Archived News

14th July 2016

Our most recent farm assessment has been for the Learning Outside the Classroom Quality Badge and I'm proud to say that we have been successful in achieving this again.

The Country Trust co-ordinator for Tower Hamlets and Lewisham organised a recent visit from St. George's School, Perry Vale.  We were delighted to host a farm visit for this Year 6 group for the day and found the children to be a great credit to their school, being interested and engaged throughout the day in learning amongst other things about where their food comes from, how it's reared and grown, traceability and Red Tractor Assurance. 

We provide free Educational visits to our working farm to engage with groups of all ages and abilities, many of whom have never visited a farm or the countryside before.

We were pleased that the storms on referendum day finally blew past the farm in time for an evening visit by 2nd Burpham Brownies who are working towards their 'Growing Up Wild' badge. 

During the previous week the Brownies had constructed scare-crows with straw grown on the farm and with memorable clothes , such as a sweatshirt to remember a Brownie's  Granddad by (he was a smallholder) or a favourite summer hat.  The scare crows will come in handy as there are hundreds of rooks about at the moment.

Preparations for harvest are underway with the grain stores being cleaned;  dusting down the walls, removing cobwebs and vacuuming the entire floor and under-floor air ducts.

There is a large area to be cleaned in a variety of grain stores and the cleaning takes weeks getting into every nook.

A turning area has been created in the field outside the new grainstore and will be helpful when working in and around this area. 

We recently organised a First Aid course for our team, tailored to the type of injuries that might be found in the agricultural sector.

Whilst it's good to have the First Aid skills we hope we don't need to use them. The use of a tourniquet is being reintroduced in First Aid training, in light of trauma incidents across numerous cities in the past few years.

Within a week three groups of cattle have escaped due to  different causes; a gate left open, not having a coral system in a rented field that would benefit from one and a fallen tree leaving a large gap in a fence-line.  But the results are usually similar; a lot of people running around on uneven ground for a couple of hours trying to head-off the cattle, often in darkness and wearing the wrong footwear pulled on in haste!

And as was the case this week, a field of wheat was trampled by one group and maize was both eaten and trampled by another group.

On the upside,  a phone call just after midnight from a neighbour probably helped reduce the distance of travel for the third group of escapees who I was informed were heading along the A25.  What I didn't know at that point was where the cattle had escaped from and whether they were young calves from Damphurst Lane or older cattle from the Glebe.

They turned out to be the larger cattle and a docile bunch,  which is an advantage when trying to handle them in the dark.

After a couple of hours with help from the neighbour and staff the cattle were returned to the field.  The fence was checked and a fairly large gap in the fence found and blocked off until a repair could be made in daylight.

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