November at the Farm
It’s certainly been wet and windy at the farm this month, but the autumnal weather hasn’t stopped our schoolchildren visitors having lots of fun in the mud! The education team have worked really hard to keep spirits high in the drizzle, and the positive feedback we’ve received from teachers has proven you don’t need glorious sunshine to enjoy the outdoors and learn about the past. Here’s our staff weather report from last Friday…Elsewhere on the farm, we’re adding a new chimney pot onto our Roman villa roof so that we can actually use the fireplace. We’re basing the pot on one excavated in Yorkshire, now on display in the Yorkshire Museum. We’ve commissioned Bursledon Brickworks to make the pot, and West Meon Pottery are making the flue. Below on the left is the original Yorkshire pot, and on the right is the start of the new chimney in our villa. It should be ready to use in the new year, so expect lots of delicious Roman cookery demonstrations this summer… We have also finally found a new home for our male kid Comfrey! He was born at the end of the summer and is a truly handsome young thing, but unfortunately he has been getting rather promiscuous with his female relatives and needs a new home where he can live out his years as a stud. After a long search, he will be joining the team at Manor Farm in Bursledon. They are coming to collect him this week, and we will miss him rather a lot… Here he is as a newborn, compared with the fluffy lad he has become!