Black Ven Farm Visit

Black Ven Farm, situated between Fletching and Nutley, is a traditional, organic pedigree Sussex beef herd farm.  The owners are passionate about showing that food production and caring for nature go hand in hand. Black Ven invited a group our of Year 9 students to visit the farm to learn more about farming, to mind about farm animals and how they are treated, to appreciate the preciousness of nature, and to learn more about the impact of climate change and what they, at Black Ven, are trying to do to combat it.

This visit was set up in conjunction with the organisation, LEAF (Linking Environment and Farming) who promote and support more sustainable farming to create a resilient food and farming system for future generations. Black Ven Farm are part of a collaboration of farms that are working with LEAF to provide education to school students.  

Our visit to Black Ven Farm was delightful. We were greeted by Elizabeth & Leighton who run Black Ven Farm, Jo from LEAF and Elizabeth's beautiful & very friendly dog who spent the morning with us.  We were welcomed into the barn, which was set up as a makeshift classroom.  They explained how the visit would work and spoke to the students to see what they knew about farms and farming.

Changing into our clean wellington boots and waterproof trousers, we then walked through the disinfectant mats to prevent any germs from our boots being transferred to the farm.  The cows were all in the barns as many of them are expectant mothers or have just calved.  The herd are beautiful and were so very friendly with Elizabeth and Leighton.  It was easy to see that the cows were content and happy and strongly bonded with their owners and was wonderful to witness the calves being looked after by their mums.

Part of the trip was focussed around careers, we wrote down all of the careers that sprang to mind during the conversations we were having.  There were some obvious ones such as farmer, farm manager, vet and a great variety of job roles that were identified by the students that were connected to farming but were more unusual such as environment agency advisor, agricultural mechanics, fencers, nutritionist and chef (see the full list in the image above). Throughout the morning everyone was having great fun shouting out different jobs as they thought of them, it was amazing to see what different roles they all came up with. 

Leaving the cows behind we headed out in the field to learn about soil and how important it is to have nutrient rich soil for plants to grow.  Soil acts as the foundation for most terrestrial life on Earth, providing a medium for plants to grow, filtering water, storing carbon, regulating climate, and supporting a diverse ecosystem of organisms - essentially, it produces the food we eat, cleans our water, and plays a vital role in mitigating climate change by capturing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere; without healthy soil, our food systems and overall environmental balance would be severely impacted.  

The group did a worm count, having a lot of worms in the soil means that it is rich in nutrients. The group counted over 100 worms between them in a very small area, we had fun identifying the three different types of worms in the soil.  Finally, it was time for a walk across the fields and into some woodland. There Elizabeth spoke to the group about the trees and clues to identify that spring is on the way, as well as asking the students to walk in silence for 4 minutes (while in the wood) and asking them just to listen to the noises of nature around them. Afterwards they were asked how they felt and unanimously there was a sense of calm that each student was able to identify. This brought our trip to a close and after a quick debrief and footwear wash and change we were in the minibus on our way back to school.

As always, our students were a credit to Chailey School. Thank you, Year 9!

We hope that the visit was informative to the group and that we can offer other students the chance to enjoy future trips to Black Ven Farm in the future.

If you would like your child to attend a future trip, please email gwickens@chaileyschool.org

Please remember to read the Careers & Work-Related Learning Padlet to find out about work experience, college taster days, Unifrog, apprenticeships and much much more. And don't forget the wonderful resource that is Unifrog! All students have a login to this fantastic destinations platform.