THIRD year students from McLaren High School in Callander, near Stirling, Perthshire, were given the opportunity last week to meet with BBC Countryfile's Adam Henson.

The educational charity, RHET, were invited to bring along a group of school children along to Meldrum Farm, a dairy farm in Stirlingshire, to meet Adam who was visiting farms across Scotland as Bank of Scotland's farming ambassador.

The pupils, who are all studying the Rural Skills Nat 4 course, along with a small group of farmers and vets, received a talk from Glasgow vet school about the work ongoing with the dairy herd at Meldrum farm and had a question and answer session with Adam about life on the farm.

"The Bank of Scotland are incredibly supportive of the work carried out by RHET in Scotland, and were kind enough to offer RHET the unique opportunity to ask local school children a chance to visit Meldrum Farm and ask Mr Henson about his farming life," said RHET manager Katrina Barclay.

"The event was a fantastic experience for these school children and they were able to get up and close to a working dairy farm and learn about the daily management of a farming business. They also had this extraordinary chance to meet Adam, a highly respected and knowledgeable individual, and find out about his farming life and experiences," Katrina continued.

RHET Forth Valley coordinator, Katie Brisbane, who organised the school pupils attendance added: "This is an event that these children will remember for life and hopefully take away a much better understanding of how food is produced and the hard work that is takes to produce milk to such a high standard."

The students will be returning to Meldrum Farm later this month on a RHET organised visit to discover more about the farming business. Meldrum farm also hosted the new cohort of teachers undertaking the year-long Good Food Champion course, which provides knowledge that covers and integrates many of the issues around food—its production and sustainability. This course also includes a critical awareness of current issues relating to food production which has an invaluable element of experiential outdoor learning opportunities.