We have been creating a brilliant allotment area for our young people to work on. We have a beautiful greenhouse, raised vegetable boxes and a cold frame – currently being renovated!
This is a great space to learn all aspects of horticulture and take part in planting various fruit and vegetable seeds and seedlings, pruning, weeding, watering, feeding and harvesting.
This includes a wide variety of activities for example:
Woodwork – Our woodwork shed provides a lovely space to be creative and also practical with wood. We use pallet wood or donations from wood yards for our work. The young people have designed and made bird feeders, bird boxes, housing and play equipment for the animals as well as using wood to create gates for the enclosures and mend fences and animal housing.
Cooking – we have a well equipped kitchen with oven and hob, students are given the opportunity to use the equipment to make their lunch each day if they wish. We also do regular cooking activities to teach life skills and encourage healthy eating. When our produce from the allotment area is ready for harvest, we use this to make a variety of recipes.
Our young people really love to spend time with the animals, through all of our furry friends we are teaching responsibility and empathy.
Each day our animals need feeding, houses cleaning, providing with water, handling and general care. This has to happen whatever the weather which teaches the young people resilience and perseverance.
We love watching our young people develop their skills and knowledge with the animals and it has been great to see them use this experience to move onto college, employment or to enjoy having pets at home.
It is also very rewarding to observe how the animals support the young people to develop positive mental health and wellbeing by just spending time with them.
You can find out all about our lovely residents on the Our animals page.
We are lucky to have a beautiful pony named Ruby on the farm, she is a 7yrs old Welsh mountain pony and she has lived with us for four years.
Young people work with her on the ground (no riding), we spend time grooming her, hoof picking and general health checks. They also learn what the different brushes are used for and how we should behave around her. We also teach them about head collars, rugs and fly masks – why these are used and how to put them on and take them off safely.
Then we care for Ruby’s environment by mucking out her stable and making her bed for the night and tidying up the paddock for her day ahead. We spend time watching her in the paddock and stable to learn about pony behaviour and body language.
There are always jobs to do around the farm and we like our young people to be involved in all aspects. They have helped to build enclosures, mend fences and put sheds up. We also have to keep on top of the weeds and make sure our vegetables and flowers have space to grow.
Our hedges and trees require pruning and Nicki our tree expert who has worked for the National Forestry association for many years guides us through this with our young people.
We currently have our in-house accreditation which consists of evidence sheets in our 5 Key Areas of Learning.
Once a student has completed a sheet they receive a certificate of achievement.
We provide schools, parents and carers with reports twice year, end of the Autumn Term and end of the Summer term.
These include photos of what the young person has been doing on the farm and a written report of targets, challenges and most importantly, their achievements.
