Kids Connect campaign blog

You’ll find something new on this blog every couple of days as our four young bloggers will be sending us all the news from their farms.

This first one is from 10-year-old Martha Corney in North Yorkshire:

The main reason why I like living in the countryside is because of all the different animals we can have and the birds and wildlife we can see.

On our farm we have cows and calves and a bull called William, he is very friendly and he loves to eat carrots, he will stand for ages to have his back scratched.

We have a flock of breeding ewes and my favourite time is lambing time and hopefully I get some pet lambs to look after.

My favourite bird is the barn owl who nests in our old granary, this year she has four babies.

The owls are looked after by the Barn Owl Trust so when they come to weigh and ring the babies I get a chance to hold them, which is good but they smell really bad!

I never get bored living in the country as there is always something to do, and we have a really big garden to run about in, we also have lots of apple trees to climb or to pick fruit of and you can’t beat fresh veg out of the garden, my favourite is the carrot.

I would not want to live anywhere else.

Meet the second of our four bloggers, 13-year-old Craig MacKenzie from Inverness-shire. Here's why he loves the rural way of life.

Living in the countryside is great.

I’m always outside helping out on the farm or if I happen to not be doing that (a very unusual thing for me) I’m pottering about in the garden.

The farm dominates my spare time and there is always a job to be done. Of course the tractor driving is the best bit but I enjoy anything to do with farming.

I have two sisters but they aren’t really interested in the farm (except when there are lambs about).

The whole family often ends up getting involved at busy times such as lambing time, but although I live on a farm I still have time to do other things too.

I play the bagpipes and compete as well as piping for highland dancers. I also play shinty for my local team – Beauly. Basically the countryside is a brilliant, exciting place to spend your life.

Hello from Felicity Towler, who's 13 and lives in Bedfordshire:

I love the countryside because I have always lived in it, my family owns a 200 acre farm in Thurleigh.

On the farm we grow sweetcorn, raspberries, strawberries, pinks, beans, oilseed rape, oats, barley and wheat.

My farm is also home to lots of sheep and lambs, six donkeys, 100 geese and over 100 chickens.

Today on the farm four goslings hatched and the geese are very protective of them.

A little chick also hatched today, it is the very first home bred chicken we have had on the farm to date.

We are also celebrating the newest member of the farm, a little donkey foal named Frankie, (named after Frankie Dettori, who won the Derby at Epsom) who today is one week old.

There are lots of factors that are great about living in the countryside, everyone knows each other and especially in the farming community. It's nice to know and see where the food comes from and to know that it has been well looked after and cared for.

I get to met a lot of people that are my age through events like Young Farmers and through family friends.

I also love to collect the eggs and see the new born lambs jumping up and down the field, it's great to wake up to the sound of cockerel in the morning and to see the geese paddling in the pond.

These are the factors that make living in countryside a great enviroment to be and grow up in.

This is the first blog post from 12-year-old Emily Baker from Buckinghamshire:
When I need to be alone and have a quiet moment on my own, I climb to the top of the round bale stack that my dad made.

It is up by the fields at the back of our house. I climb to the very top and look out at the view. It looks out on to the cows fields and it is amazing, I could stay there for hours, just staring at the view.

Once I stayed out there so long it started to rain and I was so mesmerised by the view I didn't notice. The one thing I love more than looking at the field is walking down it.

I just take my dog, Spooky, for a walk and lie in the long grass, and look at the sky then Spooky lies down next to me and I think, "how many people get to do this whenever then want?" and then I realise how lucky I am to live in the countryside.

It's been a busy week for 13-year-old Felicity:

Last week my family and I visited the Royal Show. The food is great and it's good to see all the different animals.

We've ordered some more big chicken houses for some of our chickens. Dad has a 4X4 but we still got stuck in the mud in the car park because of the horrendous wet weather.

Back at the farm, the weather has damaged some of the crops so my father and I went to have a look at the fields. Due to the weather we have also lost a sheep.

13-year-old Craig's sure been busy:

It’s been one week since the school holidays have started here and the haymaking has still not began because of wet weather.

Often by now most people around here have finished their first cut of silage but this year’s weather has delayed it.

A number of jobs including the big task of shearing the sheep were done though.

An update from 12-year-old Emily Baker:

I’m going to start by telling you a little bit more about me.

I live on a farm in Buckinghamshire. I live in a 300-year-old house with my Mum and Dad, sister-Rachel and brother- Nicholas.

I have a dog (Spooky), a cat (Snowy), a rabbit (Mickey) and a guinea pig (Ozzie).

On the farm we have cows and ducks, though most of them have been killed off by the fox. We farm oilseed rape, wheat and barley.

Earlier this year we converted two barns into holiday cottages which my mum runs. My dad’s parents live on the farm too and take care of everything when we go away on holiday.

We also have a field which people come and stay in their caravans and camper vans. My life is very interesting… I hope you enjoy hearing about it in this blog.

Martha writes:

The first week in July has started off really wet, it has rained so much that all our fields now look like lakes.

The weather has been horrible - it has flooded all of our fields and there is a massive big puddle in our yard and there is a pond in our garden where there shouldn’t be one.

We had to take the sheep in, but the cows decided to take themselves into the silage clamp when they broke out of the field.

All of our Christmas ducks and geese were in their elements - they have been swimming in the yard all week.

On Monday I went to Young Farmers. We went bowling in Scarborough, it was so much fun and on my team won the game.

I have been going to Young Farmers for about six months - it has been really good, we get to do all sorts of different things, one of my favourite visits has been the birds of prey centre.

We got to have a go at calling the birds down onto our arms. There was an eagle owl there and also lots of different types of birds to see.

On Saturday it was my Dad’s birthday and one of my hobbies is making and decorating cakes so I made him a Claas forklift-shaped cake.

My Dad said it was “first class”!

Craig writes:

This week has been fairly busy with the first section of hay cut at the beginning of the week.

On Monday afternoon once the mower and turner had been hitched up to the tractors and checked over, Dad made a start on cutting the hay.

Shortly after I joined him in the field with the turner on the other tractor to spread the hay out.

Martha writes:

I went to the Yorkshire Show last week and it was brilliant.

My favourite part was looking round the animals - there were all kinds of different sheep, some of them had really long wool.

There were some North Country Cheviots which are the ones that we breed so we had a really good look at them as I would like to show ours one day.

We got to have a look around the cows and bulls, when they were being all brushed and pampered before they went into the ring, some of them were massive.

Emily writes:

The rain has finally decided to hold off long enough for us to start harvesting. Today the combine harvester came in and stared harvesting the oilseed rape. This is shown in the photo.

What is oilseed rape?

* Oilseed rape is like poppy seeds, they’re small, black and round.

* The seeds are usually made into vegetable oil but ours should be made into bio fuel (an environmentally friendly way to run cars).

* All of the seed is used. Some for oil etc and some for animal feed.

I’ve been off school most of last week because of a fire in the drama block.

I went in our swimming pool for the first time because it stopped raining and it was quite warm but when I got in I got so cold, mum hade to warm me up with her hair dryer (just kidding but I did get pretty cold!)

That’s the low down on my life at the farm for this week anyway.

Felicity writes:

I have been away on a school trip with my friends to the south of France - it was great fun and it had great shopping!

The weather is rather a shock as it was 38 degrees in France and it was thundering in England.

The crops are feeling the brunt of the weather and many fields have dropped.

The little goslings were let out to live in the fields. Also the oilseed rape has been swaft (this means it was cut, laid in rows and left to dry.)

Martha writes:

It is now the end of Snainton Young Farmers for the summer, so on Monday night we had a social evening.

We played golf, tennis pool and darts, they also had a jacuzzi which we could have a go in. It was a really good night and I shall miss not going for the summer.

We have broken up from school for the summer holidays - it was really sad because all of my friends have left to go to secondary school.

Craig writes:

With changeable weather, there’s been a fair mixture of things happened.

On the wet days because no hay work could be done we made use of the time and began washing the fold floors with the pressure washer ready for the harvest, although it’s a number of weeks away yet.

I also walked my dog Molly quite a lot this week, usually in the evenings.

She is a Bearded Collie cross and as you would expect from a Beardy she is mad and loopy!

Her time is usually spent sleeping, swimming in the river or barking at my cat Murphy!

I took her up the road to the next farm one night this week and she came back with her legs (usually white) black as coal after her running through every muddy puddle she could find.

We also have a sheep dog that is a Border Collie – not as mad as Molly but often doesn’t do quite what you want her to do when rounding up sheep.

Emily writes:

This week I was going to write about the village fete but it was called off because of the rain.

We still had the party that we always have afterwards though. There were little people running everywhere and climbing on the bales we lost two of them when it got dark (the children, I mean, not the bales).

We went for a walk today in the field that had just been combined. The river running around the field had overflowed and there was water everywhere.

My dog almost got swept away by the current when he went for a swim. My sister was very silly and wore shorts on the walk. My dad had to carry her on his back because she didn’t want to get stung by the nettles.

We found two huge feathers that look like red kite feathers. We get a lot of them round here circling overhead.

This is a picture of my brother wading in the floods that we usually get in winter.

Craig writes:

Only two weeks left of my summer holidays now - and the weather still hasn’t improved much.

There hasn’t been a lot happened on the farm over the past week due to heavy showers although Tuesday was lovely and we cut more hay.

Unfortunately it was so wet that we couldn’t touch it much with the turner and ended up carrying on with the endless job of floor washing.

My auntie and cousin were staying with us this week, so for a change I went for a walk in the Cairngorms one afternoon with them and to brighten it up a bit we went grass sledging in Aviemore afterwards.

It was great fun. I wish I had a grass sledge, and then I could go sledging in the summer as well as winter!

Since there wasn’t much for me to do on the farm I did a bit of cycling with my mates and we camped out in the garden for a couple of nights – a good laugh!

The hay has dragged on later and later this year and it would usually all be baled long before the Black Isle Show on Thursday. Certainly not the case this year.

Emily writes:

I have finished school at last!

As I write, this is the second day of my holidays and the weather hasn’t improved at all, but I’m making the most of the sunshine by wearing my bikini and sunbathing on the trampoline.

This week I’m going to talk about the pigs that live down the road and I like to go and visit them.

I’m not sure if they have names but me and my sister have called them Pippin and Cox - they are both girls.

They are a special breed of which I don’t know. When I went to see them to take pictures they had a male with them. This is because the farmer is hoping to breed and have piglets.

My sister, who has an obsession with pigs, wants one of the piglets when they are born but my mum said they would dig up the garden and eventually have to be sold for pork. This my sister took as a no.

Here is a picture of Pippin and Cox. Pippin is on the right and Cox on the left.