Forest Schools, smores and sharks teeth at Foxburrow Farm

Forest Schools, smores and sharks teeth at Foxburrow Farm

The interns with our smores at Bradfield Woods after a day of forest school training. From left to right: Katharine, Faye, Charlotte, and Sam.                                                                                      

Hi everyone, I’m Katharine. I’m the new learning team intern based at Foxburrow Farm. I’m going to be at Foxburrow until June, then I’ll be switching places with the Ipswich green spaces intern, Faye (look out for her blog coming soon!).

The other interns are Charlotte at Carlton Marshes, and Sam at Bradfield Woods and Lackford Lakes. We’re all really excited to get started and see what each other get up to. 

A bit about me

I completed my degree in Psychology last summer. My main area of research was environmental psychology – investigating how to encourage people to be more environmentally friendly.

During my degree I also got really into house plants. Over the lockdowns, keeping my plants alive and happy gave me something to do and helped brighten my small uni room. My housemates and I even expanded to our garden where I grew tubs of flowers, tomatoes, and even one tiny cucumber! If you want to grow some plants to boost your wellbeing you could visit the peat-free plant sale at Redgrave & Lopham Fen on 10April.

Last autumn I moved back to Suffolk. I found a new interest in fungi and I spent a lot of time slowly walking through the woods looking for exciting mushrooms – have you spotted a stinkhorn mushroom before? They live up to their name! I’m currently reading Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake; I really recommend it if you want to learn more about how incredible and vital fungi is.

What I’m excited about

I’m looking forward to working with, and learning from, other people who also care about nature. All of us interns have already had loads of great chats about what we love about the natural world, what we’re excited to do, and what we hope to achieve.

I’m particularly excited about the Team Wilder initiative. I’m hoping to use what I learned during my degree to help get more people doing what they can to protect nature.

Intern Diary

07/03/22 The interns met at head office for the first time – we all instantly got on and started chatting about what we’ve been up to and why we wanted to do this internship.

08/03/22 Faye and I met Emma and Kat at Foxburrow Farm. We saw Muntjac trails in the Jungle and had a dig for sharks teeth in the crag pit (we haven’t found any yet, but Lucy showed us the treasures she unearthed!)

14/03/22 All the interns headed over to Redgrave & Lopham Fen. Sam spotted a marsh harrier!

15/03/22 – 16/03/22 Two days of Forest School training with Jo and Charlie at Bradfield Woods. We had so much fun: looking for fungi and bugs, putting up shelters, making charcoal, and laughing a lot! We learned a lot of valuable skills and I’m looking forward to putting this into practice with groups at Foxburrow.

19/03/22 My first day at Foxburrow. In the morning the Young Wardens showed me what they usually get up to and we all had a big spring clean of the barns. The afternoon was Family Forest School in Crag pit woods – we did loads of bee themed activities.

That’s all for now! All in all it's been a busy first two weeks! Check back soon to meet the other interns and find out what they’re getting up to at the other sites. I’m going to be busy at Foxburrow at lots of events over the next few months – check out the what's on page and come and visit me there, or visit the others at their sites!