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Kent - Mrs. Juliet FentonTreasurer: Jenny Weight LIVING LAND SCHOOLS DAY
AGM - 19th April 2004
After our AGM last Wednesday evening, held at Juliet's house, WFU President, Ionwen Lewis stayed the night with Juliet and then they went to Maureen Friday for coffee on Thursday morning before returning to Wales. She loved the Kentish oasthouses she saw on the train journey down and wanted to come and see the one on our farm - which houses my sons cars and Maureen's ferrets! She was interested to hear how the oasthouses were used for drying the hops for beer. A lot of Kentish farms have the farmhouse, Wealden barn and an oasthouse but sadly most have been converted into houses now. KENT SHOW 16th, 17th and 18th July 2004 WFU will be featuring the four types of picnic baskets and filling them up with good local Kentish produce. Images of the stand:
Three or four hundred chipolatas were given away as samples - bought from a local butcher who kindly gave us free sausages and bacon for our Farmhouse Breakfast events in January. This event, the first of it's kind in Kent, was organised by the Kent County Agricultural Society for 3000 Key Stage 2 Primary School children. At the pre-fair meeting for the teachers, Juliet Fenton told them who the WFU were and then Maureen Friday explained how our Farming in the Classroom could provide them with a visit to their school after the fair, to consolidate the children's experience. Maureen detailed, with a flow chart, how the talks would progress and fit into the curriculum and the areas they covered. Over a dozen schools signed up there and then for a free talk and many have come in since. So Kent members will be extremely busy for the rest of this term travelling from one end of Kent to the other. On the day the stand was very popular with a continual flow of excited children. With day old chicks to look at and listen to and many different coloured eggs to examine first, they then made their way around the marquee via the HGCA Cereal Story board, to find out about milking. All exclaimed about the weight of the clusters on display. To finish their visit they played the strawberry game, which was a great favourite if somewhat rowdy at times. Maureen had a ten-minute slot on BBC Radio Kent, which was covering the Show, to explain what we were doing there. Everyone involved felt it was a great success and already plans are going ahead for next year's event. Although tired and rather hoarse by the end of the day Juliet, Maureen and Nicky felt they had got an amazing amount of information over to the children in an exciting way and the whole show had stimulated their and their teachers interest in farming and agriculture. The Kent County Agricultural Society organised their first ever Schools Farm Fair – The Living Land’ for 66 Kent schools on 6th May at their Showground at Detling. Kent WFU offered a follow-up talk to the schools and fourteen accepted the offer straight away. We hoped to extend the experience for the children and give them more information about our farms, where their food comes from, the environment and give them some ideas on sensible eating. It’s all right, I told the Branch Committee, I’ll do two or three school visits a week until the end of the Summer Term. It wasn’t that simple, they wanted them before the end of the half term and so with members help, I visited 14 schools in two weeks and spoke to 1,010 children, travelling from one end of Kent to the other – my school marathon. It became obvious that the children, teachers and accompanying parents had had a wonderful time, and had learnt and remembered a great deal. The Sheep Show was an obvious favourite, with the Wild Bird Show coming a close second. Many recalled that cows were milked twice a day, with the girls especially remembering the chicks I had taken along and the boys enthusing about tractors and combine harvesters. What a shame they didn’t see them working and weren’t allowed near them because of health and safety regulations. It was not just the children and teachers who gained from the visits, I too have learnt a lot. How to get their attention when it was wandering, dealing with naughty children, when to change the subject, and how to calm them down. I was lucky and experienced no bad behaviour but this might have been because one teacher assured me when we arrived, that the two worst boys had been excluded the day before. At one village school, a pupil had just punched a teacher, jumped a fence, and was being at that moment hotly pursued across a field by the headmistress. The teachers all filled in a form to say how they found the talks and the first school wanted more child participation. Thereafter, at all subsequent schools finished with an adapted version of the HGCA Balanced Plate Game that went down extremely well – if rather noisily! We are hoping that the other schools at the Fair will contact us for visits later in the year, because from the teachers comments, they have gained much knowledge on food and farming that they would not have found elsewhere. WFU must try to persuade other County Show Societies to hold these excellent invaluable educational days. (Maureen Friday WFU Kent Branch) Visit to St Francis 16th March 2004 by Maureen Friday Pictures of Maureen Friday's visit to St Francis school with her chicks: Farmhouse Breakfast Week - 30th January 2004
The local Mayor called in to wish them a happy breakfast and afterwards they had the chance to see their other visitors - a dozen day old chicks! Oil Seed Rape Rumours have been circulating that ADM, the UK's major oilseed crusher at Erith in Kent are not taking UK rape seed at the moment. The NFU has checked this out and can confirm they are not true. ADM are crushing entirely UK rape, the bulk of which is delivered by boats, loaded out of ports up the east coast. This is ADM managing their supply and throughput at a busy time and reduces their need to compete for lorries quite as fiercely. Strawberry Day 2003
AGM 2003 Kent WFU held their AGM at Tenterden's Eight Bells on 12th February. Their guset speaker was John Leigh-Pemberton, chairman of the Kent Wildlife Trust. He descirbed how the modern farming methods necessary to compete on a global market, have robbed many farmland birds of their habitats. In some cases, such as skylarks and lapwings, these numbers have declined by over 50%. Mr Leigh-Pemberton pointed out that, with the imaginitive use of set-aside land, most arable farmers could do something to redress the balance. Programme for 2003:
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90 children in year 2 at Tenterden Infants School in Kent had
their Wake-up Shaken-up when the Kent WFU ladies cooked breakfast for them.
With rolls filled with locally produced sausages, bacon, scrambled egg and
with milk and apple juice to drink, they all tucked in. 