Growing together: Volunteering this Season
November 27, 2025
Volunteer numbers continue to grow despite the rapid change in weather.
We have recently had an influx of new volunteers who have not struggled finding their feet at the farm and have got themselves stuck in from day dot. Sometimes, literally stuck in! Recently, up to our waists in pond silt whilst expanding and improving the pond dipping platform for future visitors to enjoy!
It has been great to be working in and around the pond building the platform and also being a major part of the build helping our expert Mel with our new bird hide. It has really expanded what the farm has to offer further afield and will hopefully pull people a little bit further along their walks to enjoy the more secret and hidden parts of the farm.
It is not only our volunteer Fridays that are going from strength to strength, but our volunteer weekends are still attracting willing workers from around the country to really help push things forward and make huge improvements to all things FCLI. One of the most recent weekends also attracted over 20 young people from a local Scout/Explorers group who came to enjoy an evening of camping and campfire cooking before a full day of hedgerow maintenance the next day. They certainly earned their keep with the amount of work they completed on the Sunday. Many hands certainly made light work of what would have taken our usual volunteer team and countryside apprentice several days to complete!
2025 has seen us host volunteers from all around the world and from all walks of life. We have had corporate groups building pathways, starting our Piggy Paradise and planting hedge lines; we have had WWOOFers in our garden, maintaining hedge lines and completing all around site maintenance; we have had youth groups improving our floating paths, building dead hedges and creating hazel fences; and our regular team getting involved in anything I throw their way.
As usual, we arealways ready to hear from new volunteers. Whether you want to come and help every week, or you fancy doing a random day every so often, or even a complete one-off day, you are more than welcome to come along and get involved. All we ask is a willingness to get stuck in. Get in touch with me at mike.grabarz@fordhallfarm.com for more information or to sign yourself up.
Mike Grabarz, Youth Worker, Volunteer Lead and Residential Extraordinaire
