Wick Court

FARM NEWS

We have had a packed season of visitors since our last update and were honoured to welcome both HRH Princess Anne to the farm, and a new group, Netherley Youth and Community Initiative, a Liverpool based community group offering recreation and educational opportunities for local young people.

We were also pleased to have the opportunity to work with local families connected to the care system, through Gloucestershire Virtual School. Following this successful (and hot!) summer, our staff, volunteers, and animals are looking forward to some colder temperatures at Wick Court.

During harvesting season, the children have been busy collecting apples, pears, and blackberries, and visiting groups will continue to press this into juice for their breakfast and use them for preparing seasonal dishes in our cookery sessions. The garden is thriving with fresh produce from previous months of arduous work, and our groups will continue to collect vegetables including chard, onions, and potatoes. By the time you read this, we will have started our coppicing routines, taking rods of willow for fence making and weaving. Thanks to the support of Gloucestershire County Council, we will also be planting 700 hazel trees on a wildlife walk, to create a better heaven for birds.

Our biodiversity sessions have proved very popular, and we will be using our binoculars and microscopes to look closely at insects over the winter. Oldbury sessions will continue throughout winter, which means the walk to and from the dairy becomes more of an adventure! When the children arrive, they will feed cattle and learn about the processes of commercial milk production. If they are lucky, they may see a birth! Back at Wick Court our winter lambing season will start in November with the arrival of more Dorset and Greyface lambs. As part of the preparations for these new arrivals, we have developed an area for children to clean and process the sheep’s fleece for crafts.

Beekeeping sessions have now ended as we have extracted the honey from summer, but children visiting in autumn and winter will reap the reward of this work and get to taste our very own Wick Court honey! And finally, in early January we will be holding the annual Wassail event in the orchard. Children visiting that week will have the once in a lifetime experience of attendance at a centuries old event within rural communities, which celebrates the apple tree.