Archived News

1st March 2008 Paula Matthews

Yesterday was a first for us.  We had our first school visit to Manor Farm since becoming fully accredited by Countryside Educational Visits Accreditation Scheme (CEVAS).

I woke early and then couldn’t get back to sleep.  The morning dawned fine and the sun was shining for a while.  A ewe had twins during the night, which was excellent timing!

So with a list of things still to do, I went down to the office to make a start.  I made a few notes of items I would need to cover in the Introduction and Health and Safety talk, printed off a quiz just in case the weather changed, put signs out on the road-side for the coach driver and fed and watered the hens.  At 7am I popped back indoors to get children up, breakfasted and off to school.

Our boys wanted to stay and help and it’s a shame they couldn’t because they love that sort of thing; helping to prepare information boards, making treasure boxes and showing people around the farm.

St Ives School arrived on time and 18 little girls emerged from the coach in matching blue raincoats and some were sensibly sporting an array of woolly hats. There was an immediate reaction from these five and six year olds to the farmyard aroma, lots of twitching noses!

We began by looking at the calves and took five girls at a time into a calf pen so they could actually touch the animals and feel the warmth and softness of the young livestock whilst hearing all about them. 

There was a real fascination with the automatic milk machine. Triggered by a calf collar, the children could watch as the milk powder and water were mixed together and sucked away by the calf. We talked about the weight of a typical adult heifer or steer (having already described each of these) and compared this with the weight of a man and then with the children themselves, the class gathered around as we formed an imaginary cow with a head (wearing a striking pink and white hat), tail and four stomachs!

The children gave names to two Belted Galloway calves - Mandy and Morag and then moved on to the sheep and lambs which everybody had the opportunity to hold or touch while I spoke about everything from teeth to tails. 

A lamb had been rejected by his mother during the morning and the children were able to see first hand how animals sometimes treat their offspring, the effect on the lamb and how the lamb would now be hand reared.

The whole idea of providing visits to Manor Farm is to give an interesting and enjoyable educational visit, to show what happens on a real working farm and how food is grown and reared and I think we achieved our aims.  Considering that we are a working farm and not a farm park, work had to continue on the farm; a fertiliser rep came at lunch time for a meeting with Laurence, field work was ongoing and we had a delivery of calves which the children were able to watch, however we did postpone a collection of maize from the barn being used by the school!

All in all the visit was very successful and despite the bitterly cold wind that picked up during the day, the girls did seem to have a good time and learn more about food and farming.