An urban farm in the heart of South London
Barry looks like he’s still recovering from our busy Easter.
With that in mind, please be aware that we will be closed this coming May Day bank holiday (Monday 1st May).
Apologies for any inconvenience caused, have a lovely long weekend!
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!
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!
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!
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.
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!
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.
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.
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!
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.
The first half term of the year is upon us! We’ll be running our school holiday activities as listed below from the Tuesday 14th to Friday 17th. Please be aware that, as we normally are, we’ll be closed to the public on Monday 13th.
As per usual, we’ll be running our Own A Pony and Young Farmer days across Tuesday – Friday (Now fully bookable online via our website, you can check availability and pay via the Holiday Schemes webpage). A full day helping on the farm or working with the horses for ages 8+, check out the above link for more information on what the day might entail.
Will take place in the yellow and white marquee out by the fields will be taking place from 10:00 – 12:00pm and 2:00 – 4:00pm Tuesday – Friday at £2 a go. A chance to get up close and personal with our small pets.
Will be in the gardens at the end of the arena, Tuesday – Friday at 12:00pm and weekends at 3:00pm at £2 a go, for ages 7 and under.
Will be open full days, 10:00am until 4:00pm (take away only from 3:00pm).
If you’ve not been in a while, the bridge next to the farm entrance is now fixed and accessible to the public, hurrah! Once again there’s easy access onto the farm entrance from Phipps Bridge Road, making it an easy walk once again from the Phipps Bridge tram stop to the farm.
We aim to put on a full roster of activities throughout the holidays, but it may depend on staff availability. If anything is likely to vary we’ll aim to update via our Facebook page as soon as possible!
The yard is looking very spacious at the moment!
With our new aviary finished (housing our quail, canaries and finches) and all the birds moved across we were finally able to start disassembling our old one. The old aviary was originally built in 2002 and has certainly stood the test of time for a while. In fact it’s been there for so long that none of the staff really had any idea what might be beneath it (turns out, just a lot of soil and concrete).
After 15 years though, it was on its last legs, especially with all the mesh taken off and strong winds forecast over the weekend, we decided to help speed up the process of getting it down with some help from staff, volunteers and a bit of elbow grease.
In terms of what will happen to the space, we’ve got some grand plans for what might happen in the main yard, but for now we’ll be busy shovelling out soil for a while yet!
[youtube height=”360″ width=”640″]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGN8weEgvEY[/youtube]