Getting knee-deep in muck to support a good cause

Earlier this week the Opportunity Green team had a day volunteering at a city farm. It was a chance to get away from our screens and connect with nature, enjoy some animal therapy and give our time to a brilliant local cause – oh, and get knee-deep in poo…

Freightliners City Farm is a community farm nestled in the backstreets of Islington. As our Legal Officer Isa put it: “I only live two minutes around the corner and I never knew this place existed!”

Home to Golden Guernsey goats, Dexter cows, KuneKune pigs, sheep, ducks, geese, guinea pigs and some extremely soft rabbits, we might not have known about the farm before, but we’ll be making lunchtime detours there whenever we can from now on.

The team quickly got to work with the morning animal feeds, cue lots of cooing and squealing as we topped up the rabbit hay and got acquainted with the guinea pigs. Then it was time to move the larger animals – the entertaining KuneKune pigs daintily trotting through the gates made our morning.

But it wasn’t all soft bundles of fur and funny YouTube animal moments – we had to do some hard work, too.

Aptly nicknamed ‘poo mountain’ by the farm team, we were tasked with turning the mountain into a mound. It was smelly and messy and tiring, but we bagged up a whole load of farm manure and felt proud at the significant dent we had made by the end of the day.

Our Project Assistant Sabrina may be a self-confessed city girl at heart, but this ended up being her best bit: “My favourite part of the day was Hannah distracting me from the smell of shovelling horse manure by teaching me about gardening – and I now know that the wormy bits are the best,” she says!

For lots of us, getting outside for a whole day was the biggest treat. “Being out in nature and close to animals is something that I love more than most things,” says Ana. “But there was also something very relaxing about having to fully focus on just one task at the time, and using some of the senses (and muscles!) we don't tend to use in our day-to-day jobs, sitting in front of a screen.”

Isa agrees: “I really enjoyed spending time with the whole team outdoors. The farm team was kind and considerate, taking the time to show us around and let us have some cuddle time with the animals (definitely the best part!).”

Our CEO Aoife was won over by the goats. “My best bit was definitely having the goats eat out of my hand, the joy!”

She also says it was good to volunteer for a cause that had some really tangible results. “It can be difficult to see your results when you are advocating for long-term policy to stop climate change, so that was a nice change.”

Find out more about visiting and volunteering for Freightliners City Farm here.