Harvest time is well underway, so straw is aplenty. Who needs to travel miles to a theme park when you are a farm kid? Straw offers hours of fun. It’s also a brilliant backdrop for anyone seeking a rustic, natural backdrop to a film or photo shoot.
Every farm will have a straw fort if there are children about. Edward and Jessie are proud of this one their uncle built at Hare Farm, near Rye, East Sussex.
Stacked high, the fort has a maze of passages inside. Follow me!
Part of the fun is collecting straw from around the shed to help make a soft landing when jumping off the “diving platform” (I quote – eek) of the fort. This old small trailer has been with the family since the 70s when it hauled pig feed from one end of the pig sties to the other. Today, Queen Jessie is on board.
Endless quantities of straw end up being thrown everywhere. Let’s build a nest in our hair why don’t we?
And then let’s get even more covered and be a straw angel.
Oh, and then any wannabe farmer needs to practice chewing on a piece of straw.
Inside the fort is a great place to hide, especially when Mum calls to take the kids back home.
But when Mum (that’s me) does come back to take the kids home later in the afternoon, I do get just a bit side tracked by this brilliant dappled view of the straw stack. The roof lights in the shed send shafts of light in “squares” onto the bales.
That’s another day sorted of entertaining the kids for free on the farm.
Baled in the fields in August, bales of straw are then stored in the sheds all year, so straw is available all year long as a prop for a photo or film shoot. We can arrange for a shoot in the fields, in the farmyards, or in the sheds of several of the farms featured at Farm Locations. Please contact Jo to discuss the best location for your requirements (07802 979348 or [email protected])