Animals, tools, farm vehicles and farmers themselves are being lined up for the experience!
The home are pulling out all the stops for an experience day for its residents, the likes of which they will have never seen before.
Louth Manor Care Home has a large number of residents who are from the farming community and had hoped to take them to visit a farm. However, as Debbie Clennell, activity lead, said: “So many are in a wheelchairs and, even with our minibus, we couldn’t get that number on board.
“It was our home manager, Lucy Blackburn, who said, ‘why not turn our garden into a farm?’. We have an amazing garden here, its would be a perfect spot if we can make this happen”.
The Homes activity team, Debbie, Zoe and Deborah, started putting feelers out and there are already pledges of chickens, guinea pigs and the possibility of a Shetland pony paying a visit to Louth Manor on Sunday, June 2. Debbie said: “One lady is bringing a small horse in, she’s going to let our residents strip down the saddle and bridle, clean them and put them back on”.
“There is going to be a tractor parked in the car park. We have quite a lot of retired farm folk in the home – some are wives of farmers, some are farmers – and a few are living with dementia.”
It is Louth Manor’s hope that people will be able to bring along more livestock, including goats and pigs, as well as some hand tools for farming/gardening that the residents can handle and reminisce about. The home has requested some bales of hay, “either to loan or buy reasonably”, and some old garments that the residents can use for a spot of scarecrow making.
Debbie said: “We hope that some retired farmers or young farmers will want to come along on the day, have a cup of tea and some cake and have a chat with our residents. For our ‘townies’, we think it will be something different for them to experience as well. They will never have had that experience of farm life.”
