Schoolchildren from across Yorkshire got a close-up look at the journey of food from field to fork at the Great Yorkshire Showground in Harrogate this week.
Countryside Days is a two-day educational experience organised by the Yorkshire Agricultural Society and it is free for primary schools to attend. It gives schoolchildren opportunities to experience the countryside through interactive workshops, demonstrations and displays that tell the story of farming, the natural world and how landscapes are carefully managed.
At a soil station, children found out all about the importance of worms and how they transport nutrients around the soil. They met sheep and pigs, got to sit in a tractor cab and made sausages. The great array of activities covered many topics, from potato harvesting and the story of grain, to birds of prey, British wool and willow weaving.
Rachel Coates, dairy farmer and Show Director of the Great Yorkshire Show, which is organised by the Yorkshire Agricultural Society said:
This week’s event was a wonderful occasion, with thousands of primary schoolchildren at the Showground from all across Yorkshire. Over the two days, so many children learnt about things that the national curriculum wouldn’t ordinarily cover.
Countryside Days covers everything from how livestock are reared and how wheat is grown and turned into flour, to how healthy soils and worms support sustainable farming. For many of the children, this was their first experience of getting a front row view of farm animals.
Sponsorship from Co-op helped a number of schools from deprived areas attend Countryside Days by contributing towards their transport costs.
The Yorkshire Agricultural Society welcomes schools back to the Showground for the Great Yorkshire Show on Tuesday 8 – Friday 11 July. As a farming charity, the Society wants schoolchildren to have access to the Show and so it offers school pupil tickets at a subsidised rate, with free places available for accompanying teachers on a pupil-to-teacher ratio basis.
School ticket sales for the Great Yorkshire Show close at 12noon on Friday 27 June and are available from https://greatyorkshireshow.co.uk/school-visits/
Education about all things farming, food and the countryside is a key objective of the Yorkshire Agricultural Society and it holds other events for schools and teachers throughout the academic year. In the autumn, Apple Day sees schoolchildren visit the Great Yorkshire Showground’s orchard and a rolling programme of free training courses is offered to school staff across the North of England to take learning outdoors.
The Society’s popular vegetable box competition sees primary schools grow vegetables from scratch, with finalists’ boxes on display at the Great Yorkshire Show, where the winners are revealed. Also at the Show, access to workshops in the Discovery Zone are fully subsidised by the Society as part of its educational offer.
The Society funds visits to working farms via the Country Trust and runs a small grants scheme which gives schools the opportunity to apply for small grants towards projects and initiatives linked to farming, food and the countryside.
