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Starting with entering a calf pen to handle the week old calves to seeing the adorable piglets, moving on to fluffy lambs where one school were lucky enough to see a lamb being born. The pupils then moved on to learn about the beef cattle and the dairy herd and saw the milking parlour with fresh buckets of milk, looking foamy and yellow learning how much milk was produced and the cost of feed and milk yield. |
As this is also the International Year of the Potato, the journey then took the pupils to the walled garden where each school were to plant potatoes with pupils split into groups of 10 and given the task of then deciding in teams of 5 who would be a measurer, 2 diggers, a planter, a fertiliser under the supervision of more horticultural Bicton students. The pupils relished the chance to be competitive amongst their peers with each team naming and marking their own plot. Bicton College will in time, when the potatoes are ready, dig up each separate plot to see which team of 5 had the biggest yield. |
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From the walled garden the pupils then made their way to the exhibition hall where they could take part in various activities Exeter College had created for them about the food and hospitality industry. They could taste savoury and sweet stir fried food and have a go at silver service using revels, maltesers and bread sticks against the clock. The other exhibitors were Mole Valley Farmers, Farming and Country Education (FACE), Aimhigher and Bicton College were they could learn about careers and progression into higher education. |
Report on this event published in the Western Morning News
John Lee, chairman of the board of governors at Bicton, said it was one of the "key events" in Devon's Year of Food and Farming calendar. Mr Lee, who is also chairman of the South West Sustainable Farming and Food board, said: "The regional target is to get at least 90,000 schoolchildren of all ages into the countryside and on to farms, and this is a big part of that."
He said it would be the first time some of the children had ever come into "serious contact" with a rural way of life, adding: "They are seeing the role of the countryside, not only in producing food, but how it connects to tourism and the environment. It's also promoting the healthy eating agenda."
Bicton principal Louise Twigg said it was also a useful educational tool, adding: "Teachers are tying it into the curriculum. The children have fact sheets, and are ticking boxes on issues from numeracy to health and safety."
Rachel Cude, 13, from the Teign School in Newton Abbot, said: "We learned a lot of things, particularly about how animals are handled and raised."
But for others, the day may have also provided guidance on a future career. Kimberley Marchant, 14, who is taking a GCSE in food technology at West Exe Technology College in Exeter, said: "I would be interested to go into anything to do with food and farming."
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