The Apricot Centre build & busiest part of the farming year at Huxhams Cross

Open Farm Sunday was a great success. We run this in conjuction with the other farms at Dartington Hall Estate. More people came than ever before – in excess of 120 over the day. There were farm walks, activities for children, mud paddling on the wellbeing walk, fresh produce to buy and lots of teas, coffees, scones and fresh drinks. People chose this lovely day to get to know where their produce comes from, to sign up for a veg, egg and fruit bag or meet the neighbours and farm club educators.

The Apricot Centre at Huxhams Cross Farm has entered into the busiest part of the farming calendar, our growers are out in the fields picking the soft fruits that are starting to plump up and ripen.  We have been grateful for a bit of rain over the last week.  We have also started to see our salads come in to their own and these are looking lovely, perfect for BBQ’s and picnics if the glorious sunshine returns.

It’s been great to have the children back on the land and our Farm Club is proving popular amongst the local families with young children.  Our next block finishes in July but we have lots of summer activities that we are hoping will see the new generation of growers and farmers on the land once again.

The South Devon Steiner School has spent some time with us on the farm helping us to create a wild flower area around our new pond and they absolutely loved having an authentic experience on the farm, we hope that we will continue to work with them as often as we can.

Our new training centre is flying up and is certainly an absolutely beautiful building. Local ecological builders Terra Perma are doing an amazing job, their choice of music has split the farm workers though!

From the end of June and start of July we will be running a range of creative courses for adults, we are working with local land-based practitioners to provide diverse and interesting content.  Courses running include an Introduction to Scything, Agroforestry with Professor Martin Wolfe, Making a Clay Oven with Biodynamic Cooking with Gordon Clarke and Wendy Cooke and a full Apricot Centre Permaculture Design Course.  If you are interested in enrolling on any of these courses please contact Rachel; email rachelphillips at apricotcentre.co.uk or visit the website www.apricotcentre.co.uk/training-courses

If this wasn’t enough we are now offering monthly wellbeing and farm walks, this gives people who want to visit the farm and see what we do an opportunity to hear a little bit about how the farm and wellbeing service came into fruition and how their symbiotic relationship works! If you come on one of these visits you will see our newly installed pod.   The pod is a wonderful piece of craftsmanship by Rowan Stickland, who has designed our new space for our therapeutic sessions and wellbeing work.  We will be using the space to provide art therapy, play therapy and psychotherapy to the young people and families who access our wellbeing service.

To keep up to date with all the events taking place at The Apricot Centre please check out the website www.apricotcentre.co.uk

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