Visiting a herb farm is a great way to give ‘post-lockdown’ help to a local herb farm, while learning English!

20 learners and 6 volunteers and 1 teacher visited the Herb Farm in Ashurst on 3 November. The visit had been postponed due to Covid-19, but as one of the class Term 4 topics was “Plants” – the trip was rebooked for as soon as they could be squeezed in.

The aim of the visit was to use natural products to create a small pot of skin cream. And it was great to have a bilingual cultural and language assistant along to translate the pretty complex ‘herbal terminology’.

Mixing the ingredients was fun but almost disastrous! We had to count the number of drops of each item, for example, seven drops of rosemary oil. More drops might mean the cream separated. The learners quickly found it was best to remove all little bottles except the one being added and pass that bottle around each group.

Learners were then given a choice of ‘colour substance’ to add, and told strictly not to open their pot for 24 hours!

The session was fun, and the class only wished they’d more time with so many amazing herbs and plants to look at and paths to walk around.

Special thanks to The City Mission, Palmerston North, for providing transport and supporting this trip. We’d also like to thank to our generous donor within The City Mission who provided the funds for this trip.

Writer: Liz Wharton