We are delighted to have our visiting groups back after a short break. Cardiff High School and Harris Academy Crystal Palace had a great time milking Polly our Jersey cow, sorting lambs ready to go to market, and baking delicious bread.
Some of the team headed to London to revisit groups. Laura and Luke travelled to Hackney to meet up with one of our Unaccompanied Asylum Seeker groups who visited the farm in August. Whilst enjoying pizza together, memories of a wonderful week were shared, and it was clear that they had since further developed positive friendships with each other.
On a different day, Laura joined young people and staff from The Baobab Centre for Young Survivors in Exile. The Monmouth team had a magical week with these brilliant young people over the summer. Pizza was on the menu again, and whilst sharing a tasty slice or two, everyone enjoyed checking-in and watching the video highlights from our week together. We are so lucky at Jamie’s Farm to be able to share our beautiful environments with such a broad range of young people.
Dan, our Farm Manager, attended ACE (Action for Climate Emergency) Monmouth Festival, speaking at the Savoy Theatre. He spoke about Jamie’s Farm and how we engage children with the environment, food and wellbeing. Back at the farm, Dan welcomed the Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty study tour of 40 local councillors and CEOs of local organisations to see and hear about our work.
Out on the farm, we collected a new teaser ram from Hereford, which has been put in with our ewes. His presence will help the ewes get ready for mating season. At the same time, we picked up a pregnant gilt (a pig that has not produced a litter before), to join our family of animals at Monmouth. Excitingly, we have started developing our soil testing programme. We aim to establish long-term data, which will enable us to track changes, and hopefully, improvements to our land. This will then influence our land management decisions.
What will next month bring?
