Hints of Spring

The past few days have been very like spring, with the temperature reaching 24c.  A little hint of things to come, and a reminder that we need to be concentrating on our summer crops. Work has started on the tomato beds and seedlings have been potted up .It is the start of a very busy time but it was lovely to be able to have a class from our local Steiner school out for a farm visit.

I have had a long association with the school. Two of my daughters went there and I worked as a teacher there for 6 years.Over the years we have had visits from classes from Kindy through to the high school, and the tour can be quite specific or an open farm tour. Today we had a wander around looking at and petting animals- the cows, the horse, guinea pigs but mostly the dogs. Both the dogs are extremely child friendly and they usually steal the show. You can't see her but it's Aggie that all the children are crouched around in the photo above. In the background you can see our 2 house cows, Bella and Patsy. At another time an older class helped make a compost heap, and at another time a younger class had a bee experience, where Mark dressed up in all his bee gear, and showed the children the smoker and we extracted honey from some frames which Mark had robbed the day before.They each were able to take a small jar of honey home with them.

We have had other schools come out for the day, and last year one class camped for 2 nights in tents. Another class from that same school has asked if they could come and camp also, later in the year when the weather warms up. It is a wonderful thing to be able to offer these children a farm experience!