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North
Downs
YFC Club report 29th November, 2006 Mix a teaspoon of bad luck, with a shovelful of enthusiasm and imagination. Add a measure of optimism, and plenty of friendship to soften the mixture. Bake for one year, and what's the result? A great success for Kent YFC's newest open club!
North Downs was born in October last year, after the decision was made to close the Astor of Hever School Farm and sell the site for housing. Despite a desperate campaign organised by the YFC, local residents and Borough councillors, the closure went ahead anyway. Ex-members attended Kent's County Show in July 2005, assuming it would be our last. We watched gloomily from the sidelines as club after club proudly marched into the show ring with animals, although did our best to cheer when friends from other clubs came in! But then it struck us - why not open a new club especially, but not exclusively, for all the people who were forced out after the closure of our school farm?
So that's what we did. One year later and Kent now have a thriving new club - the North Downs YFC. We have 25 members already, and are seeking to expand further this year. Establishing the club wasn't easy - it involved writing a special constitution that allowed the club to function despite many of our older members being at University. Also, being based in the middle of the County Town of Kent, finding a small-holding at which to meet and hold regular meetings has also proved quite tricky! Over the last year though, we have taken part in several charity fundraising activities. This includes dressing up as Daisy the dancing pantomime cow (£24.52), holding a quiz night to raise funds for the Born Free foundation (£94.85), and taking part in - and winning - Maidstone river festival's fancy dress raft race, raising money for the Heart of Kent Hospice! (£90)
Between looking for farms where we can regularly meet up, we've taking part in all manner of social activities - from bowling, lazer quest and ice skating, to seeing King Kong at the cinema and taking 18 members to the YFC County Ball. We also threw a spectacular after-show party in East Farleigh with a BBQ, disco, bouncy castle, off-road buggy course and fireworks! North Downs have also done our best to support to other Kent clubs. As well as volunteering to help at the SEA Comps day, running the cricket tournament and helping with situations vacant, we also spent a day just recently helping to rebuild Axton Chase's chicken pen. Sheila Flight helped us out during the County Show, and it seemed only fair to return the favour! Seeing our flag in the parade was, certainly for me, the most rewarding part of this year's Kent County Show.
Despite all the challenges of raising funds to buy equipment, obtaining and training animals and dealing with paperwork, we managed to finish an impressive 11th place. That's not bad for a club led by busy sixth formers and university students! Amongst our successes were being awarded best presented club, and scoring highly with our 5-month old beef calves and butchers' pairs lambs. We also did well in the fancy dress class, winning third place for dressing a lamb up as a John Deere tractor!!
As well as filling in miles of paperwork, and working hard to prepare our animals (calves kindly loaned by Nick Leggat, County YFC president; lambs from Matt of Ash YFC; and porker pigs from Princess Christian's farm in Hildenborough) we also had to build an area for our animals to stay in including kickboards to keep muck together, and flags so that people realised who we were!
We had an absolutely brilliant time, despite one of our members having to travel to A&E late at night after receiving a nasty bite from a horsefly (Emma's fine now!)! All in all, we've had an absolutely fantastic first year. Our new committee have been elected, and can't wait to get stuck in to 2007!
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Kent
YFC (c)2006 is registered charity #302905. |
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