Year Five from Sedgeberrow C of E First school had their eighteenth and final farm visit with me. A very lively and very lovely class and I will miss them. The topic today was ‘Crime and Punishment’ which is at first not an obvious farm related topic. However, we found plenty to discuss…

Firstly, I had some great first hand and very recent examples of rural crime. This week our quad bike was stolen for the second time in a month and this winter we have had people cutting our fences for hare coursing. The children had some great ideas of how I could catch the thieves….

We then moved on to talk about what farmers need to do to abide by the law. We considered animal traceability and looked at cattle ear tags and passports. Then we discussed our legal obligations to keep our staff safe, the children enjoyed trying on the chainsaw safety equipment. I showed them the milk tanker readouts as we talked about food safety. The children took great delight in pointing out when the milk was a little high in temperature on collection, but after close inspection we saw that the collection times were alittle after milking and so the milk hadn’t had chance to be cooled in the bulk tank. 

On our farm walk we looked at deep hole in ‘top field’, where a drain can be seen which was dug out by German prisoners of war. A ‘punishment’ for being on the opposing side in the war. In the den building wood the children decided to build a prison, a tray of food for a captured person and found a suitable piece of wood for a judges’ gavel (hammer).

The children were very animated with this topic and continued the idea of crime and capture in the play wood after lunch.   

Tags: crime, punishment