Gardening in School

[areia]

I did!!! Detling Hill.
Nightmare - steam engines and cows everywhere. And you were inundated with brochures for absolutely nothing relevant.

I now never go to county shows just in case.

yeah they do over advertise irrelevant merchandise, but i loved it very fond memories there, sneeking out me tent joining those at mainline, not getting bk till 4 am having a few crafty bottles of beer that were kept cool in cattle water buckets and had to be opened against any lump of wood you could find, rabbit hutches came in usefull (i was 16/17 then)only to have the tent tapped on cuz some silly twonk had hammered a fence post through a main water pipe and the cows were ankle deep.freezing cold showers as they hot water didnt come on til a certain time, hairdrying sheep (thats still makes me giggle that ) useing a 2in paint brush to oil a bullocks hooves,shoe polish in the horn buds, talc for bunnies white feet, ooo giveing away trade secrets here, but everyone showing did it anyway so what the heck, was a great laugh, and met some cracking people i do miss it, just to clarify none of us ever got drunk or got silly, cuz we all knew all the work we had to do was a very strange grown up atmosphere, we all cared for the animals and knew what we had to do, sigh i do miss it

[Snadger]

Our maths teacher used to run the allotment sized garden at the rear of the school.
I remember having to make a wooden cold frame for the garden in woodworking class.
The woodwork teacher nearly came to blows with the maths teacher when he came into the workshop and said to me" Oh, No don't bother with all those fancy mortice and tenon and half lap joints! Just glue the flaming thing together and stick a few tacks in until it dries and it will be fine"

And it was!

[Mikey]

I never knew much Welsh Mikey, but isn't Siani Blewog a hairy caterpillar? Or did I dream that?
Strewth I have some odd dreams - must give up the cheese suppers!

You're not far off, blewog does mean hairy!!, OH has wirewool for hair, so the name stuck between her and friends as a kid, being an extremely confident person, she deems it a term of endearment. Are you Welsh by origin flum?

[Flummery]

No, but my maiden name was Roberts! In my first year at University I was put in a shared room with a Welsh speaking north Wales girl - they obviously thought we had much in common. I was studying geology, she was studying botany and zoology. I wish I'd paid more attention when she was wittering about plant genetics - but I don't suppose she EVER wishes she'd listened to me chuntering about carboniferous fossils!

[Mikey]

I've never understood the northerners much, (by that I mean North Wales), there is far too much fanatical welshness for us mid and southerners. If the word is easier to say in English we say it in English, there's no problem, its called Wenglish. Its hard watching Pobol Y Cwm, most of the actors are from North Wales, and I end up scratching my head saying to OH what did they just say!!

I'll give an example I was taught grammatical welsh by a gent from North Wales, and you would say a simple phrase like, I like coffee, as Rydw i'n hoffi coffi, but at home you would say Fi'n lico coffi. The former is so much more formal, and completely different from what you would say in normal conversation, so sometimes even as a welshman I have no idea what has just been said.

[Flummery]

I still occasionally feel like that about Yorkshire folk. (I'm from Manchester!)

[Mikey]

I guess language is a funny thing, and we do have a great diversity of it in the UK.

[Claire72]

I teach eco schools at my afternoon schools and love it, I get a whole afternoon every week to help them tend the veg plot, but in mainstream school there simply isn't space in the curriculum for it.
We have a veg plot, and are hoping to get some chickens soon, although we are having trouble sourcing them, we tried the ex-batts, but the waiting list is huge, a member of the care staff's father breeds chickens, and put aside some eggs for incubating, but something along the lines went wrong, and they were all deformed, or dead so now we are trying to find them some locally, but having great trouble.
We have cleared an area as a meadow garden and planted some wild flowers, next year we are developing a bigger meadow, and hopefully clearing a stream for a wildlife pond.
The kids also opted to have their own allotments, whichs eems to be going well.
That is why I opted to teach out of mainstream school!

[Chez]

I'm a teaching Assistant in a primary school in a London Borough and have just recently been put in charge of 'the outside classroom'

So far we have dug a huge veg patch, grown fruit and veg in pots ( tomorrow we harvest our spuds!) and given the wildlife garden an overhaul. We are looking into having animals of some kind but have a major fox problem.