Kids Connect campaign blog

Hello and welcome to FWi's newest blog - the Kids Connect Campaign Blog.

We've got four youngsters who will be regularly updating you with all the news from their farms - giving an insight into what life's like growing up in the countryside.

We'll be introducing them next week, so watch this space...

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.