Monthly Archives: November 2016

A note from one of our Farm Hands

Hi my name is Courtney and I’m a Farm Hand at the local community farm in Lawrence Weston. I’ve been a Farm Hand for about three  months now and I love everything about it already.  We do loads of fun things such as:

  • Hold chickens.
  • Collect the yummy chicken and duck eggs.
  • Bake banana bread.
  • Go on scavenger hunts
  • Mucking out
  • Pick fresh rhubarb from the garden and baked a rhubarb crumble with it.
  • Go in all of the pens.
  • Make awesome dens
  • Outdoor art with different berries and leaves

We have done lots more things too but it would take up the whole page to write them all.

Everyone and anyone is allowed to be a farm hand as long as they are 8-11 years old no matter what shapes or sizes they are, as long as they come from the local area. Being a farm hand is the best thing that ever happened to me and I wouldn’t change a thing for the life of me. We learn new things every session and have the best time ever.

 I love being a farm hand!

 

Courtney (aged 10)

img_6785img_6502img_6761hen-hub

Memories Cafe

Our Memories Cafe has been running for a few weeks now, and lots of fun has been had!  Each week features a different activity, a walk round the farm and tea and cake – yum.

People arrive on the LW Community Bus – this is available to anyone over 55 who lives in Lawrence Weston. Then there is the opportunity to walk around the farm, getting some fresh air, seeing the seasons change and interacting with the animals.  Feeding the goats is lots of fun!

The visitors have then been getting creative and learning about new things. One week the afternoon was spent listening to birdsong and seeing if they could recognise any. They learnt different bird names and talked about their favourites.

Another week everyone tried their hand at flower arranging with the special drying flowers grown on the farm.  There were some stunning results as you can see below.  Visitors have also painted using leaves and fruit.

 

We had a great day last week with our Apple Day in our Community Orchard.  A Forgotten Landscape had brought along their apple press, and lots of delicious apple juice was made.  ALS were available to give advice about energy saving.  A choir sang autumnal songs and there was some great story telling from Michael Loder.

There was an opportunity to learn about different grains and try your hand at making flour.  We soon found out how hard it was! Although fun too!  During the summer we grew crops that are used to make vegetable oils, near the chickens.  Samples were available to taste – flaxseed or linseed, rapeseed and sunflower oil.  A quick opinion poll was that the flaxseed was bitter, the rapeseed was nice, a bit like olive oil, and the sunflower didn’t really have a taste.

Brandon Trust have also been busy this Autumn, making cider vinegar, chutneys and Halloween decorations, which were available to buy from their stall.