Farm School Exmoor
Educating through farming
Meet our team
Serena Colwill
Serena grew up at Coombe Farm and has many happy memories from her childhood. She is now the fourth generation of her family to farm here.
Denise Stanbury
Denise loves caring for animals and looking after children. After leaving school she worked on her family farm before marrying Michael and moving to Coombe Farm.
Sally Bickersteth
With a keen interest in farming and a background in early years education, Sally likes nothing more than being involved in a programme that teaches children where their food comes from.
Michael Stanbury
Michael grew up at Coombe Farm and has worked on the farm for the whole of his life. He married Denise in 1987, which is when they took over the family farming business until 2020.
Mike Colwill
Mike has qualifications in agriculture and started his farming career as an agricultural contractor, as well as working on many dairy farms.
Lottie, Midnight and Rowan
Lottie, Midnight, and Rowan lend a hand throughout the farm, not only soaking up affection from students but also helping to keep the animals in order.
Welcome to farm school
Farm School Exmoor are offering fully funded hands on learning experiences on their working beef and sheep farm. We also have three dogs, a cat, a pony and some chickens!
Farm School Exmoor are passionate and determined to help as many people as possible understand and become engaged with farming and the environment, using the land as a classroom. There are many benefits to children learning outdoors and connecting this with introducing children to farming, learning valuable lessons on where their food comes from, how to care for animals and the environment is something we strive to provide for the people who visit our farm.
Since January 2023, Farm School Exmoor have catered for over 100 different groups of people, from school group of all ages to toddler groups, extra curricular activity clubs such as scouts and a gymnastics club and care homes. Some of these groups visit us multiple times throughout the year, whereas other groups visit us annually. The success of Farm School Exmoor has allowed us to improve our facilities, which now include two new toilets, one of which is accessible to all, alongside hand washing and baby changing facilities.
During the visit we will provide a structured two-hour lesson, which will suit the needs of your children and cover areas of learning you have requested. Please take a look at the ‘Education’ section which will give you more of an idea on the types of topics we can cover. We also have a lunch room on site, which we can use for certain activities and is a great area for people to enjoy their packed lunches.
Before the session we will provide you with further information including a lesson plan, a full risk assessment and a letter addressed to the children/adults attending, please find examples of these in the ‘Education’ section. Finally, to enable Farm School Exmoor to provide a fully funded visit we will require a ‘farm visit declaration form’ to be filled in, which we will provide.
If you have any further questions or would like to book your fully funded session (places are limited), please do not hesitate to get in touch.