Tag Archives: Education

The party day

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The threatened children arrived, took the farm by storm, had nettle soup (in large quantity in one case), thoroughly enjoyed themselves and then left. The floors are actually looking cleaner than when I arrived to set up, thanks to parental input. Despite the noise and squeakiness and jollity I actually quite enjoyed it, though I am grateful to my kids for taking up martial arts and rugby rather than going to parties.

I was also able to take money off four passing ramblers and give out a number of leaflets for Julia’s Easter Event (biscuit making and Woodland Treasure Hunt).

If you’re about on Tuesday 7th April it’s 10.30 – 3.00, ages 5-11 and £7.50 per child including ingredients and chocolate. Bring wellies and a packed lunch.

Sadly many of my readers come from a long way away but if you don’t ask you don’t get.

We also had a visit from the Goat Lady, who was much cheerier and less bearded than the name suggests. She’s generally happy about the goats so we must be doing something right.

All in all, a happy end to the week.

 

Tree Day!

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At last it’s arrived, the day we’ve been looking forward to for over a month. The Woodland Trust people arrived and it was down to work. We now know about crowns and stems, clinometers and ranging poles. We also have the equipment for the Javelin event in our next Improvised Olympics. (I know everyone else was thinking the same, but we all decided not to mention it until the Woodland Trust people left).

We’re now qualified to measure heights and girths and crowns (both north to south and east to west) and I have a pen mark on my shirt to tell me where the 1.3 metre mark is for measuring girths. As long as I don’t wash the shirt I’m pretty well set up for that.

I still think that it will be easier to measure small trees by making Tim climb them with a tape measure instead of using a clinometer and percentages. Despite this, it’s a lot easier doing it with a clinometer than the way I was taught at school. I can’t remember exactly how we did it but it involved sticks and plywood triangles and much more maths. It also involved a lot more answers because it’s a mathematical rule that the more steps you have in a process involving ten-year-olds the more answers you get. We were all pretty good, and the answers hardly varied at all, a triumph for the instructors considering the mixed abilities of the group. In fact the only person who got the girth wrong was me, but after standing straighter and trying again I got it right. It’s likely that drawing an ink mark on the front of my shirt isn’t the best way of finding the height for a girth measurement.

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It hasn’t suited everyone as an activity, and the temperature hasn’t helped, particularly the icy north wind that’s been getting up since mid-morning, but several of the group have definitely enjoyed it and that’s what it’s about.

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You never know where these things will lead. For an example look no further than lambing. Three years ago most of the group didn’t care for farm animals and were only interested in things like rabbits and guineapigs. Now they are volunteering to come in at the weekend and help with lambing. It’s strange how one thing leads to another, and when you look back over the years it’s amazing how some people change.

Apart from me that is. In 1966 I seem to remember being in trouble for throwing the sticks and for getting some pretty outlandish answers. In 2015 I can only grin and point out that we all have to grow older, but we don’t have to grow up!

 

 

 

 

 

 

It never rains but it pours

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We have a big booking next month – tree planting, lunch for 40 and farm walk for a company that sponsors some of our new woodland. We have a new yoga group starting that evening. So it’s going to be busy.

Now we have someone wanting to rent the centre for a film show and talk, which might, as they point out, interest the yoga group. They have a guest coming who can only make it that evening…

To say I’m torn is an understatement. I don’t want to let anyone down. I would like to fit everything in. But most of all I would like to hide until it was all over.

We also have two days in the next month where we have two events on at the same time. It’s nice to be bringing money in to finance the centre but it always seems like four times the work to do double the events. It also makes me wonder what is so attractive about some days and so unattractive about others. Even in the middle of all this doubling and trebling up we still have seven days when nothing is booked.

All that and I have to get my nettle soup recipe ready for a school group on Friday…

Cyclists, sheriffs and various other visitors

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We had an unexpected group of toddlers arrive on Monday, which was a surprise. Farmer Rose had fixed that up for us on Sunday and forgotten to tell us. He is, after all, wrapped up in lambing.

That went OK, as they just wanted to see the lambs, and was followed on Tuesday by a group of cyclists from the University of the Third Age from nearby Bingham. Somebody had told them the cafe was now open all week. That’s not quite accurate, but I did open up for them because I’m a cheerful sort and because I will do all sorts of things for money. (One of those statements, by the way, is untrue. I will leave you to guess which.)

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We then had the Health and Wellbeing Ambassador for the High Sheriff of Nottingham come to visit. Or Sue, as we used to call her before her elevation to Ambassador status. It seems that she is not allowed to claim her house is sovereign territory or evade parking fines so, quite frankly, I’m not sure if she’s a proper Ambassador.

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Then, as I was loafing near the bird table with my camera, the first farm butterfly of the year settled on some crocuses near my feet. It looks a bit rough round the edges but it’s always good to see the first butterfly of the year, and let’s face it, I’m not fresh out of the box either.

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Breakfast!

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We had a simple breakfast this morning – just cereal and fresh fruit. It’s part of my new regime. It was a good thing I didn’t have too much because I ended up with a second breakfast as part of the National Breakfast Week campaign. The second one was porridge with fruit. I’m feeling quite virtuous at the moment. And full.

It’s a very important meal is breakfast, and it’s currently a political issue with Blackpool council becoming the first in England to provide free breakfasts for all school children. I’m not sure about this – I’m happy to see all kids getting a decent breakfast but I don’t see why the parents should be let off the hook. If you aren’t prepared to feed them you shouldn’t have kids. That’s just my view of course, not the farm view and definitely not the view of the touchy-feely modern world.

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Here’s a picture of us eating porridge and a link to Mary’s meals to remind us all that some kids go to school hungry for reasons other than lazy parents.

Birdwatching, students and politics (that’s in order of preference!)

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Last Friday we had reed buntings at the bird table, which was a first for us as we haven’t seen any here in all the time we’ve been coming. They are a somewhat portly bird, as are most buntings, and radiate a feeling of cheery domesticity, so it was a surprise to read that they are apparently the most adulterous of all bird species, with over 50% of chicks in a brood being fathered by males who are not the male in the pair. I’d never thought of adultery in birds until I read this bit so it just shows what you can learn, and it will certainly come to mind every time a see a reed bunting from now on.

Things moved on today with a mixed group of buntings coming to feed – nine reed buntings and  three yellowhammers. With low temperatures overnight and light covering of snow on the fields they are probably finding natural food hard to come by, which is why we come into play. This is certainly the opinion of the BTO and they tend to know these things.

Apart from the birds we have a group of students from a local college visiting to gain experience for their animal health course. They are currently finding out how to put ear tags into pigs (we have some going to market tomorrow). You can tell this from the protests of the pigs – they aren’t keen on ear tags. Our normal Monday group is assisting, as they have now done this several times. It’s good for their self-confidence to be able to show their skills to the students. It’s good for the students too, because it shows them that people with learning difficulties are actually more skilled at some things than they are.

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Johno will be giving a couple of presentations to the college later today but he’s fitting in an interview with the local press at the moment because he’s standing for the local council in the May elections.

Got to go – politics is making me lose the will to live…

Jobs for the Day

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1) Check electricity meter readings

2) Feed Polish chickens

3) Make beadwork Christmas wreaths for keyrings

4) Make mince pies for visitors tomorrow

5) Answer interminable boring emails

6) Make lots of cups of tea (important job!)

7) Clean bird feeders and set up new seed feeder

8) Communal reading of Farmers’ Weekly

9) Set up skittle alley in barn

10) Referee cut throat game of Noughts and Crosses

11) Plan menus for meals on Wednesday and Thursday

12) Arrange for pick up of chicken that Johno is donating to one of the group

And that’s just for starters – there’s always plenty more to do. My next job, however, is making sandwiches for lunch…

Kestrel!

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We’ve always done a bit of bird watching on the farm, partly because we have birds to watch and partly because it allows me to sit and relax. It also teaches a number of important skills such as concentration, being quiet and sitting still. When you have learning difficulties you can be given to twitchiness and talking continually so it’s useful to have an activity which rewards efforts to control the condition.

One of the things we’have been watching recently has been a kestrel hovering over the field where the new woodland has been planted. I say “new woodland” but at the moment it’s sticks and tussocky grass, which is good hunting ground for kestrels. Sometimes the bird hovers in the area around the recently erected Neighbours statue and once or twice people have told me they saw it perching on the head.

I have been trying to get a shot of it but I’ve never had my camera with me at the right time and I’ve never actually seen it perching on the head. It all changed today when I managed to spot it perching while I had my camera in my hand.

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Tim found some pellets in the hood of the male figure when he was putting the Christmas lights on the statues so it looks like we’ve inadvertently erected a kestrel habitat.

Compost and Mondays

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It’s always nice when a plan comes together, and for that reason alone this Monday was a good day. I’m not really sure why I’m prejudiced against the day – we tend to work through the weekend anyway so it isn’t as if it’s actually the start of our week. It’s probably a hangover from my school days, when Sunday evening was such a poignant time. It seems like I spent all my Sunday evenings thinking back to our Sunday seaside trip and dreading a return to the village school where the spirit of Wackford Squeers lived on well into the 1960s.

In truth I actually liked some of the schools I went to and didn’t go to the coast too often so I’m really only thinking of an eighteen month period when I was eight-years old, but it seems to have ruined Mondays for me for life. Fortunately it’s just a mild dislike – if I had an irrational fear of Mondays I would have to learn to spell lunaediesophobia just to describe how I felt.

Anyway, back to the real subject. Having access to a large amount of greenery and several cardboard boxes it seemed a good time to dig the bean trench we’d been threatening for two years. There are various sorts of bean trench, ranging from ones filled with good compost to those filled with cardboard and newspaper. The benefit of the first sort are obvious, the benefit of the second sort is that it keeps moisture under the beans. We’ve gone for the third type, also known as a composting trench, where you fill it with waste and let it rot down over winter. The idea is that it will not only rot down to produce compost, but will heat the soil (according to one blog I read). I’m not convinced about the soil heating bit – I think you will need a lot more in the trench to produce heat, but let’s see.

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That’s cardboard, cape gooseberry and various garden clippings in the trench. We ended up with a lot more by the time we’d finished and had to stamp it down. Now we just wait and see.

As for the rest of the compost – the three bay pallet bin is nearly full (as you can see from the picture above), the plastic and wooden bins and rotating drums are full and the pigs are producing plenty of raw materials. Despite this I just know that when we come to spreading time we will be disappointed when we see how little it actually covers. There are several rules of composting:

(1) It always contains plastic, no matter how careful you are

(2) It never looks as good as it does on Gardeners’ World

(3) It never goes far enough

 

Porridge

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World Porridge day has been and gone. We ate Likuni Phala to get into the swing of things. That’s Malawian porridge – four cups of maize kernels and a cup of soya beans with 15 cups of water. TESCO provided maize meal, which was a useful short-cut, and textured soya protein, also known as soya mince. I had intended reducing the soya to a more meal-like consistency in a blender, but I forgot to pack it . First I tried a rolling pin but still ended up with some recognisable pieces of mince. That was when the stick blender came into play.

Next time I’m going to seal the top of the jug with cling film. It wasn’t as bad as when the courgette soup went wrong, but having said that we’re still finding crumbs of soya twenty four hours later.

The day was supposed to be about comparing ourselves with other countries, so I also made oatmeal porridge to compare with the Likuni Phala. Unfortunately, given a choice kids always go for the familiar. Eight out of twelve refused to try the foreign porridge and even the ones who did try it covered it in sugar. From the point of view of comparison, and nutrition, I have delivered better education sessions.

On the other hand we did make sure everyone had plenty of porridge. As many of the group had free school lunches (which always seems to feature a plain grated cheese sandwich in white bread) this was probably a good thing.

After looking at the animals and learning more about how we grow and use wheat (what we refer to as our Seed to Sandwich presentation) it as time for the kitchen session. I’ve been working on a simple scone recipe because it gives us something to spread our home-made jam on. It also, being Hedgerow Jam, allows us to talk about foraging and alternative foods. People who wouldn’t think of trying something new when offered porridge seem happy to eat anything if it’s in the form of jam. The amount of sugar probably helps.

The first time we tried the recipe the mix turned out a bit dry. This time it was a little too soft. A bit of extra flour soon cleared that up. Next time I may get it right.

Next time, I will get something else wrong.