ONE YEAR ON… SCHOOL FARM GROWS WITH VITAL SUPPORT FROM PUPILS

Ayear ago, Hailsham News visited Grovelands School Farm when it was just starting out — just a few animal pens and some fledgling plans to bring the community together through basic farming and animal care. We returned recently to see how the farm had grown and what has changed.

What we found was an amazing example of how one person’s dedication can create something truly wonderful. Meeting Heidi Greenwood, the founder of Grovelands School Farm, we couldn’t help but be inspired by her enthusiasm and positivity.

She told us about all the work that has gone into building the farm, and all that is still left to do, but most importantly, she talked about how the farm is bringing people together and helping children learn about animal welfare and where their food comes from. We spoke to her about how the farm has come together over the past year and what the plans were for the future…

Heidi told us: “We’ve got a lot more animals here than we had a year ago. We now have four goats, two donkeys, two ponies, two pigs, chickens, quails, bantams, guinea pigs, rabbits.

The farm also has the added edition of a domestic dog and a cat. Through the hard work of the volunteers, we have built a really wonderful provision for the children, that they actively engage in.

They do all the mucking out, the grooming — it’s not a petting farm. It’s a farm where the children are really being taught animal husbandry, they’re being taught about the welfare of animals.

We’ve had children here holding donkeys while the vet’s been out. We’ve had children here, watching the goats have their feet trimmed, watching vaccinations happening.

So they really have been hands on in all aspects of animal husbandry, which was the vision of the farm. We didn’t want it to be a petting farm, we wanted it to be a provision where the children really learnt animal husbandry and that’s been the fruition of their hard work over the last year.

We’ve really supported the children to develop those skills with the supervision of the adults to look after the animals.”

How important are those skills?

“It gives them opportunities. It gives them a taste, a tiny little snippet of something that they might like to go into. We’ve already got some Year 6 children that are talking about wanting to go to Plumpton College, to study agriculture.

These are children that haven’t experienced animals before — potentially might live in flats without gardens.

We’ve got children here that have asked me if there is somewhere they can go and learn to be a gardener because they’ve enjoyed the horticulture side.

Last year the children — led by the adults — they harvested the encouraged children to get involved with selling our produce that we call them Farm Market afternoons outside the school gates where children have sold the eggs and the fresh vegetables that they’ve grown and harvested themselves.

We’re teaching children as part of that about where their food comes from, about sustainable living. That’s a huge part of what we teach the children up here.

Although we don’t slaughter our animals here, I speak to children all the time about the purpose of these animals in bigger commercial farms, and how the animals are sorted for food. I’ve talked about food miles, animal welfare, the introduction of some of our animals that potentially would have gone into the food chain had they not come to us, which is the reality of some of the animals here — it’s a fantastic learning experience for the children. That’s the reality of it. When I talk to them about the chickens and I say: “Hands up if you like chicken nuggets and McDonald’s,” and I say, “Okay, so Dolly, the hybrid chicken is that bird that is used for that food production,” and it’s just a really good experience for them to learn these things.”

It’s a lot of work to keep the farm going. Heidi explains that it’s a 24/7 job. She’s constantly on call on weekends, days off and even when she’s on holiday. The last time she was on holiday in Spain she was checking in with the volunteers every day.

“It’s made a lot easier by the amazing families that we have at Grovelands School. Over the last year I’ve worked very hard to foster the sense of community for this farm.

My vision, and the school’s vision, was that this was going to be a community-built farm and it has been. We haven’t paid a penny of labour for any external people to come in and build this farm.

It’s been built entirely on the goodwill and the generosity of our families, and grandparents, hugely led by my husband who’s a skilled builder, so he’s been here pretty much every Saturday for the last year with me building it. This couldn’t have happened without Gary.

But what we’ve done is we’ve incorporated the real community to things, the tree surgery was done by a local business. We’ve had some wonderful people coming in and helping. We also have some lovely teams here at the school.

On a Wednesday, the Dell, which is our unit for our autistic children, are responsible and in charge of the farm on a Wednesday, the nursery are in charge of the farm on a Friday, which involves the nursery team and a couple of volunteers coming up.

We have the two year olds feeding, mucking out, watering, sweeping, really being involved in those things.

But it’s a big responsibility and there does need to be somebody here on the weekends, if there is a problem with the animals, and I’m employed to be that person. It is a challenge that I really wanted to be involved in, and I’m hugely passionate about supporting children to learn these skills.”

We asked Heidi what the plans are for the future and whether there are proposals for growing it any further.

“There are two or three projects that we’re aiming to do this year, the children have led the build of this farm quite a lot. They wanted a pond, so we built a pond. They wanted tortoises, so we built an area for tortoises, so it’s very child-led, which is wonderful.

That beautiful oak tree there, as you can see through the window, the children have decided they’d like a tree castle with a slide, so we’re going to build them a tree castle on the farm, then we want to build a duck enclosure behind that hedge.

We need a big safe up-and-over duck enclosure to build. Then, in line with the horticulture project, I’d like to build a bog garden for them so that they can learn and understand how to grow carnivorous plants and what the carnivorous plants do, what the habitat looks like, what the sort of the ecological issues around that area as well.

So those are our projects for this year, as well as the other things that we’ve really focused on this year that I’ve spent a lot of time working on is how the farm can support the curriculum for the children.

We’re looking at the science curriculum, what links can they do around hibernation growing of vegetables, life cycles and things around our PSHE (Personal, Social, Health & Economic) curriculum, I think that’s really important that there’s a lot of really strong links going towards that you saw with Betsy the dog. With the children learning to read with Betsy we’ve built a reading area there to sort of really promote reading across the school, and just by creating another environment where children feel they can come they can sit quietly with the dog, it’s very therapeutic and really developed their literacy skills.”

Heidi was asked how the finance for the school farm is managed given that, like every school, budgets are tight despite wanting to give the children the best possible learning experience.

“I think it’s down to the really tight planning and the vision of our senior leadership team led by Mr. Golding and Mrs. Swain — they had the vision of really thinking about what provisions we can offer our children here at Grovelands School.

The farm was certainly one of those visions they had that’s funded initially, the setup was from the school. In the first three weeks that I started, I just sat in a room quietly, and I applied for lots of grants, so throughout the first six months, we received some really nice funding and the rest of it was funded by the school.

It’s obviously my responsibility to make sure that we stay within the budget that I’m set each year. Generally, the running costs of the farm are paid for by our after school clubs.

We run after school clubs five days a week, where it’s very inclusive. Any child can sign up for it, we charge £2.50 a session and the money that’s generated from that pays for all the feed, bedding and those sorts of things. I think for those children, to have an hour or so of farm provision at the end of the day for £2.50 is a lovely opportunity.

The other really exciting things are that — back in the summer we took children to the South of England Show and some of our children showed our pygmy goats that we bought and one of our goats, ‘Jubilee’ came Second Reserve Champion in the Kids’ Class, which is really exciting.

We’re giving our children opportunities, taking our animals out — two of our boys are planning on taking the pigs this year, we’re going to show the pigs which is going to be hugely exciting for them.

What was wonderful was when the children showed their pygmy goats, there was about 50 Grovelands’ families and supporters in the show ring that all came to the show to watch them, which was a really good opportunity for them. We’re really getting our names out and about when we’re hoping to do some more different agricultural shows this year.

Again, choosing different children to give them the opportunity of being proud to show what we’re doing is amazing.”