Making the difference
If you have mountains of enthusiasm and energy or even just a little; if you have particular skills or if you simply have spare time to share, then you would be very welcome at the farm. We need so many skills to make the Shallowford Farm experience happen. We are blessed with a great network of friends and supporters who rally round to help but we always need more!
Ways to Volunteer
Community garden
Our large kitchen garden is always keen for new green thumbs. Whether you’re a seasoned pro or your growing skills are just beginning to sprout.
Join in on garden planning, sowing, tending, weeding, watering, harvesting, cooking, and eating!
Our current garden volunteers meet on Tuesday mornings, but the garden gates are open Monday – Friday 10am-4pm
Frequency of volunteering: Weekly year round, busier in the spring and summer
Supporting young people
Our residential school groups get up to all sorts at the farm – from animal care and environmental education, to moorland walks and arts and crafts.
If you have a skill you really value we would love for you to explore it with the next generation. You can support on a session or come up with ideas for your own.
Chat to Volunteer Officer Emily and Programme Officer David to see how your skills could fit into a schools week long programme.
Frequency of volunteering: to suit you, one of or reoccurring
Citizen science and conservation
Contribute to the monitoring of many important species at Shallowford Farm, including the Marsh Fritillary Butterfly. Receive all the necessary training to be able to survey the adults in flight and the larval webs of these beautiful, but vulnerable species.
Get stuck in learning how to manage diverse moorland habitats through practical conservation activities such as scrub clearance and plug planting.
Frequency of volunteering: regular opportunities during summer surveying May to September
Farm help
There are always seasonal and odd jobs to tackle and improvements to be made around the farm – From repairing fences and maintaining equipment to tending grounds and developing projects there is plenty of variety to keep you engaged.
If you are particularly handy, your skills will be put to good use, and if you would like to develop these skills you can in this hands-on practical environment.
Frequency of volunteering: to suit you
Event help
We love being able to take the farm off the farm and out into the local community, to be able to do this we need help!
A staple for us is Widecombe Fair where we serve home made fresh sandwiches, cakes and cream teas to hundreds of hungry visitors each September.
Frequency of volunteering: roughly 2-4 times a year
Skill sharing
Super into social media, love to bake, really great at graphic design, just getting into photography, learning about animal enrichment and want to practice?
If you have skills or passions in areas that are not covered in the opportunities above we would love to hear about them so we can keep developing our volunteer programme into something that suits and supports everyone.
“It made me wish I was a child over again and had been given the opportunity to be taken care of by people as kind and understanding and enthusiastic towards them as you were in that first hour of their arrival. I am sure each one of them has been made to feel special and safe in this, their first visit to the farm. What you have provided cannot be measured in money.”