Category Archives: Education

Guides, Guides, Guides…

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Finally, the third part of today’s triple post.

We have a group of 20 Guides out in a field with Julia and the rain has just started again. From where I’m sitting (dry, smiling and complacent) it seems like a heavy downpour. I must rise from my padded typist’s chair and have a look in a minute. At least it’s not hail, as we had earlier in the day. It flattened my newly transplanted salads and once again made me question the wisdom of growing my own produce.

Programme for the evening visit is animals, salt dough and the making of vegetable soup. In the end we were able to discuss composting and keyhole gardens too.

I blotted my copybook in the first ten minutes by telling one of them that the pigs are currently all in the freezer, and that we don’t keep horses because you can’t eat them. I do like tormenting teenagers, but there is also a serious purpose to this as they have to realise that farming isn’t a hobby, our animals aren’t pets, and that vegetarianism is an option.

(You may have spotted my deliberate error regarding horses. Sorry about that. You can, of course, eat them.)

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It all seemed to go well, and most of them will be coming back for a Saturday session in a month or so. They turned the compost energetically, painted a range of salt dough shapes for Open Farm Sunday and their parents bought all the available eggs.

All in all, a good result.

And no, I don’t know why the image of the salt dough shapes has turned itself round. I am bemused.

 

A strange egg…

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We had the second class from new College in today and I decided to open an egg up to show them a bit of science. As you can imagine from the featured image, I got a shock when I cracked it open.

I’ve seen eggs with meat and blood spots before but I’ve never actually seen one with so much blood in it. I assume that as the egg was having its thick albumen layer added the bird must have bled from the oviduct. It’s definitely not started incubating, because there are no blood vessels. Whatever the reason, it caused a bit of a stir, rather like a satanic conjuring trick.

It’s been wet today but despite that we’ve seen off a lot of jobs, and the flowers in the garden are starting to look great.

The students helped us catch the Polish bantams, which have been at liberty since Monday, so that was good, as although two of the birds were happy enough to go back, one put up more determined resistance.  As we are down to three we don’t want to lose another, particularly as there had been a cat eyeing them up yesterday.

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We have some more information and photos up on the Individual Pages, the cow is repainted, the pigsaw’s tail is made (but not yet attached), I’ve been making signs for Open Farm Sunday, and we have two TV companies wanting to visit us (on the same day!). It will all come to nothing, I’m sure, but in any event, as a man with “a good face for radio” I’m not likely to be needed.

 

Our new invention – the Pigsaw

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Wednesday

I admit that there’s an element of ambiguity in the name, as it could possibly be a new butchery tool, but if you look at the pictures all will become clear. It’s a pig jigsaw but in the modern way (think Brangelina or spork, or even blog) I thought it would be good to coin a new word. Shakespeare invented 1,700 new words so I thought it would be good to have a go. Only 1,699 to go. Sadly, looking at the web, it seems that someone has already come up with pigsaw. I thought I might try a witty sentence here, using some of Shakespeare’s 1,700 words, but after having my new word snatched from my grasp I have lost heart.

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It’s been a team effort – idea from Julia, drawing from me, cutting out by Men in Sheds and painting by the group.

The main debate is now what we put behind the pieces. We were originally going to cut up a poster showing joints of pork but we’re now thinking that it might be better to use interesting pig facts. It’s more educational that way, and less traumatic for vegetarians and small children.

We have now launched the first stage of the new blog pages – one for each member of the group. Go to the “Individual Pages” tab and select a name. So far I’ve only put a photograph on each one but next week we’ll be adding some text as people decide what they want to discuss about their time on the farm.

Finally, we wrapped up the day with a meeting for the volunteers who will be helping on Open Farm Sunday and a quick trip to Nottingham for a second meeting. I didn’t have to go to the second one, I just dropped Julia off. She has more stamina than I do.

Thursday

Only two points of interest today.

Julia went to the physio today – they say it’s just a sprain, but she can go back in a few weeks if it doesn’t clear up. We’ve heard this before, so we’ll see.

On a brighter note, the touch pad on my computer is now working again. Sometimes computers can be quite perplexing.

 

 

 

A visit and a lucky escape

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We had a group of pre-school children visit yesterday to look at the lambs. We spent what seemed like ages cutting out cardboard patterns to make model sheep and I distinctly remember saying to Julia: “I’m glad there are only six of them.”

We even cut an extra one out just to be on the safe side, then made a nice cup of tea to celebrate the end of the scissor work. There are quite a lot of fiddly bits round the edges, giving it the appearance of woolliness, and my eyes no longer focus at ant distance less than arm’s length.

You will no doubt be able to guess what happened when they arrived, all ten of them…

With a false smile I set to work printing more copies and cutting them out.

At that point we discovered we had miscounted, so I had to do an eleventh.

It’s been that sort of a day.

On  a more cheerful note, we had three school visits booked last week and two more enquiries today – it’s always the way when the sun comes out. At the moment we are ahead of 2014 but still lagging behind 2015 for bookings. It’s partly to do with the relationship between the  lambing date, Easter and school holidays – we just didn’t get the early visits.

However, this is no excuse and I’ve been  emailing schools to remind them that we are here.

In the afternoon, as I wrote this, Julia painted some glass in preparation for some sort of artistic installation on Open Farm Sunday. Personally I equate the decline in civilisation with the rise in the use of the term “art installation” but that’s probably just me. I still don’t see what was wrong with just having paintings and statues.

Finally, after taking the computer home and falling asleep in front of the TV instead of finishing post I had a go at rushing it this morning. It didn’t go well when I got my fingers crossed over and managed to wipe everything off. Thanks to instructions from Derrick J Knight I was able to find a previous version and restore everything without too much trouble.

So that was the story of yesterday. It’s now 11.30 on the day after and it’s bus. Already had the Forestry Commission, another farmer with concert flyers, a teacher coming to look at the facilities and news that we now have seven goslings. It’s all go!

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Make that TWO lucky escapes as I just knocked the laptop off the desk. The hinge popped and the screen went stripy before everything switched off. Fortunately, after  a moment of suppressing a major swearing incident (we were in the middle of a group session on trees) I managed to realign the hinge and it all seems OK.

Feeling relieved now.

The concert is on Saturday 2nd July at North Lodge Farm, Widmerpool, NG12 5QE – http://www.bestofbritish@northlodgefarm.co.uk

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A plan comes together

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It’s a busy day today and everywhere seems crowded, we even had three buzzards wheeling over the sheep field when we stopped to look at the ewes this morning. I managed to get some sheep photos but the effort of capturing tiny specks with no viewfinder was too much for me. Nice picture of clouds in a bright blue sky, but little else.

We’ve had a bit of a sheep-based day for Quercus, with felted sheep and sheep lollies. In the morning we had a college visit again, and they completed the work on the goats and bedded the pigs. No electric fences today!

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Both groups are now moving chickens to the new accommodation that has been repaired by Men in Sheds. They are going to be out on the fields, though we will have to keep an eye out for high winds as I’m not sure how stable the new coops are.

I love a day like this – when everything falls into place like a well made plan. Derelict chicken coops resurrected by Men in Sheds providing work experience for animal care students and an activity for our group. At times like this I feel like we are really getting somewhere, but at the back of my mind I always find that thought about what is going to go wrong next…

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Another Pizza Tuesday

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Another week and another pizza session.

Many of them merge into one and only a few stick in my memory. There was one last week where all the kids seemed really switched on, and knew the answers to the questions involving mummification and Christopher Columbus. Yes, it all relates to pizza…

Then there are others where the helpers decide to take their own session at the back of the class or where the teachers think they are still taking the class. The two sessions this Tuesday both had helpers who wanted to take their own sessions, but the first session also had a teacher who stepped in to contradict me. I can’t help wondering what would have happened if I’d visited her class and told them all she was wrong in mid-sentence.

For the record, if I’d been allowed to finish what I was saying she would have seen I was correct.

She’d already corrected me for using the term “groups of two” – it seems they are “pairs”. She then went on to answer for various children when I asked if they wanted more water for their dough. She said they didn’t, and though I did eventually manage to get extra water in most of them we still had some very hard, dry dough.

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Some adventurous pizza shapes

We didn’t do the questions about mummification or Christopher Columbus, because it seemed like every time I asked a question I was told “We haven’t done that yet.” or she pursed her lips and shook her head.

I could go on…and on…

Now, I know from past experience, that if I had objected to any of this it would result in a complaint, it always does. I don’t get many complaints, but I am now at a stage when I can predict them. I’m also at a stage where I’m getting fed up with this sort of stuff, to the extent I’m seriously thinking of stopping.

So the question for today is, do any of you polite, tactful readers know of a way to handle this sort of situation? Are there any secret code words I can use to make myself part of the teaching fraternity? Or any special ways of saying “be quiet”?

I already start the lesson by telling people what we are going to do, that we are going to do it stage by stage at the pace of the slowest group (I’m a little more tactful than that) and that I will issue instructions for each phase, but it doesn’t seem to help.

All suggestions gratefully received (even from teachers!).

 

In which a farmer gets a shock…

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We had a college out today, studying animal husbandry. As with a lot of these things, we interpreted the brief widely and showed them how to put up electric fencing to keep animals in place. It is always interesting, as nettles and electric shocks are a constant hazard for people who aren’t used to working on farms.

They are a constant hazard even for people who do know what they are doing. I once lost the feeling my right arm after touching an electric fence (though it did come back quite quickly, unlike the time I contracted Saturday Night Palsy). The Farmer went one better today, not only touching the fence but being told off for his language after doing so. That really is adding insult to injury.

There isn’t a lot more to add, as it’s been a day of dull work and even duller paperwork. It seems I used the wrong piece of paper for something a couple of weeks ago so I was told off today. The figures were correct but the form was incorrect. I say form, what I actually did was put the money in a paper bag and write the details on the bag. Next time I will use the right form and wrap the money in it. Let’s see how they like loose change all over the place.

There were other things, some nearly as bad as using the wrong form.

It’s also been the day when I had to confess that after putting the farm debit card “somewhere safe” I can’t actually remember where it is. This went down badly.

Fortunately I didn’t compound my crime by reporting it on the wrong form…

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The great idea

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Well , it seemed great. If I do away with oil or sprinkled flour on the baking trays whilst cooking pizza, I reasoned, I could do away with washing the trays, cycle the equipment faster between groups and, by writing initials on the paper, could identify the pizzas more easily.

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Great in theory.

In practice I did avoid any washing up, so that was a plus.

But the green marker pen I originally used (because you never really use the green one do you?) proved unequal to the job. I’m tempted to say it faded badly, but that would be unfair because it actually faded really well. In most cases it disappeared or left a faint green shimmer.*

The black was far better. Not sure whether to try the blue or the red next time, or stick to black.

Not that it really mattered because we had a 100% identification rate for the pizzas anyway. No arguing, no tears and no tantrums (from me or the kids). It’s all going too well.

Meanwhile, back at the photos, I can’t get titles on them. It shows pizzas, black writing, green writing and a pizza in the shape of Italy. That would have been really imaginative wouldn’t it. Then he spoilt it all by telling me it was a football sock.

Ah well!

 

*This is similar to the rhetorical question I often heard asked on campsites in the days I fought with the Sealed Knot. Some broken wreck, usually male, would shamble past groaning “Do you know what’s good for a hangover?” to which I would perkily reply, “Fifteen pints of bitter and a kebab usually does the job for me.”

It didn’t go down well.

What the poor addlepated coxcomb meant, of course, was “Do you know what’s good for getting rid of a hangover?”

Sometimes we can be very unclear in our meanings.

The Year Ahead

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I had my annual check-up today, but that couldn’t dampen my good mood at missing the forecast “arctic blast” and driving to the appointment in lovely sunshine. It’s a  once a year thing, the GP practice seems to like doing it, and it amuses me to see them try so hard to avoid using the word “fat”. For despite modern words and modern concepts of patient dignity the truthful, accurate and short description of me is “fat”.

I have turned down the offer of swimming as therapy because I’ve seen what happens when people like me go swimming.

I have however, accepted the offer of being weighed regularly and being given vouchers to join a slimmers’ organisation – I forget which one but can feel my body bunching up ready for flight at the mere mention of the idea. Sometimes you just have to recognise the inevitable. If I wish to live and irritate my wife until I am in my eighties I am going to have to change my ways.

In many ways this belongs on the other blog (www.sherwooddays.com) but I’m telling you here because it leads on to other things.

Due to the unexpected excellence of the weather, and the desire for a nice cooked breakfast after a discussion of my weight, we went out for brunch. I think using a two meal strategy and eating beans, tomatoes and mushrooms is a sufficiently healthy start to my new weight-loss programme.

The best bit was the planning session. We have a number of half-formed plans but nothing definite on paper yet. Released from the tyranny of meetings and the need to involve idiots we now have several pages of notes relating to schools, education, the Open Farm Sunday school days, a poetry competition, salt dough work, a grant application, getting men in sheds to build us a display, Flintham Ploughing Match education tent and (as they say) much, much more.

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The advantage of our system (Julia talks, I write) is that it cuts down on discussion and saves time. If anything goes wrong it also means the blame sessions are simpler as it’s all her fault.

The disadvantage, of course, is that she’s now given me a list of jobs to do. A long list.

 

 

Songs and sausages

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National Breakfast week is drawing to a close and I have been doing my bit.

We’ve treated ourselves to a couple of days off from the farm because things are getting a bit intense and because we could do with some time to recharge our batteries – the two weeks off at Christmas was mostly spent cooking, cleaning and catching up on sleep so it wan’t really quality time. The lesson there is to plan your time off rather than sleep through it.

Yesterday was built round breakfast at Frankie and Bennys, followed by seeking out glass paints for Julia’s plastic flower project and then it was off to work for her, at the job that actually buys the groceries. I dropped her off, cooked and eventually  picked her up. At that point I served the food and found it hadn’t cooked properly, so it was Chewy Beef and Crunchy Carrot casserole for tea. You will search in vain for a recipe of that name.

I should probably point out here that F&B have not paid me or offered me any inducement to say I enjoyed the breakfast and the ambience, and that the quality and service were good and the cost reasonable.

However, if anyone from F&B is reading this, and would like to offer me any inducements for positive reviews in this blog I would be happy to accept.

Today was built around breakfast at Little Chef, followed by a visit to my Dad to drop of cards and presents for his 87th birthday on Sunday.

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Olympic Breakfast

I like the Olympic Breakfast and it was well-cooked. It was at least equal to F&B, possibly even a little better. Ambience, service, cleanliness, value – F&B wins.  I don’t want to be one of those people who takes a swipe from the safety of the internet, so I won’t name the site or go into more details about the faults.

Despite this, I’ve been going to Little Chef for so long that they feel like they are part of the family and as such I will be prepared to accept inducements for positive reviews.

Anyway, there you have it – my social diary, a food review and my contribution to National Breakfast week. I’m actually quite pleased with myself, as I usually eat the food before I remember that I’m supposed to be photographing it. That’s why I never actually got on with the food blog I planned.

It was entertainment time at the home when we arrived, with a local entertainer singing to a selection of Jim Reeves, Guy Mitchell, Tommy Steel, Perry Como and various other stars of the 50s. I have to say the music wasn’t to my taste – reminding me too much of my father’s taste, but the audience loved him and I mentally filed a few tricks of the trade for working a crowd when I next have to visit a care home to do a presentation (which is actually coming up quite soon). Top man.