The Ag Corner

Spring has Sprung!

Spring has truly sprung at Lake with lots of new and exciting things happening in the Ag plot this term. You may have noticed that the school has a few new additions. A local community member donated a young male alpaca to the school. Rodriguez, is a quiet animal who is curious about his surroundings, however, is still a little timid when approached. He came to us with two friends, female sheep who were in desperate need of a sheer.

On Monday morning (21 Oct) we came to school and discovered that the very woolly sheep Delores had been keeping a secret! A very small and adorable lamb was born around Sunday evening.  Needless to say, the students and staff were very excited by the news and she has had numerous visitors. Mum and bub are doing fine!

On Tuesday the 30th Oct, Carlotta, the second sheep gave birth to twins!!! Within 4 weeks we have gone from 4 sheep to 9, I am fairly sure that is it for now (fingers crossed).

The Agricultural Technology students have decided to hold a ‘Name the Lamb (s)’ competition (entry is a gold coin) and to donate the money raised to the People’s Truck fundraiser for the Illawarra Convoy.

The year 9 students are very busy preparing for next year’s Royal Easter Show. There is some fierce competition this year as the students have been working on their pumpkin patches for months and have planted their seedlings in the hopes of producing another giant winning pumpkin. We are also trialing growing a number of gourds and heritage varieties of vegetables and will also enter these in a separate produce competition at the Royal and other local Agricultural shows. On the show front, our lovely girls and one young gentleman have been winning and representing our school proudly, taking first place honors at several local poultry shows.

In term 3, we participated in a Dairy Farmers initiative called 'Cows Create Careers' where we hosted two three week old poddy calves called Sovereign and Suzanne. The students were responsible for their welfare and daily feeding. At the end of the three weeks the girls went back to the dairy farm and the students entered projects based on what they had learned throughout the three weeks. There were several sad faces as we said goodbye, though they cheered up at the thought of two new babies next year.