Year 2’s Visit to Crockford Bridge Farm!

Today, we went to visit Crockbridge Farm, in Surrey. We went here as part of the Schools to Market project.

Previously, Green Team have learned how to make chutney and today we went to pick our own crops to be used in our very own chutney! We were a bit worried about the rain, as it rained quite heavily first thing but we embarked on our journey and arrived at the beautiful farm. After getting off the bus, we set down our things for lunch (no… it wasn’t time for lunch yet!). We saw a sign that told us all about which fruits and vegetables were available or coming soon. We were split into two groups, one group were to pick carrots and the other group were picking beetroot.

For the carrots, we firstly had to find the patch that were carrots! This was trickier than you would imagine. Once we were certain, we started picking. We were originally told to pick one to two carrots each due to the fact that we would have to pay for the weight of our vegetables. Once we started picking, however, we realised that the carrots were rather small! This meant that we could pick some more and we hope that they will be of some use for Green Team when they make our chutney! Picking the beetroot was quiet challenging. You would have to get down close to the root and pull up as hard as you could. Some were ready to be pulled from the ground but others were trickier. Some of us even ended up falling into each other!

As our vegetables were quite reasonably priced, we were able to get three punnets to be able to go and pick some strawberries. We went to one of the fields and had to wander right the way down to be able to find the best of the best! Some of them were only a few days off being ripe. Lots of us were great at identifying and finding strawberries that were perfectly red… others were convinced that white/green ones might be nice. We spoke a little bit more about how we can tell when a fruit is perfectly ripe! Philippa from School Food Matters then went to another strawberry field whilst we were having lunch and picked us another punnet. These strawberries were a little more ripe so we would be able to enjoy them when we got back to school.

Next week, we will be coming up with a class name for our product (with advice from Green Team) and we will make labels that are appealing to a wider audience. Green Team will then be going to Whole Foods to sell our chutney. We are so excited to see how it turns out, and can’t wait to try it!

We would like to say a huge thank you to the parents that came along with us to help, they were amazing! We would also like to thank the Schools to Market project who allowed us to go on this trip and helped to pay for our vegetables. We had such a fantastic day and it was brilliant to be able to understand a little bit more about farming and understanding where our food comes from.