Food on the farm, the courgette pancake and the perils of beeswax

This summer there has been a whole sequence of sessions involving bees. I have been lucky enough to have a demonstration hive with a glorious honeycomb hanging from a bar. This is a real object of woonder with which to draw people in. It still gets me how these creatures with a brain the size of pencil dot, and a sharp pencil at that, can constuct these hexagons of proportion and pattern. Modelling little beeswax bees has proved fun although sometimes fiddly. It is good to find materials that are not everyday. And the perils? Well discovering that the pot of local honey has somehow opened itself all over the story bag, looking from the empty honey tray to the rather sticky and ever so slightly guilty farm dog and then to discover that the local wasp population have taken a liking to the hive!

The courgette pancake has become a favourite recipe with visitors. The joy is in the harvesting of the courgettes from their tyre bound growing patch, the gathering of eggs warm from the chicken and then preparing and cooking out in the field over a wood fire. Finally local honey is drizzled over them. Yum indeed!! I think that this is when farm based learning really comes into its own.