Celebrating 2024!

As we draw to the end of 2024, I thought I would share some of the highlights of the year and some hopes for the New Year! It was great to host our Winter Warmer in December, when we welcomed neighbours, friends and families to the farm on a fresh, cold evening. Santa arrived with great excitement, we sang carols led by Moneyreagh Community Church choir and Ned, our guest donkey came to say hello and was definitely a hit with young and old alike.

Lambing season is always a busy time both for us as a working farm, but also as we welcome groups to the farm. This year we hosted a Syrian group of women from Footprints Women’s Centre, young adults from the Now Group, Moneyreagh Community Church and Hope for Horizon cancer awareness project when Belfast City of Sanctuary facilitated a workshop led by I.AssistNI. It is always a privilege to give space to groups to experience a working farm, enjoy nature and spend time building community through refreshments or over a shared lunch. For our friends from other countries, the farm often reminds them of their home where they were part of the agriculture community prior to leaving to make Northern Ireland their home. Through conversation, we know that for many the time of coming away from regular routines is therapeutic and good for health and wellbeing.

We have valued the support from from Volunteer Now as we looked to grow a volunteer team at Glenside Farm. Mark and Esther have joined Elliot every Saturday at the farm. Elliot has been with us for several years and seeing the team grow has been exciting… more cakes, more craic and more jobs for Iain to assign to us!

It has been amazing to start our Farm to Fabric project funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund. It’s every month with 25 people enjoying learning how to prepare the raw fleece from our Blue Texel sheep ready for spinning, weaving, dyeing and fabric work. It has been an eye opener seeing the intensity of the process to turn fleece into wool. It has been good to work with Inspiring Yarns CIC and Kiri Cottage as they have brought their expertise to the project.

This year we benefited from the Go Succeed NI programme, as we received mentoring and funding to support the social enterprise as we look to become more sustainable. We also had the honour of being part of Social Farming Awareness Week, organised by Rural Support. It was great to share our role in supporting participants in providing an environment that is for health and wellbeing. Elliot, our volunteer, gave insight into his time on the farm, highlighting the diverse activities he has enjoyed and learned from.

Our neighbours are very much part of Glenside Farm and when one of them chose to support us through arranging a plant sale to raise monies for the social enterprises we were blown over. She spent months potting plants with a beautiful array of plants being sold on the day. We would like to thank everyone who has supported us this year with your time, your skills and through your financial support.

This year we grew our day to day team as we welcomed Alyson McElroy, as our event coordinator. This will allow us to build capacity as we plan more events in 2025. We are excited to bring Lambing Live in March, where you can join us to come and see the lambs, help feed the sheep and learn how to prepare wool for spinning. Signing up for sessions will be live in the New Year.

In 2025 we are looking forward to introducing Friends of Glenside Farm, an opportunity for you to stand with us as we see the vision of health and wellbeing for all, through farming, nature and community become further embedded into the life of Glenside Farm Comber CIC.

We would like to wish you and your families a wonderful Christmas and a very Happy New Year! We look forward to welcoming you to Glenside Farm in 2025.