Thursday 30 September 2010

FACE annual meeting 2010 Leckford Estate

Had an interesting day at the Leckford Estate, (after finding the Village Hall as my sat nav doesn't quite pin point the whole postcode! )
John Lee (Chairman of FACE) set the scene for the day and we had a welcome and introduction by Malcolm Crabtree (Managing Director of Leckford) who gave us an insight into the afternoon's trip.
The estate is a worker's democracy it was purchased my John Spedan Lewis of Oxford Street London in 1928 and formed into a Ltd company in 1929 and now forms an important part of Waitrose.
The Leckford Farm:
  • produces 30 ton of mushrooms per week
  • 230 acres of fruit but the harvest this year is less than last year being approx 800 ton not 1200 ton
  • Organic processing dairy unit
  • Winter Wheat milled into Leckford Flour
  • Oats
  • Spring Barley
  • Free range Egg Flocks
  • Free range Chicken flock
We were then given a talk by Amanda Dance Event and Education Manger followed by Mary Noyce Consultant to the Rural dimension.
Meg Hart FACE regional co ordinator gave us highlights of the work in her area in the last 12 months and this was followed by Bill Graham on FACE's acheivements this year.
John Lee summed up the presentations and asked Sir Don Curry to give the closing remarks which gave us a positive outlook for the future of farm education and working with partners to acheive this.
After a superb lunch from the farm produce we climbed aboard the tractor and trailers for a very informative tour of the Farm and Longstock Park Water Gardens

We won Innovative learning with Bayer / FACE awards 2010

"Farmers on tour" we were invited to the Tower of London for lunch in the New Armouries Banqueting suite it is called "new" as it originated in the 17th and 18th centuries please see The Tower of London for more details

We won the BAYER/FACE Innovative learning award and were presented by Jim Paice Minister for Agriculture and Gary Richardson from the Countryside Foundation for Education


For more resources for Farm education please visit the FACE website

Friday 10 September 2010

Very Busy Summer, awards and Harvest!

Sorry for no posts but we have been updating the website and now have 3 cameras live!!

We all took our family holiday to the Royal Welsh (that's us and the children we didn't take the sheep!). Lots to see including the world Golden Shears competition and new Food Hall.

I was lucky to be runner up in the NFU/Natwest Welsh Rural Champion Awards.


We managed to get our Harvest in though the rain in August did mean it was a little here and a little there so silage and wrapped bale silage this year no Hay :-(
We also managed to get some barley straw from a neighbouring farm in the Vale of Glamorgan.

We were also nominated for the Bayer/FACE innovative learning awards story to follow shortly.......

The Red deer have increased we bought in 5 young hinds so hopefully lots of deer calves next year.

some of our Deer's friends at Blaenhow