The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Children given industry insight
A group of nursery school children from Tomintoul are four months into a year-long project to learn about life on a farm. Gemma Mackenzie joined them on one of their visits
A sea of smiling faces peeping out of bright blue boiler suits and brightly coloured wellies greets Glenlivet farmers Colin and Kelly Stuart every month as they welcome 10 youngsters from Tomintoul Nursery to learn about farming.
The duo, who farm around 850 acres at Belnoe and Lettoch Farms on the Glenlivet Estate, are the host farmers for an innovative learning project instigated by senior nursery nurse Mitch Fraser.
Mrs Fraser, who lives on a farm herself, said the year-long project entitled A year on the Farm meets all the curriculum requirements and helps the children learn more about farming and the countryside.
The project consists of eight visits to the Stuarts and two visits to Les Durno at Auchorachan, Glenlivet, to learn about tatties.
“I think it’s very important that the children learn about their local community,” said Mrs Fraser.
“We want people to stay in our area and we want to promote the jobs that are in our area.
“I think it makes them very good citizens in the community.”
She said the children learn a whole range of things from health and wellbeing, to maths and counting.
“We have had a soup and bread day and invited the community in, using the tatties we lifted and we ground our own wheat into flour,” added Mrs Fraser.
“We have been looking at olden days and we are going to have bothy ballads for St Andrew’s Day.”
She said she hoped to arrange a mart visit for the end of the project.
“The idea is that every time we do something small we raise a little bit of money ourselves to fund a bus to go to the market,” said Mrs Fraser.
Colin and Kelly, who have three children themselves, Molly, 11, Harvey, 9, and Jack, 6, say the youngsters have been fun to have on the farm and it has not interfered with dayto-day tasks.
Mr Stuart said: “A lot of the kids are not from a farming background these days and it’s a chance for them to see what’s going on.
“It just takes a couple of hours each month and I do my chores as normal.”
Asides from hosting a visit once a month, the Stuarts also email updates about what is going on at the farm to Mitch who then passes on the information to the children.
“We aim to produce a factual book with the children, recounting their visits, to use for reference in future years,” said Mrs Fraser.
On the issue of health and safety, she said the children spend time carrying out a mini risk assessment before each visit.
“It makes them aware of the risks that there are and how they can assess a risk and deal with it if something should happen,” she said.
She said the project would not have gone ahead without financial support from NFU Scotland’s Centenary Fund and the union’s Banffshire branch.
The funding will be used to cover transport to and from the farms, which Mitch says is the main barrier to such project as transport costs are “extortionate”.