The Senior Agriculture and Horticulture class recently went to Reefton to visit the Tai Poutini Polytechnic farm and learn some new skills first hand.

Between 14 and 17 March, our senior Agriculture and Horticulture class had the opportunity to visit the Tai Poutini Polytechnic farm in Reefton. We learned some useful farming skills, including quad bikes, temporary electric (break) fences, termination knots for fencing, and using a plate meter to calculate grass coverage in a paddock.

We spent the first day learning and practicing our skills, and the second day was our assessment. The whole group did very well in the assessment, all showing enough skill and efficiency to pass with flying colours.

In the words of one of the students. “I learned heaps on the farm from tying a difficult knot to using math in farming for a plate meter and I can’t wait to go again.”

A huge thank you must be passed onto Bryan and Colin from Tai Poutini Polytechnic. They shared their experience and knowledge with us, and were very patient with us while we learned some new skills and refined others that we thought we already had mastered. Thank you to TPP also for providing the venue and resources, particularly the metres and metres of high-tension wire that we used trying to master the termination knots.

Our next trip to the farm is penciled in for Term Two, where we will explore crop management on a dairy farm. This will give us some hands-on experiences and onsite knowledge that our Year 12 students will be able to use in one of their assessments.