dairy farm school
Connecting.
Photo by @cunningham.susie
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The welcoming party!
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Neil Perry.
Photo by @cunningham.susie
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Looking for a genuine working farm school excursion for your students that aligns with the Australian Curriculum?
Look no further than Tommerup’s Dairy Farm.
Our Dairy Farm School program offers students the chance to meet real farmers and learn about their life on a 5th generation working dairy farm, have the chance to meet and feed the farm animals and learn first hand where food comes from.
Dave & Kay happily open their farm gate to show students just what it is that farmers really do each day. Our farm is home to many different animals and our natural farming and sustainable practices provide a wealth of information to students relevant to many areas of the Australian Curriculum.
Take a tour of our dairy, the only 'walk through' style dairy still commercially operating in the district.
Our property is the oldest continually owned, family farm in the district allowing us to share our rich history with students and visitors. We cater not only for science and technology based excursions but provide wonderful content for history and geography connections as well.
Conducted in a hands-on manner with plenty of interaction and stimulation, our program covers a range of topics including farm to table, life and living, natural and processed materials, to name just a few. Bring a picnic lunch and morning tea to enjoy in the shade of the farm picnic area.
Dairy Farm School is a unique opportunity for school students to learn about the sights, sounds (and at times, smells) of a real farm environment. Students are able to ask questions of and engage directly with real farmers and experience a genuine working farm environment. Read our testimonials below for a teacher's perspective of our program.
Look no further than Tommerup’s Dairy Farm.
Our Dairy Farm School program offers students the chance to meet real farmers and learn about their life on a 5th generation working dairy farm, have the chance to meet and feed the farm animals and learn first hand where food comes from.
Dave & Kay happily open their farm gate to show students just what it is that farmers really do each day. Our farm is home to many different animals and our natural farming and sustainable practices provide a wealth of information to students relevant to many areas of the Australian Curriculum.
Take a tour of our dairy, the only 'walk through' style dairy still commercially operating in the district.
Our property is the oldest continually owned, family farm in the district allowing us to share our rich history with students and visitors. We cater not only for science and technology based excursions but provide wonderful content for history and geography connections as well.
Conducted in a hands-on manner with plenty of interaction and stimulation, our program covers a range of topics including farm to table, life and living, natural and processed materials, to name just a few. Bring a picnic lunch and morning tea to enjoy in the shade of the farm picnic area.
Dairy Farm School is a unique opportunity for school students to learn about the sights, sounds (and at times, smells) of a real farm environment. Students are able to ask questions of and engage directly with real farmers and experience a genuine working farm environment. Read our testimonials below for a teacher's perspective of our program.
testimonials
On Friday 19th February, the Year 2 girls from Moreton Bay College visited Tommerup’s Dairy Farm. This was our second visit to the farm and the girls thoroughly enjoyed themselves. The day provided the girls with a real life experience of farm life which for suburban girls was an eye-opening and very valuable life experience. The excursion also addressed the Australian Curriculum Science Key Content Descriptor “Living things grow, change and have offspring similar to themselves (ACSSU030)” The farm provided hands on feeding of a variety of animals including chickens, calves, kids and lambs. The girls were able to see the whole life process of the cow. They saw milking cows, a bull and baby calves of different ages. Kay and Dave are friendly, organised and knowledgeable. They capably communicated with us prior to, during and after the farm experience. It was easy to organise e.g. they can provide a risk assessment and the day ran very smoothly. Overall, I would highly recommend this excursion as it was well organised and provided a fabulous learning experience for our students.
Mrs Kylee Phillips
Year 2 Moreton Bay College 2016
We took 2 classes of year 8 Food Technology (all 40) students to Tommerup’s dairy farm because it fitted in perfectly with the unit of work that they were studying called ‘Paddock to Plate’. In this unit, students look at the journey our food takes from the farm to the table, and the environmental, social and ethical costs that mass-production can have on land, animals and humans. Our aim was to address, in a very practical and interesting way, the Australian Curriculum Design Technologies Descriptor (ACTDEK032) which says 'Analyse how food and fibre are produced when designing managed environments and how these can become more sustainable;.
We were looking for a farm that could demonstrate this and that good quality food didn’t have to come at the cost of the above mentioned, whilst also supporting local farmers rather than big corporations and large supermarkets. Tommerup’s fit the bill! The year before we had discovered Tommerup’s Dairy Farm, we’d taught this unit for the first time, and (our students being ’city kids’) without this farm excursion, what we were teaching had no where near as much impact as when we visited the farm the following year. Students heard how challenging it really is for farmers like Dave and Kay to continue to exist on the modern-day farm and they heard stories straight from the source how much of an impact deregulation and poor milk prices have had an effect. Many students were shocked at the massive cuts in the profit margins that farmers like Dave and Kay had to bear when deregulation came in, and the other ways it affected them. Dave and Kay teach the students the importance of supporting local farmers, how they care for the land, that nothing on the farm is wasted (rather it’s a valuable resource) and showed how every animal has a job to do.
Dave and Kay were very obliging and made a great connection with our students, answering their many questions and showing them around the beautiful Tommerup's farm. They also demonstrated how animals can be ethically farmed, how they have adapted their farming practices and diversified to not only survive the challenges, but create other beautiful products like their delicious milk-fed pork (which, by the way, tastes even better than any Christmas ham!) high quality cheese and other meats and smallgoods, whilst producing a high-quality product for which they can get a fair price. All of the above is the essence of sustainability – farmers making a living but not at the cost of keeping happy animals or the land and way of life. The students LOVED the animal feeding, and for many our our ‘city kids’, it was their first time doing such a thing! It was a great day out, with so much to learn about and see…they all wished that we could have stayed longer! One student said “I’m having the time of my life!”. A truly wonderful interactive experience which students came away from happy and with a real-life understanding of how our food does get from the paddock to our plate…which beats just hearing about it from me! We were able to come back to the classroom and continually use the farm as a real point of reference, which became far more valuable than any video or textbook could teach! We sampled some products when we got back and they could actually taste the difference between mass produced food and that which was done ethically. It truly was a learning in ‘full circle’.
- Mrs Helen Armstrong
Food Technology Teacher
St. Thomas More College, Sunnybank 2016
Mrs Kylee Phillips
Year 2 Moreton Bay College 2016
We took 2 classes of year 8 Food Technology (all 40) students to Tommerup’s dairy farm because it fitted in perfectly with the unit of work that they were studying called ‘Paddock to Plate’. In this unit, students look at the journey our food takes from the farm to the table, and the environmental, social and ethical costs that mass-production can have on land, animals and humans. Our aim was to address, in a very practical and interesting way, the Australian Curriculum Design Technologies Descriptor (ACTDEK032) which says 'Analyse how food and fibre are produced when designing managed environments and how these can become more sustainable;.
We were looking for a farm that could demonstrate this and that good quality food didn’t have to come at the cost of the above mentioned, whilst also supporting local farmers rather than big corporations and large supermarkets. Tommerup’s fit the bill! The year before we had discovered Tommerup’s Dairy Farm, we’d taught this unit for the first time, and (our students being ’city kids’) without this farm excursion, what we were teaching had no where near as much impact as when we visited the farm the following year. Students heard how challenging it really is for farmers like Dave and Kay to continue to exist on the modern-day farm and they heard stories straight from the source how much of an impact deregulation and poor milk prices have had an effect. Many students were shocked at the massive cuts in the profit margins that farmers like Dave and Kay had to bear when deregulation came in, and the other ways it affected them. Dave and Kay teach the students the importance of supporting local farmers, how they care for the land, that nothing on the farm is wasted (rather it’s a valuable resource) and showed how every animal has a job to do.
Dave and Kay were very obliging and made a great connection with our students, answering their many questions and showing them around the beautiful Tommerup's farm. They also demonstrated how animals can be ethically farmed, how they have adapted their farming practices and diversified to not only survive the challenges, but create other beautiful products like their delicious milk-fed pork (which, by the way, tastes even better than any Christmas ham!) high quality cheese and other meats and smallgoods, whilst producing a high-quality product for which they can get a fair price. All of the above is the essence of sustainability – farmers making a living but not at the cost of keeping happy animals or the land and way of life. The students LOVED the animal feeding, and for many our our ‘city kids’, it was their first time doing such a thing! It was a great day out, with so much to learn about and see…they all wished that we could have stayed longer! One student said “I’m having the time of my life!”. A truly wonderful interactive experience which students came away from happy and with a real-life understanding of how our food does get from the paddock to our plate…which beats just hearing about it from me! We were able to come back to the classroom and continually use the farm as a real point of reference, which became far more valuable than any video or textbook could teach! We sampled some products when we got back and they could actually taste the difference between mass produced food and that which was done ethically. It truly was a learning in ‘full circle’.
- Mrs Helen Armstrong
Food Technology Teacher
St. Thomas More College, Sunnybank 2016
Teacher Resources & Curriculum Links
Click here to access our Teacher Resources and Excursion documents to help you plan your day on Tommerup's Dairy Farm.