On Tuesday, the Year 7 boys were taken to Upton Park Farm accompanied by our Science teachers Mr Drake, Ms Carpenter as well as Mr Reid and Miss Willcocks. On arrival, we were greeted by Tim the farmer, who would tell us all about the farm. He showed us the grain storage sheds which contained a whopping 1100 tons of grain with a rough market value of £200/ton! Tim showed us some of the crops used in food and invited us to eat a grain or two of the corn. Most of us said they tasted like flour – which made perfect sense, since it is flour in the middle of the corn grain, and it is this grain which is milled to produce the flour in our shops. After that, we did some soil pH tests and used quadrats to work on hypotheses we had come up with. At the end of the morning, we had a competition: which team could find the most species of plants growing in the field we had been working in? The team that won found an amazing 26 different species!

After a tasty lunch eaten on Old Alresford Cricket Ground, we went to see an artillery gun in the grounds of the estate which dated back to 1985 and had been used in Stanley during the Falklands War. We also walked through a beautiful avenue of trees to a memorial for Patrick’s grandma. Finally, we all went to see the farm machinery. We saw some huge tractors and were taught about their radar system and how, using these, the tractors can find the straight lines automatically to prepare the ground, drill seeds, fertilise, and harvest crops. One of the tractors, a few years ago, was stolen and taken to Romania by someone who had bought a key on Amazon for £1 which could unlock every tractor in the UK! Tim also took us to the crop sprayer with its enormous span, and an abnormally large combine harvester (which Mr Reid asked if he could drive and was very disappointed not to be allowed – Ed)

What a great day out!

written by Felix in Year 7
with Miss Carpenter and Mr Drake