Whirlow Hall Farm is a magical place for the children to visit. We are not a visitor centre – we’re a real working farm where the children can get involved in all aspects of farming life. Last year over 14,000 children and young people came to the farm for a range of educational activities. Many of these children are from schools in the most disadvantaged areas of South Yorkshire and North Derbyshire. The teachers are effusive about the benefit the children gain from coming to the farm, but the main factor that teachers mention which makes it hard for them to bring a group to the farm is the cost of transport. Through fundraising, we can subsidise the cost of using our minibuses significantly but our in-house transport is only available to around 25% of the groups. At the moment we have two minibuses, but one is getting fairly old (W registration) and it is frequently breaking down because of the amount of use it is getting. If we had a third minibus, this would not only increase our capacity but also make it easier to manage when our older bus breaks down. It would also give us some flexibility to start fundraising to replace the older bus (if you feel able to donate two buses instead of one we will be ecstatic!). We are asking for a brand new minibus plus the cost of running it for two years i.e. £30,000. ‘Yes, yes, yes’ Courtney, in answer to the question ‘ Would you like to visit Whirlow Hall Farm again?’ ‘For the children in my class a visit to Whirlow isn’t a nice to have, it’s a need to have.’ Jane, teacher at Longley Primary