Tuppenny Barn Organic Farm

Earlier this week we had a wonderful visit to Tuppenny Barn with our Homeschooling Group. Tuppenny Barn is a 2 acre organic smallholding which provides organic fruit and veg to the local community, as well as promoting sustainable working practises to encourage others to work with nature. Hannah was so excited about this trip as she loves anything to do with nature and it didn't disappoint! The children were given a tour of the farm, they were told all about the different crops, eco-friendly planting, composting and building, shown how a beehive works and taught about caring for bees, and did some pond dipping and learned why a pond is so important for wildlife.


Tuppenny Barn's polytunnel,
Beka telling the children about the pond,
Hannah examining her finds,
the pond!
Learning about the crops,
and the living fencing.
In the orchard,
a new bee hive - Beka showed the children how the bee hive is constructed and told them about the different jobs the bees have in the hives.

Oliver in the bee keepers hat - how cute is he ?
A beehive in action!
Maggie explaining about climbing crops,
Herbs and vegetables planted companionably.


Salad crops.
All the children were invited to taste as many herbs as they wanted and Hannah discovered a few she had never tried before, and liked them :-)
Busy bees were everywhere!
Learning about the fruit crops,
and sustainable, eco friendly planting. Maggie is showing the children their coconut seedling pots and also helped them all to make pots from old newspapers to plant up and take home. Even the compost is coconut compost instead of peat as the extraction of peat not only disturbs rare wildlife but also releases an estimated million tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year.
And finally, the children visited the recycled greenhouse! This greenhouse was built by visiting school children last year and is made of bamboo canes and plastic drinks bottles on a wooden frame - it is amazingly simple and really effective!
Hannah and her friend Melissa thought it was excellent, and Hannah wants one in the garden now!!
We enjoyed out trip to Tuppenny Barn so much that we signed up for a weekly organic veg bag which we are really looking forward to :-)