on The Farm

The pitter patter of tiny feet…

If you’ve been following our Facebook or Instagram posts (which you should be!) you might have seen some photos of our newest arrivals at the farm. This week we’ve had two very small and very cute new comers to the farm. Say hello to Spritz and Blitz! They are a brother and sister pair of 12 week old Pygmy Goats. At the moment they’re a bit nervous – it’s a lot to take on, going from their quite small holding onto a busy little farm, so they might be a bit shy for now, but we hope that will change shortly! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pygmy goats are a popular breed for people to keep; you may have seen some before at other farms. They’re small (as the name might give away) and like most goats, can be very friendly! These two are still a bit nervous around people, so it’ll take them a while to get used to their new life, but we reckon they’ll soon settle in. 

 

This particular pair are locally bred, from the lovely people behind Pecking Orders!

on Events

Young Artist’s Day, Saturday 20th May!

Looking for something to do on Saturday 20th May? Feeling like letting your inner artist lose? 

One of our lovely volunteers, Gaja, will be running a Young Artists Day workshop for ages 3 – 7 in our Porta-cabin!

It’ll be running from 11:00am to 1:00pm. Just turn up and join in for £2.50, all the art materials will be provided and there may even be a prize in it for the Best Young Artist! 

 

Young Artists day Poster

on Latest News

Oscar’s Playground will be closed 27th & 28th April

Hello all!

We’re sorry about the short notice, but Oscar’s Playground next to the picnic area will be closed for the remainder of today and much of tomorrow. This will give us time to complete the extension of the seating area before the weekend. 

We’re sorry to cause any inconvenience or disappointment – there’s still lots to see and do at the Farm, so don’t let it put you off visiting!

on Education

Incubating with Netmums

Easter’s over, now if only the sun would come back and warm everything up again, brr!

A big thank you to everyone who came down to visit, it was a very busy two weeks. All the animals (and staff I’m sure) will be glad to have a little bit of calm before May half term. During Easter, as well as our popular Hug A Lamb with Edgar and Eleanor (who are now back to living with the rest of the sheep, their work is done!) and Animal Handling in the marquee we had some new chick arrivals!

If you happen to follow NetMums on Facebook, you might have seen a familiar logo on an incubator during one of their live streams a few weeks ago. We had started incubating some of our chicken eggs to test everything before we begin our School Incubator Scheme next term, when NetMums got in touch wanting to broadcast it on their Facebook page. Given that we already had some on the go, it made sense to go with it!

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Out of the 10 eggs, only about half of them were fertile. And of course, after saying how good chickens are at hatching on the dot on day 21 of incubation, most of them decided to hatch a day early, leaving us with one lone egg on live stream day! If you want to watch the hatching process, you can see the video on their Facebook page here. The hatching process takes a long time, so if you want to skip to the interesting parts, have a look from 1:30:00 onward. 

The chicks are now housed in our Incubation Shed – the newest part of the renovations to our bird area at the entrance side of the farm. They’re still a bit too small to go outside, so have to stay with a heat lamp for now, but hopefully in a few weeks and when the weathers warmer they’ll be able to come outside properly.

On the topic of incubating though, in the next two weeks we’ll be starting our School Incubator Scheme (which is already fully booked for this academic year!). In another month and a half we’ll be welcoming back all the chicks that various local schools have hatched, so there’ll be plenty to see! If you’re interested in buying chickens to keep, whilst we don’t have any for sale at the moment, we will do in a few months time! 

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on The Farm

New arrivals – the lambs!

The lambs have arrived, Spring is definitely in the air! Our first pair of lambs was born during a sunny lunch break at the start of this month and the other ewes soon decided to follow suit. We’ve ended up with 7 new arrivals in total (three sets of doubles and one big burly single). With the help of our Junior Volunteers they’ve been christened Edgar, Eleanor, Audrey, Anne, Grace, Galileo and Martin. 

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At Deen City Farm we keep a flock of Poll Dorset sheep, which lamb every year around late February/March time. If you ever see a breed or animal described as a “poll” or “polled” it means it doesn’t have horns – the Poll Dorset sheep is descended from an old English breed known as the Dorset Horn, which as you can imagine from the name, is well recognised for it’s rather impressive, large curly horns. We’ve got a soft spot for our Poll Dorset sheep, not only do they have a great personality (even our ram, Herman, is a gentle giant) but they make exceedingly cute lambs. Judge for yourself! 

If you want to try your luck with telling them apart, the stock marker letters on the side of all the sheep will definitely help out. The ewes can tell which lambs are theirs from their smell and calls, but for us humans it’s a little bit harder. Every sheep (apart from the boys in their separate field) has the first letter of their name on them – with the lambs, the names begin with the same letter as their mothers name, and the letters in blue are girls, and any in green are boys. Simple!  

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on Gardening

The new Rain Garden Project

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With help from the London Wildlife Trust as part of their Wandle Rain Gardens project, we’ll be digging out and planting up a Rain Garden at the farm! You can read a bit more about the Wandle Rain Garden project on the Wild London website here. The aim will be to make greater use of the (lots of!) rain water we receive – we’ll be able to use the water gained to help around the farm, as well as taking some of the pressure off our hard working drains!

We’ll be getting involved and it would be great to have more volunteers helping out too; if it’s something that might interest you then get in touch with Joanna Ecclestone by emailing jecclestone@wildlondon.org.uk. You can download a high resolution version of our poster to put up here.

on The Farm

Amelia & Penelope on TV!

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If you were watching TV this week, you might have spotted some familiar faces on BBC2’s Further Back In Time For Dinner. Aside from Adam Henson, our two lovely pedigree Oxford Sandy & Black girls, Amelia and Penelope, and their friend Maurice from Merrist Wood College had their moment in the limelight! 

Our little group of pigs was helping to cover the topic of Pig Clubs during the World War, though it looks like they were largely happy to be fussed and have a chance to laze around in the last of the summer sun. You can watch the episode on iPlayer, we’re at around half an hour in.

 

on Cafe & Shop

Barn Owl Café will be closed next 4 Fridays

Hello!

Due to staff absences over the next few Fridays, the Barn Owl Café and Shop will be closed on Friday 24th February, Friday 3rd March, 10th and 17th. Apologies for any inconvenience caused – aside from the aforementioned Fridays, the café will be open as usual (so from 10:00 – 2:30pm week days and 10:00 – 4:00pm on weekends), and will be back open on Fridays on the 24th March.

We’ll be remaining on winter opening hours throughout March (with the café closing at 2:30pm) and will be going into our summer opening hours from the 1st April onward, meaning the café will be open until 4:00pm throughout the week. Thank you for bearing with us!

on Help Us

Vacancy: Trustee Treasurer

We are recruiting for a new trustee treasurer to join our Board of Trustees! As a charity we are governed by a Board of Trustees, who are ultimately responsible for the running of the farm and play an active role in any big decisions made at Deen City Farm. They bring a wide variety of skills and knowledge to the farm, and act somewhat similar to Company Directors! 

You can read more about our current trustees on our website here.

You can view more information about the role, details on how to apply and a downloadable job description on our vacancies page.