Thursday, 23 February 2012
Posted by Sallie on 22 February 2012
Check out BBC 2 tonight, Wednesday 22nd February, from 8pm for Bees, Butterflies & Blooms presented by Sarah Raven, followed by Winterwatch with Chris Packham, Kate Humble and Martin Hughes-Games.
Posted by lucy on 30 January 2012
Exciting times for the Education Team at Farm this week-we’re going on a field trip to the Lake District! We’re visiting the Honister Slate Mine, http://www.honister.com/ in search of a giant lump of slate. Why, you may ask, would an Urban Farm be procuring several tons of slate rock? It’s part of a larger project to create a giant rock timeline in our Scothall Field. We run a variety of school’s projects at the Farm, one of which is ‘Rocks and Soil’ http://www.mvuf.org.uk/education/schools-projects/rocks-and-soil/ in which we introduce school children to basic geology. The rocks we look at are all hundreds of millions of years old, (try working out how many noughts there are in one hundred million!) and it’s hard to convey how old that actually is, especially related to how long humans, animals and even plants have been around for.
Honister Slate Mine
So we’ve had the bright idea of installing a giant rock timeline; pupils at the Farm have worked hard to clear four large squares of earth, which is then covered with substrate,(the crushed up parent rock) all ready for the giant rock to be put on top of it. The timeline has been carefully measured out by two of our graduate volunteers, (thank you Caroline and Gemma) so that the rocks are put in order of age. Right at the end of our timeline will be human beings. The scale we’ve used is 40cm=1 million years. Guess what distance we take up? (Clue, it’s not very far and you’ll find the answer somewhere on our Facebook page). So visitors and pupils alike can come to the Farm, walk our timeline and touch the rocks that have been here far longer than any living creature. Amazing huh?
We’ll let you know how we get on, some of us are a bit claustrophobic and the weather forecast looks pretty chilly too, fingers crossed!
Substrate base, ready for its rock!
Posted by lucy on 23 January 2012
Our hidden bird hide is proving hugely popular with all manner of birds this Winter. We’ve got all of the tit family, a wren, a pair of bullfinches and even a tree creeper has been spotted! This could have something to do with the fact that we’ve recently made a couple of improvements to it; we’ve squirrel proofed our feeders and added to them so that now our lucky birds have a choice of six feeders to munch through! As I type this from our office I can hear a cacophony of noise as they squabble and jostle for position, (the robins are bravest and the male bullfinch is a big bully)!
Did you know it’s the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch this weekend, 28th and 29th January? We’d really like people to come and do it here on the Farm! It’s a brilliant way of discovering which birds are around and monitoring bird numbers across the country. All the details are here, along with a sheet for you to record your results http://www.rspb.org.uk/birdwatch/ All you have to do is make a note of the highest number of each bird species seen on the ground (not flying over) at any one time over the course of an hour and then record your results on the website. Easy peasy! Oh and let us know what you find too!
Calling all budding wildlife photographers………..There’s so much wildlife on the Farm; we’ve seen red kites, roe deer, owlets, water voles (Ratty!) and rare birds, but we’ve never been able to capture decent images, particularly of the birds. Our Farm camera is just not up to the task! If anyone wants to come to the Farm and take some images for us, we’d be hugely grateful. They would potentially be shared on our website and social media sites and we’d credit the photos if you’d like. If you’re interested please email us at education@mvuf.org.uk.
