Tag Archives: farm

Volunteer Stories – Katie

Katie used to volunteer at Southmead Hospital, helping with the teas and coffees and befriending service. Unfortunately all that stopped with Covid 19. So in November Katie came and volunteered at the farm. She absolutely loves it!

Volunteering at the farm helps with her mental health – she’s made new friends and she loves being outdoors. She loves doing everything from mucking out to grooming goats. There is nothing she dislikes, even the rain. She loves the relaxing pace of working on the farm, and how friendly and welcoming everyone is.

Since starting at the farm, Katie has also joined the Walking Group on Wednesday afternoons, and the Knit and Natter group on Tuesday mornings. She is up for trying anything!

Katie and her first go at crochet

Volunteer Story – Amy

Amy started volunteering with us in 2017. She was studying Level 1 Animal Care at City of Bristol College and as part of that course she needed 150 hours work experience. After she’d completed them all she decided to continue volunteering at the farm as she enjoyed coming so much. She also went on to get a job with Bristol Pet Stop and was really inspired by her manager there to begin her own business.

This summer she started up her own animal care business – Peachy Dog Walking & Pet Services. She not only does dog walking and cat and dog sitting, but care for more exotic pets too, such as reptiles. Business has been great with enquiries all the time, and she now has a waiting list! She says currently her most unusal job is taking care of a parrot.

Eventually Amy would like to own her own kennels.

Volunteer Story Ellie

Ellie

Ellie volunteered with us for many years as a young teenager, and when she was taking her Animal Care course. She went on to volunteer and eventually work at Bristol Zoo. She then went for a job at Puxton Park in Somerset. When she was asked at her interview about her animal handling experience, Ellie described her work at Lawrence Weston Community Farm and the zoo. They gave her a practical assessment – handling a type of lizard called an Agama – and she got the job as Animal Keeper!

Ellie absolutely loves her role as Animal Keeper!

Recently Ellie collected some of our eggs to hatch at Puxton Park. When they started hatching out of their shells they looked very cute!

They grew very quickly and are already nearly big enough to join our main flock. This means that in the Spring, we will have lots of eggs for sale.

Volunteer Stories – Catherine

Catherine has been volunteering with us since September last year. She comes as part of her work placement as she is studying Animal Management Level 3 at Weston College. She had been planning on doing Engineering, but when she saw Animal Managment she knew that was the course she wanted to do.

Catherine loves everything about being at the farm and looking after the animals. The only bit she’s not too keen on is working on the manure heap. Last week she and the other volunteers had a lovely time grooming the goats, with the kid goats clambering all over them and leaping off them.

Coming to the farm makes her nostalgic as she used to come as a child – she says it hasn’t changed very much, it is still very similar. Catherine was very glad to come back after the lockdowns. She is a young carer, so coming to the farm is a great break for her. It really helps with her mental health.

Catherine is planning on a gap year after college, she really wants to travel and see some of the world.

Catherine with the young chickens

What’s been happening this Spring?

Lots of fun, creativity and learning on the Farm!

We’ve run several very successful workshops and courses on the farm this spring, as well as some lovely free family activites during the Easter Holidays.

The Woodland Skills course took place on Mondays earlier in the year. This has been great fun and the participants have been learning lots of interesting and traditional skills, including basket making, firelighting and shelter building. They also carried out important work maintaining and improving the woodland.

Kerry ran a peg loom weaving workshop where people learnt to weave a simple wool rug using raw fleece from our own Jacob sheep. These little rugs can be very useful, providing a warm, waterproof seat anywhere – so ideal to take on walks and camping.

The Spring Tonics and Superfoods workshop was blessed with fantastic sunny weather. Participants were taken on a short walk around the farm, looking at everyday plants that are full of nutrients and healing, learning about their history and modern uses. Many of these plants were then tried as teas. They then made a herbal vinegar to take home.

In the Easter Holidays we had our Family Fun Day, with Bristol Museum and Art Gallery. There were lots of great activities in the Water Vole Woodland, including mud prints, nest building and clay bird making.

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The Get Growing afternoon was extremely popular, with lots of people planting seeds and decorating pots. The legendary Easter Egg Hunt on Easter Saturday was as busy as ever with people hunting for clues all around the farm.

All in all a very busy spring! In the coming months we can look forward to Spoon Making, Fire Lighting, Leaf Printing, Herbal First Aid, and new sessions of Talking Tables, Introduction to Volunteering and Herbs for Health. Our Gardening Club, Walking Group and Farm Tots run all year round. Please see our website or Facebook page for more details.

Volunteer Stories

Last week we had four Yr10 students here to do their work experience. 

The students are from different schools, but had all chosen to come to the farm.  Kian likes animals and had worked with horses before, Henial likes animals and is local to the farm. Emma had worked with chickens before and wanted more hands on experience as did Meg.

They all loved everything about working on the farm, being outdoors and working with the animals, and said that they would definitely love to come back. They all felt that volunteering on the farm had improved their confidence and given them practical skills for other areas of their lives. 

Their favourite part was the goats.  Kian and Henial’s worst part was digging hole, Meg and Emma’s worst part was carrying brambles.

Farm Hands Stories

This week Sunday Farm Hands got really experimental with the herbs growing on the farm.  Here on of them tells us all about it in their own words……

First we went to the garden to try some herbs. We smelt them and tasted them. I really liked the sage, it was hard and chewy with a flavour I really liked. The herbs we tried were (clockwise from the top) parsley, rosemary, fennel, sage, marjoram and chives. After that we washed them and put them in cups  with some beaten egg and popped them in the microwave for about 30 seconds to make mini omelettes . We then put them in two bowls and ate them all up! Sage was still a favourite, but I also really liked the marjoram.  Then we took some cuttings from the herbs and took them to the polytunnel  and put them in plant pots, to make new plants. We also took some plants home for cooking . After that I filled up some watering cans and watered some plants near the polytunnel. At the end we went to put the guinea pigs and chickens away. I carried a chicken and a guinea pig into the barn.

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.

 

Volunteer Stories

Paul has been volunteering with us for 5 months. He helps with farm maintenance such as fencing, cutting the grass, cutting weeds back and painting.  He’s recently done a great job painting our vegetable stall, guinea pig run and the front gate.

Paul says volunteering on the farm has really helped his peace of mind.  He much prefers to be out in the fresh air and he likes to have a job that he can see makes a difference. For example he loves it when he can see people enjoying Community Orchard after he’s cut the grass. It’s important to him to be able to a job that he can work of from start to finish.

Paul loves volunteering at the farm as it’s a nice place to come and visit and he can see life carryng on all around him.

paul painting

Volunteer Stories

Andrew has been volunteering on the farm twice a week for 8 years!  He loves coming, and turns up whatever the weather, rain or shine.

His favourite jobs are collecting the eggs, refilling the poultry drinkers and giving the chickens their corn.

Today Andrew was collecting windfalls for the pigs.  We have Gloucester Old Spot pigs – another name for them is Orchard Pigs as they used to be kept in the apple orchards that were once very common in the west country.

Andrew is also branching out and volunteering in our Community Cafe at weekends. He likes working there as it is very different from the farm – he has to dress smartly and stay nice and clean.

Andrew used the farm’s tablet to take some pictures of his favourite animals.