Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas

and Happy New Year!

To all the garden volunteers

Many thanks for all your help and support in the garden over the year.

I will look forward to seeing you all in 2012 for another

exciting and fruitful year in the garden.

Wishing everyone a very merry christmas and a wonderful new year.

see you then.

much love Lu x

Volunteers Christmas meal

A little peek at our volunteer Christmas meal. A chance to say thank you to everyone for all their help and support throughout the year. A special thank you to Humaira and her helpers for cooking such a wonderful meal. 



Christmas down at the farm - How the day went.

What a lovely christmas fair we had today. It was full of singing, acting, selling, making, eating and drinking. Thank you to all who were involved in helping, staff, volunteers animals and father christmas. 

Father Christmas and his elf helper in the cob building grotto in the garden. He was very busy all day giving presents hundreds of children across the borough of Merton.

Our balloon fairy extraordinaire.  

Mother Christmas on tombola.

Reindeer Tom

Carol Singing with the volunteers and Katkin

Go Ben

Mulled wine and cakes, yumm........

More cakes (thank you Vauxhall City Farm)

Fun in the cafe

Guess the weight of the cake. Thank you Mrs Fookes and well done Katie!

 puppets

Whats your wish?

Merry Christmas!

The Bamboo Two

Today in the garden the Bamboo Two have been doing a wonderful job of thinning out the bamboo in the garden. It looks super. wonderful job. Thank you so much guys!

Andrew has also been doing a wonderful job of being Park Ranger. Below; Andrew is emptying one of the many hundreds of barrows of garden waste onto the compost bin. Cheers Andrew.

Later on in the day......

(you can just about see the moon!)

You can just make out Mark and Alex who have just put our new colourful ribbon bunting up.

Cheers to the volunteers in today for such a lovely and productive day in the garden.

Bye Bye Van

This post is in memory of our Deen City Farm Van.

It has been with us now for many years, always there for us to carry our chickens on school incubator schemes, collect hundreds of bricks and other donated items, take us to shows, help Linda move her furniture....the list could continue. Unfortunately due to the TFL emmisions restrictions coming into play in January we are no longer able to use it. It is being taken away today to be crushed :( This is very sad and is affecting many other charities and organisations who just can’t afford to buy a new van.

So this is a fond farewell to our trusted friend 'the van'

Thank you for being their for us

R.I.P

Do you have any ideas of how to help us?

If anyone can help us with a new van which is compliant with the new emissions restrictions feel free to contact us on

020 8543 5300.

Garden of the Day

We are Open Gardens Squares,
garden of the day! 
Please see http://www.opensquares.org/

Double Headed Vegetable

This is a photo of the pumkin we found in the garden today......isnt it great!? I wish it was around when we needed to enter an 'unusual vegetable' into the Capel Manor Horticultural Show : )

It really feels like Autumn in the garden today. We have found these mushrooms, I dont know what type they are. Anyone know?

These are the beautiful nasturtum that are still going strong in the garden. They are my favorite plant. they are cheap, easy to grow. grow in masses, you can eat their flowers and leaves and i just love the shape of their leaves (like little satelite dishes) and the colour of the flowers. as you can tell im a bit of an enthusiast! 



Tom and Edna

 Tom and Edna

Tom works at the farm as senior Lands and livestock assistant and Edner is his brand NEW Barn owl. I just wanted to share with everyone this exciting new happening at the farm. 

Edna is a Common Barn Owl. Barn Owls in the wild will hunt rodents and small birds and here at the farm she is fed day old chicks and mice (not the farm chicks, her is purchased elsewhere!). Her food is often swallowed whole and indigestible parts are then regurgitated in the form of a pellet. You may hear Edna make a variety of shrieks, hisses and snoring sounds, but she wont hoot (that's the Tawny Owl). The sizes of barn owls differ. On an average, they are between 12.6'' to 15.7'' tall, have a wingspan of 39.4'' to 49.2'' and may weigh between 14.1 to 24.7 oz. When seen in flight, it gives the impression of a large white bird.

Edna was born on the 25^th July 2011. She had a few brothers and sisters. When Edna was about 2 weeks old she became dehydrated and unwell. She took a visit to the vets and they kept her in for a while and gave her some medicine which made her healthy again. Unfortunately, having been taken away to visit the vet, when she returned her mother didn’t recognise her and no longer looked after her. Edna was then hand reared by the vets sister until she was old enough to be re-homed.  Tom adopted her at 8 weeks old and she now spends her days at the farm.  Having been hand reared she is very friendly and loves human contact.

You can come and visit Tom and Edna and get a chance to see her being fed, being flight trained, stroke Edna and a chance to ask Tom any questions about her. Times and dates for owl handling will be posted on our website at http://www.deencityfarm.co.uk/ .

Big Draw 2011

Day 1

These are just a few photos from the first day of the Big Draw down at the farm. We allocated one paving slab to each child, who were then free to draw what they wanted with chalk. Many were inspired by the animals and flowers at the farm. The space ended up being incredibly colourful by the end of the day and even ended up running out of slabs.   

Day 2





Today was the day of good old potatoes and printing.

Day 3

The ladies



Today was chicken drawing day. We had two chickens, a silver spangled hamburg and a silky. They were both very good chickens and struck a pose for the children to draw them. I think you will agree that some wonderful drawings were produced today.    

Last very scarey day





A Huge thank you to all the children and adults who came down to support the

Big Draw 2011