The farm at Oathall was established in 1941 in response the Ministry of Agriculture’s ‘Dig for Victory’ campaign during the Second World War, (which encouraged people to grow their own food to supplement basic rations).
58 boys turned an acre of grassland into arable land and thus qualified for a ploughing grant of £2 from the Ministry of Agriculture, the last sod was turned by the school’s headteacher Mr Miles.
Oathall Community College has held its annual Carols in the Barn event on Thursday 12 December.
In the days running up to it farm staff and student volunteers decorated the barn with lights and other festive trimmings while a large Christmas tree generously donated by Balcombe Estates provided a spectacular centrepiece.
Past and present students, parents, staff and members of the local community packed into the barn for a cold but magical start to Christmas. Under the watchful eye of the animals a selection of traditional and religious readings were given and music students raised the roof with renditions of lots of festive favourites.
Earlier this year our farm shop was nominated for Best New Business in the 2013 Bright FM Awards. Students and staff at Oathall Community College were thrilled to have even have been nominated but on Thursday 14 November we scooped the award! The award was presented to Mr Wood, Head of Farm and Mrs Woodward, Farm Shop Supervisor at the ceremony at the East Sussex National Golf Resort in Uckfield.
Oathall Community College student and Young Farmer, Katie Russell, has had a brilliant few days, displaying both her academic prowess and her livestock showmanship skills.
At the Edenbridge and Oxted show held over the bank holiday weekend, an Ayrshire calf, “Pylon Ambo” trained and shown by Katie and loaned by David and Jeanne Heasman from Lane End Farm Sheffield Park was the Champion Ayrshire in the calf classes.
In addition Katie, aged 16, won the DSC trophy for the champion handler in the showmanship classes. Katie is a volunteer on the school farm and chairs the young farmers club.
The previous week Katie recorded outstanding grades in her GCSE examinations finishing with 11 GCSEs, four of which were A grades including her Environmental and Landbased studies course based on the farm which counts as 4 GCSE equivalents.
Head of Farm Howard Wood said: “These results demonstrate the all-round and balanced education we offer to students of all abilities at Oathall. Congratulations to Katie.”
Some people might take the opportunity to sit back and relax after taking their GCSE exams but Oathall Community College student and former chair of our Young Farmer’s Club Holly Farrage decided to do just the opposite.
Over the summer Holly and her father participated in a charity bike ride from John O’Groats to Land’s End raising a good sum of money in the process.
Holly has been a brilliant club chairman and member of Oathall Farm and we will all miss her as she goes off to Sixth Form College in Brighton.
Oathall students were thrilled when their four-year-old Ayrshire dairy cow Oathall Rusty 10 was judged to be Ayrshire champion and reserve dairy champion at the recent Heathfield show, for the second year in succession. Rusty won three trophies including:
They are now looking forward to the South of England show when they will be displaying their cattle and pigs together with a show garden.
We host an annual public open day on the farm, this year it was held on Sunday 19 May 2013.
Lots of visitors came down to tour the facilities, meet the animals and take part in a variety of craft and child-friendly activities.
We had bee keeping displays, sheep shearing and wool spinning demonstrations plus a BBQ and a jazz band.
The sun shone and a great day was had by all!
In spring 2012 some students from Oathall worked with BBC TV presenter Stefan Gates to collect and analyse data to explore food production and land use by comparing the amount of land needed to produce snail protein compared to lamb protein… (more…)
The lambing started at the beginning of March and we’re now surrounded by 54 noisy babies. We have just two more to come and then we’re done.
The main problem for us at the moment is the weather – by now we would hope to have at least half of them out in the field but the weather has made this very difficult.
We’ve also had two more litters of piglets – both sired by a Large Black boar.
As you can see this gives us some lovely black piglets from the Large Black sow and very pretty spotty ones from the Large White sow.
Year 11 students from our Level 2 Environmental and Land-Based Diploma Course took part in the planting of an American Tulip Tree (Liriodendron tulipifera) on Friday 23rd November 2012.
The planting at Muster Green was one of 60 trees planted throughout Britain to mark the Queen’s Jubilee and were donated by The Tree Council.
We hope that our students will work alongside Haywards Heath Tree Warden Alan Colgate in the future as they continue their studies.