Mounts Bay Academy.

Last Monday and Tuesday (20th and 21st April) the farm played host to 21 students plus staff from Mounts Bay Academy in Penzance, as part of their activities week. Monday was an educational day with the theme "growing", and Tuesday was a volunteer session with the theme "changing an area/space".

On Monday, the students split into four teams, and undertook a carousel of 45-minute activities comprising:-
1) Tour of the vegetable production areas, including tasting and harvesting;
2) Meet the chicken flocks and collect eggs;
3) Composting workshop, with a chance to get hands-on in our compost production;
4) Seed-sowing exercise, sowing trays of plug-plants to use on the farm later this season (celery, cauliflower, cabbage, kale etc..).
Lunch consisted of soup made from 14 different vegetables and herbs harvested from the farm, with a quiz to see how many they could identify - a commendable 11 out of 14!

On Tuesday, the day's focus was the community woodland in our far field, during which the students transplanted almost 200 trees from our nursery into the woodland, protected them with stakes and guards; then checked all of the thousands of trees, guards and stakes in the woodland; and finally trampled the bracken and brambles that are encroaching into the top corner. All this was finished by lunchtime, so the afternoon session was spent harvesting carrots in the market garden to allow the ground to be prepared for our next crop.

We'd like to thank the students for their good work and good behavior over the two days, the academy staff for choosing the community farm, and the team of farm volunteers who helped facilitate the programme.