Why not become a member of Bath City Farm?

If you would like to receive a copy of our all singing, all dancing newsletter, in glorious colour and with pictures, please consider becoming a member of Bath City Farm. Membership only costs £8 a year (concessions available). Your membership fee helps to support our running costs, e.g. salaries, site work, newsletter and of course our animals.

Bags of Community Spirit

Once again our annual Litter pick was a great success and showed there is plenty of community spirit in the area. Spread over two days this year, with a total of 100 helpers the farm was transformed by the removal of 50 large sacks of litter, an old mattress, bike frames etc.

The first day of the Litter pick was a Friday during school time, and we were very glad to have the help from Threeways School, Culverhay and Haysfield. Towards the end of the day competition was the inspiration for the boys form Culverhay and the girls from Hayesfield and I think the girls won. (Sorry Boys)

Then on Sunday morning local people arrived ready for action, including local residents, two councillors and a group form St Michaels Church in Twerton. Some of the Farm Trustees who also helped made lovely soup for the helpers. We even had a visit form the Mayoress.

Overall it was a great success and on behalf of everyone at the farm I thank all who took part.

By Kedric Fisher

Goodbye from Helen

Our Volunteer Co-ordinator Helen Lerwill will be leaving us in May to have her first child.
Helen has worked at the farm for six years. She will be replaced by Laura Petherbridge. Laura has volunteered at the farm for a long time so knows all the animals and people well. Helen says about her time at the farm

“ Things have changed so much since I started here as a volunteer six years ago. We were working out of the metal lock –ups at the farm and the office was two miles away. There were just a few sheep, two other volunteers and nettles grew everywhere. Now it is a thriving city farm, used by lots of people with great volunteers, staff and trustees. I’m really proud to have been a part of it’s growth and am sure the farm will grow even stronger in the years to come. I hope to return after my maternity leave, if not I will continue to be a volunteer and help the farm any way I can.”

Farm Vision Day

On Saturday 29 March the Farm Trustees, Staff and one prospective Trustee met up to discuss future plans for Bath City Farm. Paul Jayson the Development Worker from the Federation of City Farms and Community Gardens came along to facilitate the day’s events. We all contributed food and drink for lunch and settled down to four hours of hard but enjoyable work; addressing our current concerns about funding and discussing the potential the farm has to continue to develop the valuable service it provides for the local and wider Bath and North East Somerset community.

We began with a Wish List of all the things we would do if we won the Lottery! Suggestions included:- A Community Café with shop and education space,  Community Allotments, Adventure Playground, A Nature Trail with disabled access and better animal housing. Next on the agenda was a SWOT analysis! This enabled us to identify our strengths and weaknesses, build on our strengths and commit to turning those weaknesses into strengths. The Trustees have now identified ten key issues and have put together a short term Action Plan they will be working on over the next six months.

We have a pressing need to raise some cash to get us through the next financial year but there are also many funding opportunities ahead that could help us to turn our dreams into realities. The Lottery Local Food Programme is now open for applications and together with MIND and the Local Food Co-op we intend to apply for funding to build a Community Café at the Farm; we would welcome feedback from Members on this initiative and any other views that you may have about things you would like to see at the Farm.

Holiday Fun

The farm has been a hive of activity over the recent school holidays.
During February half term we joined up with the Wansdyke Play Rangers to put on fun events.

We built Sparrow Hotels with materials paid for by the lottery breathing spaces programme. The Sparrow hotels are basically three nest boxes joined together as sparrows are very communal birds and like to be near one another. They will be put up on the Farm building and we hope they will be well used.
Children also painted chicken signs to decorate the chicken paddock.  They each picked a chicken’s name out of a hat then had to go and find their chosen bird and note down the colours of the feathers. They then painted a picture of the chicken with it’s name and breed on to a wooden plaque.
The Play rangers also ran a fire building and den building session during the week.

Easter Holidays were also lots of fun with the Play Rangers running Egg Hunts, egg rolling and forest skills sessions.

We hope to have lots of fun activities during the Summer Holidays for all the Family. Watch this space.

School Visits

Our regular school groups have been very successful over the past months, Threeways School, The Link, St Michaels Juniors and Hayesfield all have weekly or fortnightly sessions at the farm.

St Michaels and the Link have helped to incubate eggs and charted the eggs progress. St Michaels enjoyed it so much they are going to hire the farm’s incubator so they can hatch their own eggs out at school.

Other projects the groups have done include
Cleaning out the chickens and pigs, Building a chicken obstacle course, making clay models and walking the goats!!

Peasedown St John Primary school have also had a trip to the farm. The spent much of the day here, enjoying the animals and visiting the wildlife pond.

It is now a great time of year for school visits with lots of chicks and lambs being born. Please contact the farm if you would like to arrange one for your group or school.

Animal update

Spring has certainly arrived at the farm. As I am writing this we have eggs in the incubator that are ready to hatch, so we will have chicks and ducklings running riot everywhere soon. The lambs are also being born at the moment, so far we have just one little girl, she is very cute and doing well. All the female sheep are ready to pop any day now. Zippy the ram is already acting the proud father.
The piglets are growing fast and are getting bigger and bigger by the day, visitors have been giving them lots of grass which they love to munch. They have been doing lots of sun bathing and playing in the mud. What a lovely life they lead. They were weaned at 3 months old. By then Molly the mother had certainly had enough. She slept for two days solid after being separated from them. The piglets will be going for meat mid summer after which we hope to get Jimmy the boar back from Gloucester City Farm to start the life cycle all over again.
The cows are back at the farm this year. They come from Manor Farm in Newton St Loe. They are Aberdeen Angus crosses that are reared for beef. They do a great job in grazing the fields, which will encourage wildflowers to spread. They will stay at the farm until October.
 All the rest of the animals are doing really well, the chickens and ducks are laying very well and there are always eggs available which are delicious. The goats are being naughty as usual, and Katie and Kashmir are being trained on leads so they can be taken to the Bath Flower Show.

By Liz Doughty, Work experience student.

Volunteer Update.

Digging holes, and more digging holes have been the order of the day for our Monday volunteer group. They have been busy putting in posts for post and rail fencing around the chicken area. Bath Round Table have kindly donated money to rejuvenate our chicken paddock so we are replacing the horrible old barbed wire fencing with visitor friendly post and rail. We are also working on sprucing up all the pathways to the animals paddocks.
Volunteers have also completed the project down by the wildlife pond, planting trees and installing new fencing.  A Carbon off-setting company called e-forests donated 60 native trees to the farm, so we have planted a new hedgerow and small hazel coppice.

Of course animal care is always a priority for our volunteer days, and the pig pen, goat house and chicken house are kept well maintained and cleaned out.
With new lambs and cows arriving we have also been busy repairing any fencing.

Bath Mind and Genesis continue to come and help every other Wednesday. We have completed the Orchard project, with some lovely fruit trees donated by Bath Soroptomists. Alan, a volunteer, is also an experienced tree surgeon, so he gave us lessons in how to prune our old fruit trees.

We are looking forward to doing lots of exciting projects over the Summer months, including building more raised beds to grow vegetables, sprucing up the old pig pens, expanding the sensory gardens and much more.

If you would like to volunteer please get in touch with the farm

Team Building

Would your company or organisation like to take part in a Team Building day at Bath City Farm?

You provide the people and funds for materials and we can provide the activities, support staff and great views over Bath.
We have held many successful team building projects at the Farm over the past years. Tasks can include

• Path building
• Planting and Gardening
• Painting
• Building animal pens
• Fencing
• Animal Care

We can cater for groups of around 30 people, groups are either split up to do smaller tasks or can work together all depending on the activity.
Team building days not only benefit the organisation but also the local community.

Sarah form B&NES Adult Care team, who took part in a Team building event last summer said of the day:

“It was a fantastic day, set in a wonderful location. The sense of achievement we all felt at the end of the day was very rewarding ”

Call the Farm on 01225 481269 if you would like more information.

Funding News

We would like to thank the following people and organisations for their donations to the Farm.

Medlock Charitable Trust who sent us a £5,000 donation.

Molly went to talk to Bath Victoria Park Bowls Club about our work at the Farm, they gave us a cheque for £100 and will be raising finds for us with their activities this year.

The Old Crown Pub Twerton collected £45

Combe Down Ladies Club  donated a very generous £1,100 that will help the Farm enormously

Bath Soroptomists donated six fruit trees, one of which they planted themselves, Bath MIND volunteers planted the remainder and the trees are now coming into blossom.

United Reform Church have chosen the Farm as their charitable cause this year.