Expanding The Willows

By Dean Sherwin, Care Farms Manager

Since opening in November 2020 with eight students, an office, a classroom, a kitchen and a toilet, The Willows Care Farm has grown considerably.

We now have 39 students attending each week and the site infrastructure has developed accordingly. We have two outdoor field shelters, a polytunnel, tool store and workshop, raised beds, the ever-growing Willow World and two pig paddocks with housing. Our major development this year has been a new office and staffroom, which has been generously funded by the Garfield Weston Foundation. Our old office in the main stable block has become an additional indoor space, enabling us to support and nurture more children and young people in nature-based activities.

The triple aspect windows in the office have created long sightlines across the site and as I write this I can see one child barrowing soil, another trimming the dead hedge around the fire circle, one playing in the mud kitchen, one heeling in some hedgerow trees, plus a little lunchtime cricket game.

Wonderful!

Enquire about corporate volunteering to help improve our care farms and nature reserves by contacting lukem@wiltshirewildlife.org