Courses and Events

Old Sleningford offers a superb venue for courses and events. Its quiet, rural location with facilities both inside and out makes it ideal for any activity to take place.

A day for people who love their bangers and want to learn how to make them themselves. Using only sausage meat from our pigs, bread, fresh herbs and seasoning we will make a range of flavours, which will be sampled at lunchtime. And a bag to take home too!

A day of nibbling and sampling a range of home cured and smoked foods, including ham, bacon, salami, fish, nuts and much more! You will learn the techniques for wet and dry curing and hot and cold smoking and how to make your own smoker.

Make a chair in a day! Using hazel and willow growing around the farm, you will first make a frame and then bend willow to make the seat, arms and back. Each chair is unique, often the wood dictates the final shape and size and a number of different techniques can be used to create different effects. Come on your own or with a friend, once you've learnt the skills you can have a go at making another at home.

Join us for a day of work around the farm, a range of jobs for all abilities will be available. Well behaved children (under parents supervision) are welcome.

Make your own unique chair in this one day workshop. You will use wood gathered from the woods around the farm to make a hazel frame and then bend willow to complete the seat, back and arms. Bring a friend to help, or have the satisfaction of making it yourself!

This day course will give you the knowledge and confidence to get your first pigs. We will look at the legalities, what needs to be done before your pigs arrive, how to keep them healthy and happy, breeding and slaughter. The time will be split between classroom work and outside with the Sleningford pigs and there will be some optional practical work.

We hope to have some trees to plant and finish off the woodland planting in the field for our March workday. If not, we'll be doing something else! Arrive from 10am and stay for as long as you'd like, we usually finish around 4pm

Use wood from around Old Sleningford Farm to make your own unique chair. Firstly, you'll make a frame from hazel, then add willow to make the seat, back and arms. Easy enough to make on your own but even easier with a friend!

Come and help us with work in the forest garden, raised beds or anywhere else around the farm that needs a job doing. Come anytime from 10am, we finish around 4pm.

We always appreciate some help to get big jobs done around the farm, so why not come and help us? Could be digging, weeding, planting, fencing, moving manure..... Anytime from 10am until 4pm ish

Old Sleningford Preserves are running 4 Preserving the Harvest workshops in 2012, the aim is to introduce new and unusual ways of preserving, not just jam and chutney. Each workshop will have a focus, something that you often find is a 'glut', but will also include other seasonal produce too. This first workshop will focus on rhubarb, which will be gathered from our Forest Garden.

A Forest Garden is a highly productive way of growing food in a way that replicates a young woodland. This day course will introduce you to the principles of forest gardening, some of the plants that can grow there and give you ideas and inspiration to start planning and planting your own. Time will be spent in our 8 year old forest garden.

This course will give you the confidence to identify and use a range of plants as wild foods and to treat a range of minor ailments or in first aid situations. Learn how to make an ointment (and take it home), a tincture, poultice, and other seasonal remedies. This is a practical day tutored by Herbalist Ross Menzies http://www.the-herbal-clinic.co.uk/

We will make a range of different flavoured sausages throughout this course, guiding you through the process of mixing the ingredients, mincing, stuffing and linking. Our sausages will be made from pork from our pigs, homemade bread, fresh herbs and seasoning and we will sample them all for lunch.

In times gone by, curing and smoking was a way to preserve food. Nowadays, we consider cured and smoked food as delicacies and the techniques are used to add flavour. This day course will show you how to wet and dry cure and how to hot and cold smoke a range of different foods. Ideas will also be given to make your own smoker.

Join us for another day of work around the farm. Summer will be here, seeds will need sowing, ground will need hoeing, weeds will be growing, grass will need mowing. We start at 10am and finish around 4pm, come for as long as you'd like.

Each year, the gardens at Old Sleningford Hall and the Forest Garden at Old Sleningford Farm open their gates to visitors under the National Gardens Scheme.

Fruit from the forest garden will be in full production now and we will be picking! Strawberries and raspberries in particular, come and be part of the picking team!

If you're thinking of getting some pigs it's a good idea to have as much information and knowledge as possible before they arrive. This day course will take you through the legalities of pig ownership, how to keep your pigs happy and healthy and what the slaughter and butcher process entails. We will spend lots of time with the Sleningford pigs.

Lots of people keep chickens for eggs and the natural progression is to have some for the table too. This day will look at the different breeds suitable for the table, how to keep them healthy and happy, humane slaughter, plucking and evisceration. You will leave the day with an oven ready chicken too.

Forest gardens are a highly productive, low maintenance way of planting trees and plants for food. It mimics a natural woodland and uses all the available space to grow a wide variety of fruit, salad and herbs. We will spend time in our 8 year old forest garden and discuss the principles, plants and design.

This is the second Preserving the Harvest workshop that Old Sleningford Preserves are running in 2012,  with the aim of introducing new and unusual ways of preserving, not just jam and chutney. The focus of this 'glut' will be berries (and maybe a few currants!). At least 3 types of preserves will be made during the day which could include relish, sauce, pickle, jelly as well as jam and chutney. One preserve will be made using different flavours or techniques so that comparisons can be made. Participants will take home all the preserves made and there will be other preserves to taste as well.

Fruit, fruit and more fruit! The forest garden will be in full production of berries so come and help us to pick. Could be other jobs to do too. Anytime from 10am until 4pm ish

The focus of this 3rd 2012 workshop run by Old Sleningford Preserves is vegetables and we will be using a variety picked from the raised beds and polytunnel at Old Sleningford Farm. Often when you have a glut, you need different and unusual ways of preserving them and this workshop will look at a range of sweet and savoury preserves that can be made from whatever is in season at the time of the course.

Help always appreciated on our workdays so come along if you can. Children welcome too, providing they are well behaved! From 10am until 4pm ish

A Forest Garden is a highly productive way of growing food with minimal maintenance required. All the plants are perennials or self seed readily and all the space is used. This day course will explain the principles of forest gardening, how to design one and what to plant in it. Time will be spent in our 8 year old forest garden.

The final of our 2012 Preserving the Harvest workshops, run by Old Sleningford Preserves. The focus this time is on apples and we will be making a variety of different and unusual presreves, not just jam and chutney. Other season produce will be included too and will be gathered from our Forest Garden and orchard. 

Dates confirmed so far for our annual apple juicing marathon!

Come and help us juice our apples. Start at 10am until we've finished, around 3pm we hope!

Art Courses at The Stable Gallery, Old Sleningford Farm