Summer in the sun - holiday highlights
After a fun-packed children’s holiday programme, we thought it only right to share our highlights with you. We had 308 children join us for over 62 hours of summer activities. The most popular were our regular Farm to Forks, den building, weaving and storytelling. Special shout outs to Pinhole London, mushroom fanatic Susy, Fredde the comic artist, and our very own Spiderman, Edward Milner.
Smiles post mushroom workshop…
Our mushroom workshop involved our young participants first drilling holes, then malleting mushroom spawn dowels into the holes, and finally waxing over the surface. The mushrooms should hopefully fruit within the next couple of months or in springtime. We have Oyster mushrooms inoculated into the logs (like the log being shown above), there is also a bonus area prepared by Susy, which will fruit Winecap mushrooms. Keep an eye out on our socials or come down and see them in person as you walk past the wildlife garden towards our newly renovated stables.
Beautiful work created in our Comic book workshop
Drawing Safari, featuring special guest Toby the Tortoise
A range of free activities were on offer as part of Tower Hamlets Council’s Summer of Fun. These included den building, a drawing safari, gardening, donkey grooming, and a minibeast hunt for children aged 5-15 years. These sessions were thoroughly enjoyed and we were happy to see new children explore the farm for the first time. We also had a special summer guest: Toby the tortoise, who won the hearts of all who had the pleasure to meet him and was carefully drawn by children in our drawing safari. Our comic book workshop with Fredde was a massive hit, with children learning how to develop characters and storylines from their imaginations.
Pesto making during a farm to fork workshop
Weekly Farm to Forks were back and fully booked throughout the summer, with a variety of dishes ranging from gnocchi and pesto, to gozlemes and tagliatelle with pasta sauce. It was so lovely to see Farm produce being used in all the dishes, and kids getting stuck in with preparing and trying a range of vegetables in their handmade yummy nutritious meals.
Cyanotype printing
Weaving workshop- featuring our farm loom
We had visitors all the way from Preston join us for a cyanotype printing workshop. We explored the farm and collected leaves, feathers and flowers to make our designs. The children then enjoyed watching the magic unfold in front of their eyes as the chemicals and sunlight combined to produce their very own sun prints. We also ran an all—day weaving workshop, which saw children drop-in to get involved with the table loom, peg loom and try their hand at paper weaving.
We hope you enjoyed reading about the success of our Summer activities programme and hope you can make it to the next holiday events!
The Farm is free and open to visitors every Tuesday-Sunday from 10-4:30pm.