It’s always so good to welcome young people back to the Waterloo farm in September, as the farm becomes much quieter over the summer months with our small staff team taking leave and much of the activity being events such as weddings or corporate away days.
This term we have three schools visiting for six-week day programmes: EKO Pathways, Phoenix Academy (in partnership with AllChild) and Archbishop Tenison Church of England High School in Croydon.
EKO Pathways is a special school for pupils with social, emotional, behavioural and mental health needs in East London. In recent years, each September we’ve welcomed their new cohort of Year 7 pupils to the farm to help with their transition and to encourage the forming of positive peer relationships. This year’s group have been a fantastic, enthusiastic and curiosity-full collection of young people. We really enjoyed one pupil this week talk about how many of his ambitions he’d fulfilled in just one session – touching a rabbit, getting into the sheep pen, holding a chicken, finding an egg and getting to cook! He contributed the most during his check-outs to date, sharing his excitement at achieving all these things and his new idea of a “student takeover” of the school canteen kitchen.
It’s lovely to have students from Archbishop Tenison back on the farm after an absence of a few years. One young man attending is now in Year 11 and first came to our farm in Year 8, so it’s been great to catch up with him and continue to support him in his final year of school.
We were donated three new guinea pigs over the summer, all from the same household. Rodney and Noodle, the original inhabitants, took a while to adjust to the arrival of Panda, Tiramisu and Perpignan – and demonstrated this by relocating to their outside run for a few days, but we’re pleased to report that they’re now getting along well. The guinea pigs are so popular with our visiting young people, and holding them can really help individuals to calm down and feel peaceful for a while.
It’s been another good year for growing squash on the farm and we have a few absolute monsters here. We can confirm that the Big Max variety get very large indeed! We’ve already been cooking with them with school groups, and we’ll have enough to make plenty of soup to share at our Harvest Festival community event on Sunday November 3rd, 12 – 3pm.
Craft work has been growing in popularity amongst young people on the farm, we think partly because it offers them quiet, focused time and a chance to shape the agenda and suggest ideas for future weeks. As an example, we’ve bought a wood whittling kit after a request from young people, and this week saw its first outing. We’re also going to start some clay work, incorporating found materials around the farm.
The events season on the farm, which brings in much of our income, is slowly winding down with a wedding at the start of October being our final private event of the year. We hope our team members who help to run these events enjoy a more restful time ahead as Autumn kicks in.
