Farming Past and Present – From Old Plough to John Deere Now

This morning the P1-3 class we met up with our friends from Kirkcolm and took a trip into Stranraer to learn more about their Social Studies topic – farming! We kick started our farming fun with a trip to the Museum to learn all about farming in the past and explored some of the old machinery and how it as well as animals and plenty of man power were used for cutting, plough and whole cropping! We explored the museum with a scavenger hunt, finding various different artefacts from the past and investigated how butter, cheese, cream and milk was made in the 13 different creameries in Stranraer! 🐮🥛🧀🧈

We then went upstairs and split up into a dairy and a wool group. In the dairy group we had fun matching the tools that were used to make milk and cream – Lactalis sure has come a long way since then! We then had some fun weaving using the wool and matching the different varieties of wool to the sheep they belonged to! 👩🏻‍🌾🧑🏻‍🌾

Going from past to present day we then jumped back onto the bus and headed to J and S Montgomery’s, where we were greeted by the lovely David Calvert – or better known to us as Rory from Kirkcolm’s Daddy. He started off by giving us some background info on the branch, explaining that they are one of 4 Scottish branches who supply John Deere machinery to local farmers! He showed us around the yard and explained what some of the machinery is used for, including a plough which was VERY different from the 300 year old wooden plough we’d

previously looked at in the museum! 🐮🚜

We took a look inside the workshop where one of their engineers were busy working on a chopper and we were very much amazed to see all of the wires and electrical parts inside! He explained that machinery is often serviced in the winter to make sure its ready and raring to go for the spring harvest.

We finished our tour by looking at some big and small John Deere machinery, including gators, lawn mowers, handlers and everyone’s fave – the quad bike which judging by the smiles in the photos was lots of fun! 🙂 David very kindly gifted all of the boys and girls some Montgomery’s merch, before an obligatory walk through the gift shop for some Christmas present inspiration before heading back to the bus. 🚜💚

What a fabulously fun farming morning we had thanks to Stranraer Museum as well as David Calvert from Montgomery’s!

#CriticalThinkingChris

#SenseMakingSamira

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