Bringing back rural memories

with Sue Padfield, South West Regional Co-ordinator for 'Let Nature Feed your Senses'

Sue Padfield (pictured below) describes the contrast between hosting busy visits with primary school children to slower paced sensory-rich experiences with her elderly visitors.

 

Visitors to our farm are generally main stream school children. Running an arable and beef farm we usually offer a theme such as “wheat and bread production”, making sure all activities offered tick the requirements of the teachers curriculum. It's a very structured, hands-on experience, with plenty of opportunity to get muddy, explore the soil and hunt for mini beasts and worms.

It's a busy time controlling groups of 30+ excited children, who usually greet us with “POO… what’s that smell!”. We really enjoy hosting these children but the experience can leave us exhausted! 

As a host farmer I am very aware that the whole purpose of the 'Let Nature Feed Your Senses' project is to make a wonderfully sensory-rich farm experience available to beneficiary groups we would not have normally invited. Chatting to a community connector who had a background in social services helped us decide we had something special to share with the elderly.

Hosting visits for the elderly obviously has a very different agenda to the young children. The visits are of a slower pace, an opportunity to really breathe in the countryside, to reminisce, time to stand and stare, to really feel part of the land and landscape again, and to savour every moment of being outside with nature.

I have personally found the visits extremely rewarding. Quite emotionally moving and very memorable, I’d like to share with you two visits that happened this year.

The first was on a glorious summer day – the weather was just perfect. We had invited 10 residents from a care home that’s situated right next to our farm. The care home is surrounded by rolling countryside and we always imagined the residents had great views of our growing crops and watched the tractors and combine harvesters working the land. In fact most of the residents sit in chairs facing each other and are not particularly aware of the beautiful countryside beyond.

When I arrived at the care home the manager was sorry to inform me that she simply did not have enough carers to accompany the visit as her carers were busy caring! Only one volunteer was available.

But I noticed sat behind her were 3 defiant residents who had refused to move from the foyer – they wanted to see the farm!!! So I made a quick phone call to Jeremy who jumped off his tractor to help and after a quick lesson for me on wheelchair mobility we were off!

Being able to get very close to the beef cattle in the barn next door was clearly a highlight to one gentleman called Ron, who had lost the power of speech, but clearly found the rough tongues and warm breath of the young cattle nibbling his hands rewarding.

The residents also included 91 year old Winnie, who was as bright as a button, had a great sense of humour and a firm handshake! I soon discovered all guests had either worked or lived on a farm in their youth.

Next came a journey through a quiet country lane to our farmhouse, stopping now and again to observe the abundance of wildlife and flowers in the leafy hedgerows; the warm sun and blue skies adding to the enjoyment.

The farmhouse is typical in design with stone-built cow houses clustered close to the house, where once villagers could buy fresh milk straight from the cow, warm, frothy & creamy. The visitors remembered with great pleasure a time when friesian cows dotted the landscape and the farmers were seen on their legs working the land and not sat in huge machinery.

We gave up milking 10 years ago and those buildings are now stables; horses being kept for leisure today unlike the horses of years ago which were the engines of farm life. Our guests enjoyed the sight, smell and touch of these gentle animals and watching the horses kick up their heels in the open field brought great joy, as did bottle-feeding two orphaned pet lambs.

Over a cup of tea, which was served in old fashioned china, nostalgic conversations developed whilst looking through old farming photographs. Memories of the richness of their lives back then seemed close to the surface.

The vegetable allotment at rear of the farmhouse was brimming over with fresh produce. Ron, whose throat condition meant he was unable to eat, took great pleasure from just smelling the freshly pulled baby carrots, brightly coloured sweet pea flowers and the cocktail of herbs that he was able to pick from a specially adapted wheelchair height raised bed.

Winnie especially enjoyed picking fresh sweet crunchy young peas from the pod. As she slipped them into her mouth she said she "felt like a child again in her dads garden”. We pulled fresh lettuces, which were taken back to the home to accompany supper that night, along with posies of sweet peas for their rooms. Time in that area of the farm was incredibly satisfying. 

Winnie left the farm singing “We’ll meet again”. Iris said she felt good about herself and Ron held onto my hand so tightly I didn’t think he would ever let go.

I was left wondering who had benefitted the most…….me or them?

Shortly after a local newspaper kindly ran an article on the project which was spotted by a reporter from BBC Somerset Radio who was keen to join the next visit from a group of elderly people. Winnie returned to the care home full of inspirational stories about her adventure and some weeks later I was asked if another 10 residents could attend.

There was no shortage of staff this time, most had offered to assist even though they were suppose to be off duty. The weather wasn’t so kind this time - rather a chilly wind - but the group were kept snug wrapped high in blankets as they learnt all about the harvested grain. Initially this group were visibly less engaged and had greater degrees of dementia but within an hour everyone seemed much more alert and able to participate.

I’m finding the content of a 'Let Nature Feed Your Senses' visit continually modifies with the changing months and seasons. Our pet lambs were possibly a little too large to be bottle fed so the visit was adapted to include a wool spinning demonstration, which a friend set up in the garden. The visitors felt the beautifully soft fleece, watched it spun into wool and enjoyed the richness of the lanolin on their hands. The large lambs did enjoy a bottle much to the amusement and laughter of the visitors.

For one lady who used to be a passionate knitter, childhood memories were awakened of growing up on a farm in Suffolk. Her daughter who accompanied her told us that usually her mother was asleep in the chair with little conversation to share, yet she had enjoyed the day so much she was keen to be interviewed by the reporter. The radio interview was recorded onto CD and is played often at the home upon the residents' request! 

The care home manager has indicated the visit to the farm has really lifted the general atmosphere for both the residents and staff and they look forward to attending again.

If you are a host farmer I encourage you to invite the elderly onto your farm for a sensory experience and to anyone else why not offer to help make a visit happen? Your assistance in pushing a wheelchair could bring such pleasure. If you are an activity coordinator or manager of a care home I have witnessed the enormous benefit of our visits and say it really is worth getting out.

Access to our working farm during the cold winter months for the elderly is challenging. But with creative thinking and the kind offer recently of a warm workshop we could offer displays of old-fashioned farm tools rescued from the back of barns after a jolly good clear out this year.  Being an arable farm I’d like our elderly visitors to feel the texture of the gathered grain running through their fingers and help them make bread (there’s nothing quite like the smell and taste of freshly baked bread!) and make simple crafts like corn dollies together.

Our beef cattle are housed in the barn for the winter months, it's just possible to push a wheelchair down through the middle of the barn with at least 100 very large cattle snorting and munching sileage ………..what a wonderful sensory experience that makes!