem much of a challenge. For one thing, I keep wondering where all the other eggs are and for another I’m apprehensive about what happens if the attempt is a disaster.

All I have going round in my head is a list of things that can go wrong (dirty eggs, infertile eggs, poor egg storage, too much humidity, too little humidity at the end, dead in shell, mushy chicks, unabsorbed yolk sacs…). How will I ever hold my head up again if I make a mess of it.

Yesterday I noticed that the humidity had been falling since I switched on – stabilising at 36% when it was set at 40%. Of course, when I went through everything I found I’d pressed the wrong button and set the humidity level at 20%. I set it at 45% and the pump immediately started working, with humidity shooting up to 56%. It’s stabilised at 45% overnight so all is good for now.

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This is our new machine. It has automatic turning and humidifying as there are times we will be away for days at a time and automation is more reliable than the farm staff.

It currently has eggs from the Polish Bantams and the ones that lay the blue/green eggs. I’m not even sure which they are, we just kept the coloured eggs and are hoping for the best. They must have some Araucana blood in them but the previous poultry keeper was a bit of cross-breeding freak. Well, he was when it came to poultry; I can’t really comment on his personal life.

Watch this space, as they say.

Doing what we’re meant to do

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We had a school from the inner city today. Despite being only 15 miles from Nottingham we hardly ever get a visit from one. We did get a few in the first year or two but they seemed to drop out and only the rural schools came. We’re not sure whether it’s the cost of transport or a lack of interest.

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Parents at rural schools are often associated with agriculture so we aren’t really carrying out our mission of educating people about farming. It’s a self-imposed mission so nobody is on our back about it, but you do sometimes wonder what you’re doing.

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So there I was, standing in front of a class, feeling pleased with myself that we were actually spreading the message to people who needed to hear it, when one of the kids threw up.

Julia’s idea of running them round to get rid of surplus energy before passing them on to me might need rethinking.

 

 

 

The Fifth Day

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It’s Friday so it must be…

…another school.

Fortunately it was just a class of 12, which made things easier. The keets behaved impeccably and the dough was the best I’ve ever seen a group make. That was surprising as many of them were quite small and small people often have trouble putting enough energy into the job. It’s even harder when you have difficulty reaching the table.

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The hardest bit of the week is turning out to be finding new things to say each time, though the endless cleaning is, I admit, making me lose the will to live.

😉

 

Bread, butter and Brownies – Part 2

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Well, I’ve updated the gallery page with a slideshow, if you’re interested, and I’ve re-read Part 1 and realised that I may have been slightly less than accurate in my comments on butter making. It’s easy, as I said. However, twice it has proved to be impossible. I did it as a unit of a PTLLS course I took some years ago – the cream was hot from being in the back of the car and the evening was humid and the classroom unventilated. After half an hour of shaking, as I showed signs of passing out, they decided to let me off that bit. It still took me an hour after that to stop shaking. The other time was similar, hot and humid day, trying to make butter at a care home. Fortunately, with a clientèle that were all around 90 we were able to nip to the kitchen and substitute butter from the fridge without anyone spotting it.

So, butter making is generally easy. Apart from when it isn’t.

I’ve just been run into the ground by 23 Brownies. I don’t think I could cope with being a Brownie leader – the enthusiasm is great, but I don’t have the energy to keep up!

It’s also trickier doing the visit on your own, but as Julia was working at her “proper” job tonight we didn’t have much choice. What is a seamless performance with the two of us working like a well-oiled machine (I may be exaggerating a bit here), becomes a touch fraught as you have to prepare everything in advance and go from one to the other hoping that it all fits together. It just about did. I forgot the picking of herbs and chillies for the soup until I had them all washing their hands in the outside sink so I had to alter my choice of herbs to sage and golden marjoram – those being the ones they could see from the sink.

There was also a bit of  a gap where I needed to serve up the soup, but the leaders covered that for me with a song about gorilla snot. Yes, it was a surprise to me too.

😉

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In the end it all went reasonably well, kids and leaders seemed happy, we had no accidents, the animals behaved (OK, apart from the goats) and I’m left with a feeling of well-being as we head into tomorrow and the fifth day. I’ve a few points to improve on but nothing too bad.

List for tomorrow – cream crackers, fly spray (it’s not good weather for those of us with waterless toilets), air freshener (ditto), long bamboo skewers (for our November Project), and bread for lunch.

I think that’s it…

 

 

Bread, butter and Brownies – Part 1

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Sounds like  a day of unrelieved eating, but the Brownies in question are of the Girl Scout variety rather than the chocolatey sort.

Part 1

It’s getting towards the end of day four now, despite just posting about Day 3. It was ciabatta this morning, and as it takes some time to rise I demonstrated butter-making. It’s not hard. Put cream in screw-topped beaker. Shake. Shake some more, and then same again. First of all it goes quiet as you make whipped cream then there’s a “Clunk!” and you end up with a ball of butter rolling in butter milk. Rinse and press to remove more buttermilk (which will turn butter rancid) and there you have it – butter.

Ciabatta looked good, though there’s a lot of oozing dough involved. That’s all there is to say about part one of the day. I’m now preparing for part 2.

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On the second day

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On the second day God created the sky: on my second day I supervised the making of 31 pizzas.

It’s quite clear from this that I’m slacking. On the other hand I do have arthritis, varicose veins and a tendency to need the toilet more than average, even for a man of my age. I’m well past my peak, and on a rapidly increasing downward slope which, like Gray’s paths of glory, lead but to the grave. Fortunately this middle-aged man bladder problem is cancelled out by standing with my back two feet away from four fan ovens blasting out air at 200 degrees C. It’s difficult to find any spare moisture when you are being desiccated.

But manage, I did, and the evidence was clear to see as splashes of sweat spotted the floor. I paint such a lovely picture of kitchen life don’t I?

By the end of the day I was reduced to opening the fridge door and standing next to it.

Here are some pictures, which are probably cute enough to drive my word picture from your mind. It was a great day with lots of sun and happy kids, and a great contrast to the pouring rain yesterday.

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The dark stuff in the plastic tub is a sourdough starter – we looked at dried yeast, live yeast and sourdough starter (it was having a mild day, just a trifle vinegary, quite unlike some of the acetone/vinegar blasts you sometimes get). There were a few expressions of distaste, but nobody fainted. The yellow stuff in the other pot is home made butter.

Note the Florentine-type pizzas with nettles in place of spinach. I’m finally getting back to wild food.

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It’s the first day of our marathon session – six days and six visits.

I did the shopping yesterday – enough for 100 pizzas plus various other bits. I then spent a couple of hours on the farm cutting veg for pizza toppings and set things out for two classes of 22.

It was a good thing I got a good start as we (a) got stuck in traffic for half an hour and (b) had to clean the corn mill, which had been brought back from the barn in a dreadful state.

By the time I had finished cleaning, the school arrived.

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It all went well, apart from the second session, where I forgot to write the names on the baking parchment. Despite this,the kids managed to identify their pizzas and everyone went away happy. I could have shown you a picture of this, if only Julia hadn’t borrowed my camera and disappeared with it.

The pictures I’ve used show kids handling the keets, making butter and standing outside the shed. The featured image is kids looking at cabbages. On a rainy Monday it was the best we had.

The session wasn’t brilliant, and there was a definite lack of education, because 22 six-year-olds can be a bit to excitable for that sort of thing. I’m unhappy that it was a lightweight session, but I’m happy that everyone seemed to have fun and the teachers were positive about the day. After examining the factors that lead to complaints being made against me, I’m taking a new attitude and just letting things drift along. If they don’t want to listen, what does it matter? I’m getting paid anyway, unlike the days when they cancel at short notice and I don’t get paid.

So – pluses from today – good advance planning, a cheerful demeanour and cash in my pocket. We persuaded seven kids to have egg on their pizzas, everyone identified their pizzas and we now have seven Polish eggs for hatching. Alasdair , Vicki and Kirsty all provided valuable support (they were the only 3 here to today) and I was able to work nettles into the conversation.  I’m also working on a unit on the Columbian exchange as the theme on Friday is “Explorers”.

Negatives – the thought that I might have sold out, the lack of photos and the weather.

So all in all it’s been a good day.

It’s the same school visiting again tomorrow, but with only 30 children, then a group with learning difficulties, then a Brownie group for Thursday night, a school on Friday and a Guide Group on Saturday. I’m allowed a day off on Sunday.

I’m already seeing pizza every time I blink, so I don’t know what it will be like by Sunday!

Open Farm Sunday (1)

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Well, it’s done for another year, and although I enjoyed it I can’t say I’m sorry it’s over.

It looks like final numbers will be well up on last year, with numbers about the 1,400 mark, which is four hundred up on last year. The cafe numbers are up too, and we sold all the extra ice cream we laid in.

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Without being smug, I thinks it’s true to say that we have improved steadily year on year and we delivered a good day. Most of the feedback forms were positive, and I’m going to compost the ones that weren’t.

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Not much time for writing just now, as there’s tidying to be done and I’ve been tasked with eating the last of the strawberry and marshmallow skewers before they start to wilt in the warmth. I would show you a picture but I managed to eat it one-handed whilst typing with one finger of the other hand.

I am a man of many skills…

 

A day to remember

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Subtitle: In which I meet an award-winning journalist and set fire to my own hair

 

I’m moving in rarefied circles these days. I’ve also learnt how to spell rarefied, I think. If you search for rarified it also seems to exist. Does anyone know which is right? If I’m moving in those circles I should at least be able to spell them.

Yes, award-winning journalist Andrew Cowper has been down to the farm to film an item on healthy eating. It seems that kids in Nottinghamshire are 38% heavier than kids in the rest of the East Midlands. Clearly, as obesity is thought to be a Bad Thing, I wasn’t going to feature heavily in the filming. I left that to Julia and Gail the Bread Lady.

I was allowed to construct the figures “38%” in salt dough and to load up the pizza oven. That was a drama in its own right. First of all it burned too well (which is unusual) and second, it set fire to the oven door. When I came to rake the embers to one side there were too many of them so I had to push them all round the perimeter, which prevents convection currents moving round the top of the oven chamber.

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This led to burnt pizza, pizza with ash on it (though that was my fault due to inept handling of the peel) and pizza that wasn’t cooked in the middle.  It also led to pizza that was all three. As events have shown over the years, there are few faults that I cannot produce when left alone with a pizza oven and a load of dough.

Despite this, everyone ate their pizza and said they loved the outdoor pizza experience. In the interests of accuracy I have to report that the ones who had theirs done in the electric oven seemed pretty happy too, and didn’t have to spit as many bits of ash out.

It wasn’t all drama, of course, there was comedy too. I have no hair on my arms now (a sign that the oven has reached 600 degrees Centigrade. I have also managed to get rid of the bushier bits of my eyebrows and make the quiffy bit at the front of my head look even more ridiculous. Tonight I will be shaving my head.

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That’s about it.

I will be watching Notts TV tonight. I won’t be making the 5.30 show, but 8.00 or 10.00 could be a possibility. I’m a bit hazy on details but it will be a short excerpt followed by something more substantial next week when they can get hold of a local councillor.

I’m tempted to end with a note about broadcasters who keep their promises (like Andrew and Notts TV) and those that don’t. But that wouldn’t be nice, would it?

Anyway, I have burns to see to and a head to shave…