 it is. So social farming is basically where people with health and social care needs go out on to ordinary working farms for therapeutic benefit of being on the farm and get involved in the ordinary activities going on on that farm. Usually people maybe go one day a week for a block of weeks and I suppose some of our values are around it being a choice for the participant to engage, very person-centered engagement with two or three people so it's only two or three people. People go once a week for a block a period of time and so they do that to achieve a desired outcome in their life and be it something as important but maybe a small outcome by people doing somebody self-esteem and confidence and in other aspects then it can be around skill-building, learning about farm life and farm work and all the manifests of that. Well I've been all getting out into the outdoors and especially working in nature can be very therapeutic but this is not only working out in nature but also working with animals and I suppose everything that farm life entails and so long as it's not too stressful I mean a lot of farmers will tell you you know it's not exactly therapeutic but this is different in that the farmer is trained, is that correct? Yes, absolutely. We provide extensive training, mentoring and support for farmers. We have an 11 years, 12 years experience at this point in time and members of our team including myself have been doing this for a very long time. Originally Pilots was actually in the border region and with some of our very first farmers in Ireland doing social farming were in Donegal among the other border counties obviously. So we provide that mentoring, that support and that training. We put all our farmers through an extensive training programme, approximately 25-30 hours of training and getting farmers for some of that into the classroom is quite a challenge so these people are very committed to sharing and to giving back. The farmer basically you know it's a day when he stops to appreciate his own farm in many instances and all of them will tell you that they get a lot from social farming almost as much as the participants do and very often get a new appreciation of their own farm through social farming. So they get to slow down the pace on the day their participants are coming and they're compensated for that day, they get their costs covered so effectively they are providing support to vulnerable people for that day. Okay and I mean this isn't sort of specialist treatment farms, this is regular working farms however. Absolutely and that's one of our key values is that it is around the regular working farm and there are a lot of treatments available for people, there are lots of special places that people go and centres and things like that. This is actually engaging with the community and this is reflecting back what support services want for people is they want that community engagement, they want the ordinary interaction so it's really about ordinary things and ordinary places and getting to step into a farm in a local community is a really valuable thing for people to be able to experience and farmers can even provide signposting to plenty of other things that are in their community usually they're well connected and they know what's going on in their local community and know who's who and what you know supports might be available locally, what groups you know what organisations are out there so there's a minefield of knowledge in farms that we're tapping into as well. And it opens up farming I suppose not just farming but just the nature and the rural way of life to people who might not have experienced it and who will hopefully benefit greatly from it. Absolutely and we've had many people out on farms and sometimes you know support services might come to us and say well you know this person when they were young they grew up on a farm so they might like to re-engage with the farm again and that's very it's a great approach to us but how and ever some of our big success stories with social farming have come from people who never set foot on a farm before in their lives and had no understanding of it and certainly gained a huge understanding of life through farming and acquired many skills. We've had a number of people and probably quite a number across the country that progressed on to employment as a result of engagements with social farming. Some to work on farms but others quite simply because they could get a reference from somebody and they were able to get a you know build up trust with an employer and get that door opens that might have been impossible in other situations so social farming is proving to be a win-win for everybody for both the farmer and for the participants that are engaging in it. So the day's work could be anything it could be you know could involve anything from milking a cow to fixing a fence to you know riding on the back of a tractor whatever the day-to-day work involves. It can involve yeah absolutely and it depends on the season and sometimes people you know our own farms and can see animals being born particularly this time of year we're just off the lambing season and you know that's a huge thing for somebody to experience they may not be obviously independent the animal or anything like that and we have certainly have extensive work done around health and safety with all our farmers but they can get involved in the ordinary things depending on what's on the farm at any given time. I would also say too that we've 120 over 125 farms nationally and some in every county in the country and so it's quite a strong movement nationally we have growers as well in our farming network so it's not just farmers and I suppose that offers choice for participants some participants aren't interested in engaging with animals but the majority I have to say are it would be a big it would be a big attraction. Absolutely yeah and you know that the variety of animals is huge varies from one farm to another so there's no one type of farm that needs to get involved in social farming we want to use the rural assets that are there already in rural Ireland which is the ordinary farm and the ordinary farm family. And if a farmer signed up for this I mean what what demands would be made off them I mean how many days in the year would they would they be expected to to do it? So I suppose there is a big element of choice both from the participants perspective and from the farmers perspective some of our farmers do it maybe three days per week because they have the time other farmers simply wouldn't have that kind of time to take out of their schedule so they might do it one day per week placement blocks are usually maybe for 12 15 weeks but we have some placement blocks then they go right up and maybe are 40 days in the year. But it's up to the farmer really what he wants to sign up for and it also depends on what participants express an interest in his farm at any given time. So the the open day next week is it for those who might be interested in in signing up for this or is it is it for aimed at possible participants? Well we do run open days that are specifically targeted at maybe the farming sector or specifically targeted at support services such as the health or disability services or young people schools etc. But this particular open day in Donegal we have all of those parties coming to this so it's actually turned out to be quite a significant day so we expect to have a cohort of people from support services from schools and from local farmers etc. We hope to have all our five farmers in Donegal and present on the day as well so you will get a flavour of not just what Patrick Harley offers on his farm but also the other four farmers in Donegal who are also fantastic farmers. Yeah well I'm sure they are and I know that the Harleys are so it's a great spot for this it's an open day as part of social farming and it's happening next Friday that's the fifth and that will be from half past 10 until half past 12 and online if someone's interested where could they get more information? We have a website it's socialfarmingarland.ie and it's very extensive we've a lot of research on that if you have an interest you can sign up and express interest in social farming and register and send us your details and we get back to you with next steps etc. So quite a bit we have videos of them from our farms etc. So you really get a flavour of what might be involved in social farming and some testimonials as well which would speak to the impact that social farming has had on some people's lives. Okay so check out the website for more information. Sounds great. Helen thank you very much for having a chat with us and explaining that. Thank you. Delighted to talk to you. Thank you very much.