Lowberdale Farm offers farm experience programs to young people, enabling them to enjoy the support and nurture of a family farm environment.
Programs are available for 10-19 year olds at risk from social isolation, low aspiration, behavioural and confidence challenges, sometimes resulting from neuroatypical conditions.
Programs are available to individuals and small groups for half or full days, for term length agreements. Programs are lead by Mark ‘the Farmer’, and supported by volunteers.
Currently, the charity supports 8 local young people to attend the farm for weekly sessions throughout the academic year. Some of these young people are referred from their schools, others come as part of their college work experience programs and others as part of home school programs.
The charity also runs Summer and Easter holiday programs, with often the same young people returning year after year, and others go onto attend regularly throughout the year.
Typical farm days vary across the seasons, but can include feeding cows, sheep and lambs, bedding down and cleaning out sheds and carrying out animal health treatments. Lambing time is particularly busy, with the 250 sheep lambing indoors over a four week period. Working days are punctuated by breaks when everyone sits around the kitchen table together.
Lowberdale Farm is managed by a group of trustees and supported by volunteers, as an expression of Christian faith, with a focus on care, compassion and inclusion.
Much of Archie’s early childhood was spent observing local agricultural contractors. He watched them mowing and carting grass, spreading muck and cultivating the ground...
For further information including the referral of young people to the project please contact us.
Lowberdale Farm is a care farming charity, based near Hartington in Derbyshire, which enables young people and children to engage in a farm environment.
