Machinery Monday

Today Ollie and Ian came to show us their plough and drill. The plough is like a big spade that turns the soil over ready to have seeds planted in. The drill makes a ‘v’ shape, drops the seed in and covers it all back up. The farm grows:

• Carrots
• Potatoes
• Onions
• Wheat
• Barley
• Maize
• Sugar beet

We discovered that carrots are harvested at night because they do not like to be too hot and their leaves stand up. Some crops are eaten by animals or insects before they are harvested, especially geese, rabbits, hare, deer and slugs.

Tractors are important because it speeds up the work on a farm, meaning more food can be produced. Before tractors farmers had to use horses to do the same jobs. The john Deere tractor weighed about 15,000kg- this is about 15 cars! Some seeds have a special coat on. This protects them from insects and can give them nutrients to grow.

Thank you to Ollie and Ian for teaching us a tiny slice about your job on the arm. Thank you for taking time out of your day too! We loved it!

Tasting Tuesday

On Tuesday, we learnt about deer management. We learnt that there are 6 species of deer in the UK but 2 of them are not native. In fact, they escaped from zoos!

The 6 species are:

• Red
• Roe
• Sika
• Chinese water deer
• Fallow
• Muntjak

Deer have to be managed because they can damage crops, woodlands and ecosystems. The deer can be used for meat. We got to try venison and we loved it!! We also got to see bones and antlers from 5 of the 6 deer. We were shocked in the differences in sizes. Did you know antlers are made from the same material as finger nails? They grow a new set of antlers every year. They fall of naturally or when they are fighting.

Thank you, Malcolm for answering all of our questions and sharing your knowledge about deer management.

‘Tree’-mendous Wednesday

You will not be-‘leaf’ what we learnt about on Wednesday! We used our existing knowledge to identify 10 species of trees. We looked at their leaves, flowers and fruit to help us. John, from Euston Estate was there to stop us ‘barking’ up the wrong tree’. We asked him questions that helped us with our identifications.

We ‘branched’ out our knowledge by using tree/leaf identifiers to help us with the ones we were stuck on. We had an extra challenge where we had to use the rings in a log to work out the age of the tree it came from. It was 25 years old!

We identified 10 trees:

• Hawthorn
• Oak
• Silver birch
• Beech
• Horse chestnut
• Sweet chestnut
• London plane
• Ash
• Rowan
• Elm

Thank you for taking time out of your busy day to share your vast knowledge with us, John! We feel that we have ‘conker’ed the knowledge of trees now!

Fluffy Friday

This morning we have seen 3 lambs and a ewe. Chris had brought four of his 3000 flock for us to learn about.

Did you know…?

• Wool grows at the same rate as human hair
• We shear sheep in summer to stop them getting too hot
• There are 3000 sheep on Euston Estate
• Chris’ biggest help to his job his sheep dog- Becca and Lily
• The ewes are marked to tell the shepherd how many lambs it should have
• The lambs are marked to tell the shepherd who its mum is
• A sheep has 6 lots of babies in its life time. Each time they have on average 1.5 lambs.

6 x 1.5 = 9 sheep in a lifetime.

• On average a ewe has 2 or 3 (twins or triplets) lambs in each pregnancy but the record is 7!!
• Sheep live to about 7/8 years.

We asked Chris about the best and toughest parts of being a shepherd- he said he loves working outside and seeing lambs turn in to ewes or rams. He said the toughest bit is when sheep are ill and do not make it.

We are very grateful that Chris took time out of his busy day to share these interesting facts with us. We loved seeing the 2 and a half week old lambs! They were so cute!!

Thank 'ewe' very much!

Treasure Trail and Photo Discovery

After our launch in Monday’s assembly, we were given the challenge of guessing what was in the ‘up close’ photos (see below) and finding clues around our school ground.

Our first clue sent us to where we start our trips to the farm. This lead us to the back gate where we found onions. We had to think of foods we could find in the super market with onions in.

We thought of:

• Onion rings
• Chutney
• Salsa
• Crisps

The next clue sent us to where tadpoles live. We went to the pond and began looking. Whilst looking we even came across a grass snake!! We struggle with this clue… we had to ask for an extra hand and it turns out the clue had fallen off its resting post!! We eventually found a read nozzle. We guessed that this had come from a sprayer, used for watering plants.

We were told to not ‘tyre’ ourselves going to the next clue. In the tyre swing, we found some straw. We guessed that horses, donkeys and sheep would eat it. We also guessed that guinea pigs, hamsters, rabbits, hare and mice would sleep in it.

Next, we had to find a ‘warm and cosy’ place to sleep. This led us to the cabin. We were asked to find something that could help us make our dinner. Here we discovered a log pile of wood on the fire. We guessed that this could be used to create a fire hot enough to cook our dinner.

After that, we had to find something that bees loved… obviously this led us to the bee and butterfly garden. Here we found some potatoes. We thought of somethings that we could ask Charlotte to turn them in to:

• Wedges
• Jacket potatoes
• Mash
• Chips
• Hash browns

From here, we headed to the chickens. Here we found some food pellets but not for the chickens. We thought these food pellets would be better suited to cows, sheep or pigs.

Our final clue was where we would burn the most energy at school. This took us to the rope swing. Here we discovered some sugar beet. This is taken to the sugar beet factory in Bury St Edmunds to be turned into sugar! We turn this into energy for our bodies!

Back in the classroom, we had 20 photos to look at. These we close ups of things that can be found on Euston Estate. We had a close look and independently had a guess at what they could be! This was tough, but we were perseverant and gave it our best shot.

Have a look below and see if you can work out some of the answers...