Alternative Leeds Down On The Farm
Hannah Gradwell mucks in at Meanwood Valley Urban Farm
Alternative Leeds: Down On The Farm
Other Recent Alternative Leeds Articles
Excited by any opportunity to spend a day out of the office, I recently volunteered on a farm. I honestly had no idea what I was in for, but in a worst case scenario, a day spent mucking out pigs was better more fun than a day staring blindly at my computer screen.
Meanwood Valley Urban Farm is located just off Meanwood Road but is surprisingly sheltered from the surrounding suburbia. In fact, despite having traipsed up and down Meanwood Road many a time, I was unaware such a place existed! I suppose that is rather the point. The farm’s ethos is entirely based around being a tranquil and green escape from the dirty, noisy and polluted city around. There is a feeling of escapism, despite the day being filled with some serious manual labour.
The central building is called the Epicentre, and is the hub of all farm activity. The building itself has a low environmental footprint, and has been built to blend in with the surrounding area; the roof is covered in grass and a meadow-like garden so that from the air it is barely noticeable as a man-made structure.
It is here that I met the rest of my team and was finally told what kind of day I was in for. The day did not start as well as I had hoped; it was throwing it down and the lower 45% of my body was already soaked from the puddles that were forming. Luckily, the rain ceased as we stepped out to begin the work. The morning tasks were mostly weeding, and covering a pond with netting to prevent ducks from landing. The likelihood of falling in made this a dangerous task, for which I bravely volunteered; I really couldn’t have gotten any wetter had I fully submerged myself in the pond.
We were supervised by one of the on-site education officers and his young protégé. The young man was part of the farms Re-connect Programme. As a multi-functional educational facility young adults are given the chance to work on the farm as well as providing a classroom type environment in which to learn. Both were experts on the farm and its environmental benefits. This was fortunate, as my team and I seemed under-equipped outside the realms of the office and on more than one occasion we weeded plants that should have remained firmly in the ground.
The afternoon was spent feeding the animals, and then setting up and manning a huge bonfire – which I have to admit, given my enthusiasm for controlled fires, was probably the highlight of my day. We all got a chance to look around the sprawling site which includes a garden centre, a small cafe and shop, herb and cottage gardens and many other nature-reserve-type attractions.
I am sure that as a paying visitor (there is a small charge on entrance.) you would not feel obliged to don gardening gloves and muck in, unless you really wanted to! The main attraction for children – and big kids at heart such as me – is the chance to feed and pet the animals. There are donkeys, sheep, pigs and chickens and several goats that will ignore the proffered feed, preferring to gnaw on clothing instead. There are also plenty of cute and fluffy rabbits and guinea pigs which, I swear, have formed an alliance against some of the smaller chickens and were, on the day of my visit, marking out their territory. For a day, or even an afternoon out there is plenty to see and do and it is impossible to leave the farm without learning something new!
Posted on Monday 24th May 2010
Meanwood Valley Urban Farm
Sugarwell Road, Leeds, LS7 2QG
Sending you to Twitter, hold on... 
