Neither the glossiest brochure nor the slickest online campaign is as effective as showing people exactly what you have on offer – but that means getting them through the door. That may be a challenge for some, but it’s something Hadlow College has perfected over the years. The 10,000-plus people who flocked to the annual Lambing Weekend at the end of April will have gone home with a keener understanding of everything the college does for its students, for farming and for the community.

Visitors young and old enjoyed a wide variety of activities and attractions, from the chance to get up close and personal with a snake to tractor rides, car and tractor simulators, fairground fun and plenty of food and drink options.

As a sign of the weekend’s growing status in the ‘days out’ calendar, this year’s event also featured the Sheep Show, an attraction that regularly draws the crowds at major agricultural shows across the country.

It also featured large numbers of Hadlow’s impressive students, who played a major part in running the weekend, meeting and greeting visitors and demonstrating the kinds of ‘soft skills’ that employers value alongside formal agricultural or horticultural qualifications.

They were also on hand to demonstrate the various skills, courses and activities that Hadlow specialises in, from floristry and horticulture through to animal management, equine skills, fisheries, agriculture and motor vehicle engineering.

Assistant principal Daniel Cotton said the weekend aimed “to showcase Hadlow College and its curriculum and give the students an opportunity to demonstrate their hard work across all the subject areas taught there”.

While the aim is to highlight Hadlow’s facilities and courses and promote the opportunities offered by rural and land-based careers, the only ‘selling’ at the event is low-key.

“Hadlow is important in the industry, and we certainly want to let young people know that there is a great career waiting for them, but we are looking at the long term,” said Daniel. “We aren’t trying to recruit next September’s intake, but we do hope that some of the younger children who enjoy seeing the lambs or looking at some of our other animals will remember the experience when they are older and thinking about their future.”

And while there are no hard and fast statistics available, Daniel said many of the teenagers who attend college open days to find out more about the courses on offer tell staff that they first came across Hadlow at a lambing day.

Tabby Emerson, 16, who was visiting the event on Saturday with dad Mark, may well find herself in that category at some point in the future. Now doing GCSEs and planning on studying biology at ‘A’ Level, she said she was considering zoology as a degree option and had enjoyed her visit to the college.

Dad Mark said that as a Londoner who was now living in Maidstone, he felt himself “a bit of a townie” and felt that the lambing weekend had given him more of an insight into a more rural way of life. “It’s very well organised, as well,” he added.

While many visitors took the opportunity to visit the lambing shed, where farm manager Tania Bucknell and a number of students were helping them meet newborns, there were plenty of other animal attractions, including ferrets, goats, rheas and meerkats.

Daniel explained that Melvin the meerkat and the two sister females introduced to their new enclosure at the college last summer had already resulted in three litters of the cute creatures.

The newest attraction was the serval enclosure, which represents a significant investment and was opened in February this year. “We were receiving feedback from the industry that while our students had plenty of experience with ‘petting’ animals, they lacked exposure to the types of animals covered by the Dangerous Wild Animals Act,” Daniel said.

The serval and meerkats had been introduced to add that skillset, said Daniel, with a domestic white fox set to be housed next door to the serval within a few weeks.

Visitors to what Daniel referred to as the “hugely successful” weekend, which also benefited from glorious sunshine, also took the opportunity to visit the unique National Centre for Reptile Welfare, a standalone rehoming charity that has its home on the campus and had a wide range of fascinating creatures to look at.

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