Children's Poetry Competition

Woodlands Farm's writer in residence, Clare Best, organised poetry competitions at two local schools: Kirton Primary School and Middlecott School Kirton. Children wrote on subjects connected with the farm and with healthy eating. Many of the poems entered were written at Clare's workshops following school visits to the farm.

Gerard Benson, the well known children's poet and performer, and founder of 'Poems on the Underground', was competition judge and prize-giver. On National Poetry Day, October 6, he performed his own poems, read out the children's winning poems and awarded certificates and prizes at special assemblies at both schools.

Middlecott School Winners

Year 9

Recipe for a large turkey farm

Ingredients
15 acres of land
lots of mud
1 turkey shed
5000 turkeys (from eggs)
a barn full of chicken feed
a slaughter shed
mild weather
freedom
one large apple orchard
600 apple pickers
250 hard-working friends
30 tractors
30 ploughs
and a hell of a lot of money

Time needed
about 16 years

Method
Build a turkey shed in the field to house the newborn turkeys.
Build a storage shed to hold the feed and a slaughter shed for killing the turkeys.
You'll need hot, cold, dry and wet weather for the apple orchard to grow nicely, this will be planted in 10 acres of land.
Make the friends pick apples and look after the turkeys.
Finally, go to the bank and ask for a massive loan of about £60,000,000.

Jordan Cleaver

Middlecott School's Poems