Category Archives: Outdoor Education

A Bench Made From Pallets

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If you search the internet for details of garden benches made from pallets you will find far more information than you need. They are even advertised for sale, so if you want to pay £795 for some pallets with cushions on, this is your chance. What is the world coming to?

It will come as no surprise for regular readers to find that I have never spent £795 on a piece of furniture in my life. I came close once – £700 for a Victorian iron bedstead – but it’s an antique so is hopefully an investment rather than just furniture. That was actually advice a dealer once gave me – buy old furniture because it’s already knocked about and you can probably get your money back if you need to sell it.

Anyway – back to pallet benches. The Joe Swift video shows how to make a simple, functional garden bench. He used a single pallet with nine slats, we had to use two pallets because we only had 8 slats, and one of them was broken. However, it worked, and we have a solid garden bench.

We left it with a number of pre-drilled holes and marks so the group could finish it and sand it, which they duly did yesterday. Unfortunately I couldn’t be there to see it, and we can’t use Julia’s photos due to safeguarding restrictions. You will have to put up with photos of Julia instead.

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Closure

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Today effectively started last week when we arranged to visit the farm and pick up the rest of our rammel. It’s been hanging over us for days after what happened on the last visit

Fortunately it turned out to be quite a lot better than we were expecting.

The big bird feeder has been moved. That wasn’t really  a surprise as that sort of thing has never been of much interest to the farmer- apart from the occasion when he had to put up nest boxes the week before an inspection for a grant payment. Money is a great motivator.

Apart from that things were going pretty much as expected.

Some things have been moved by the horticultural project, and the people renting the centre were tidying today. I braced myself for exposure to these high-flying  corporate predators and…

… found that they were very pleasant people.

This is a useful lesson.

Looks like the future of the Ecocentre is going to be in safe hands after all. Strange how things work out. It now feels like we’ve passed the baton rather than been thrown out.

Now, if only someone rings to tell me the farmer has an embarrassing rash, my day will be complete.

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What a difference a day makes

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It’s a slightly ironic title when you consider the actual words of the song.

What a diff’rence a day made / Twenty-four little hours / Brought the sun and the flowers / Where there used to be rain

What has actually happened in the last 24 hours is that the rain has replaced the sun and the flowers.

We have a small group of children and parents visiting to bake, hunt for treasure hidden by teddy bears and play with the chickens. They managed a Treasure Hunt and some outdoor sports before the weather turned bad, so we can certainly call it a draw as far as the weather is concerned.

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After that it was indoor sports and chickens.

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That’s not for me, of course. I’m performing my normal indoor sport of Washing Up. Funny how that happens. When I deliver a baking session I wash up after myself. When Julia delivers a baking session I wash up after her. Interesting division of labour; I’m thinking of checking back on our wedding service to see what it has to say on the subject.

At the moment everyone has returned from the barn and they are colouring in salt dough shapes of teddy bears – one to take home and one to leave for our bread shed. There is a prize of sweets for the best one. I believe the plan is to have a large number of joint winners, as it would be a bit rough not to get any sweets.

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Meanwhile, Number Two son looks more like he’s been in a fight than a dental surgery.

Years ago, whilst playing for the Wakefield Trinity U15 Scholarship team, he was set upon by two Featherstone Rovers props and ended up looking like he’d been in a car crash. To add insult to injury he was one of the two selected for sin-binning after a 26 man brawl developed (his team mates not being the sort of people to stand by like choirboys whilst violence was being applied to one of their own). I’m not saying that the beating or the sin-binning was undeserved, as his (defamatory) remarks about the mother of one of the props had, in fairness, been intended to get under the skin of his opposite number: I mention it merely to compare injuries.

Two props, aided by a couple of second rows, left him hurting and with eyes swollen to slits so that he was unable to see properly.

Without any slander as to the virtue of the dentist’s mother he was left sore, swollen and barely able to speak.

Makes you wonder what would have happened if he’d upset the dentist.

As a trivial aside – can anyone link Wakefield Trinity to Dr Who?

 

 

 

Drowning in paper

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Great day today, if you have the soul of an accountant. I hope I don’t.

We had a couple of teachers to show round today. They are really very nice people it was a pleasure to see them. They will be reading this shortly so I’m not going to say anything else, am I? They’ve been bringing groups for a few years now so they must think we do a reasonable job. They did look a bit nonplussed when I suggested feeding the class a plate of weeds but they soon picked up when I revealed nobody has died from it. Yet.

That was the start of the paperwork – checking food allergies and risk assessment. None of this actually stops us killing a child on a visit, it just means that if we do we can escape most of the consequences by pointing out all the paperwork is in order.

Obviously the parents would be unhappy and it wouldn’t gain me any friends at the school if I sent one of their pupils home in a box. To be fair, I have never killed anyone on a visit yet, and don’t intend to: have you seen the paperwork that sort of thing generates?

I’ve now moved on to sending out booking forms and entering new bookings on the calendar. I don’t know where the time goes, but by the time it’s all checked, cross-referenced and explained that five-minute job seems to take an age.

It’s a tough choice – drowning in paperwork, ten feet from a kettle and warm. Or cold, in the middle of a field, picking up kestrel pellets from the base of the neighbours statues. According to the weather station it’s now 4 degrees Celsius outside and there’s a moderate breeze.

Those kestrel pellets can wait.

Another day, another title

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I’m struggling to think up new titles for my posts. Half of me wants to become a bit tabloid (“Great tits on the table today!” is so tempting when discussing the presence of Parus Major at the bird table.) The other half of me wants to take the easy way out with a dull title such as “Tuesday”.

The problem is that I don’t think the tabloid approach helps build a quality image, and the other approach just leads to a confusing number of posts named after days of the week.

We had a group from a MENCAP gardening group. They were out our way to collect horse manure and had arranged to drop in. We had a chat and home made mince pies, sold them a hamper and a couple of penguin tree decorations and invited them back next year for National Breakfast week.

We’re planning on having a few groups out for breakfast next year, raising some cash for Mary’s Meals and raising awareness of how important breakfast is. It’s a continuation of the work we’ve been doing on breakfasts , and a continuation of the National Porridge Day work we started last year.

The Bread Group raised £26 for Mary’s Meals last week when they did their Christmas meal, which was kind of them (as was the food they left in the fridge for me). Hopefully we will be adding to this next month, particularly as we will have the Saturday morning cafe participating for the first time.

Looking back

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It was a crisp December day today, which was good because a wet, grey day would have taken a lot of the fun out of it. We had a change of gear today with the Christmas Event and though Santa and Elf worked in harmony we still managed to scare two children. I tried to  make one happier about the situation by taking my wig and beard off to show him there was just a normal man underneath it all but this just made things worse.

Either I have a face that scares children or, as Tim put it: “To him it just looks like you peeled your face off.”

Sometimes you just can’t win. On the other hand when you examine the picture there is definitely a touch of Dan Aykroyd and Trading Places in my eyes,

What was particularly good about the day was that we saw quite a few new people and were able to talk about the farm. That’s always good because, as we found at the conference last year, when you talk to other people you realise what progress you have made. To be honest, although I’m there most days it’s a case of not seeing the wood for the trees. This is ironic when you see what I do when I look out of the window (i’ll post a picture tomorrow).

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We made the penguins from beads – only sold one but thought they were worth a picture anyway,

Third time lucky

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We had a group of Guides on the farm today – spent three hours outside foraging in the hedgerows and garden. Pickings were a bit scant in the hedges but we managed a decent salad from the garden. That is mainly due to my poor weeding so maybe not something I should be boasting about.

The chickweed is really living up to its alternative name of winterweed, though I see there are other plants using the name. Best call it Stellaria media to be on the safe side. It was a mainstay of the mediaeval winter diet when pickings were slim and you can see why when you see how well it grows.

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We are also  have a good crop of goosegrass (or sticky weed or cleavers or sweethearts depending on what you call it) though it isn’t great for salads. Too sticky! I’ve never known a plant with so many different names. I don’t know if anyone still calls it ‘sweethearts’ – it was what my mother and grandmother used to call it. They come from Lancashire but I’ve checked up and it also seems to be used in the south and south-west, though it does seem to have been popular as a name before the war.

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I call it goosegrass and always have done. What do you call it?

And before you ask – the title of the post refers to the fact we’ve fed three groups on garden weeds now and haven’t poisoned anyone yet. And ‘today’ means Tuesday because I’m getting behind.

You don’t always get what you want

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It’s been a week for buying books and I’ve managed to buy some that weren’t quite what I was expecting.That’s the trouble with ordering from Amazon, you don’t always get what you want.

I ordered a book featuring 101 outdoor activities for kids – 101 Outdoor Activities for Kids: Ultimate Collection by T.J. Doherty. When I started to read I found that it wasn’t a book with 101 outdoor activities for kids but more of a book with 101 activities for kids that could be done outdoors. Activity Number One is – playing “Simon Says” – you don’t need to be outdoors to play that.

So although it is a well laid out book and full of good ideas it wasn’t quite the book of fire starting and den building I’d been expecting. But at £1.53 for the Kindle edition it’s still great value for money.

It’s probably proof of  what we’re already thinking – that kids don’t get outside enough. Same with adults: I can’t imagine any of my teachers needing a book on outdoor activities. When I stop and think about it I don’t know why I need it.

Box of matches, baler twine and a penknife. That’s all I need really.

And a risk assessment.

Fire, knives and nooses. What could possibly go wrong?

 

 

A plateful of weeds

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When you think of salad you probably think of lettuce, or possibly rocket. If you think of chickweed or fat hen you’re in a minority, and you probably don’t need to read this. Fat hen, incidentally, contains twice as much iron as spinach, so eating weeds does have something to offer nutritionally.

In an hour or two I’m going to be taking a party of Rainbows round the garden to see what we can find to eat. We have a good crop of chickweed growing in a newly-composted raised bed and plenty of mallow. There is definitely some fat hen round by the edge and we have plenty of marigold and nasturtium flowers. We also have dead nettle , borage and dandelion so without resorting to anything from the herb garden we can provide a plate of colourful salad, though I will add some chive flowers for the onion flavour.

We have some nice tender nettles coming through, but although they are edible they are not recommended in salads. I will pause for a moment while you think about it…

(Later…

It seems we need a permission form signing if we want to feed garden weeds to children, though we didn’t need special permission last week. It’s something to look into, and worth remembering that educating overly-cautious adults is also part of our job.

Strangely, when the foraged food is made into jam and spread on warm scones you don’t need special permission. I suppose it’s a case of familiarity seeming safer than the unknown. And sugar being more palatable than salad.)