A Cracking Easter Awaits at Down At
The Farm

The North East's hands-on farm experience, Down at the Farm, at Houghton-le-Spring, is hatching plans to make its Easter event the talk of the North, to kick off a great new season.

The working farm, which prides itself on creating superb, family-focused events, is preparing to stage a cracking Easter programme that will be just egg-straordinary.

The much loved farm attraction will be re-opening for the season on March 21, but then unveiling its fabulous supplementary Easter activity programme as from April 4. The Easter events will then run right through the Easter school holidays.

This news will be well received by the hundreds of families lucky enough to buy tickets to its Christmas event, for which a whole barn was transformed into a winter wonderland, with live nativity and live reindeer, a superb Santa's grotto and even a Santa's post office.

Easter visitors do not need to buy tickets in advance, as the normal admission procedure will apply. Following this event, the farm attraction will be open from Tuesday to Sunday until May and then seven days a week, between 10am and 5pm, right through to September.

Special October half-term, Halloween and Christmas 2009 events will then follow.

The attraction is ideally situated for families across the North East, located ten minutes from both Durham and Sunderland and just 20 minutes from Newcastle.

Owner Catherine Weightman is not giving too much away about the full programme, but she says it will have children giggling at the gaggles of geese and torn when it comes to which of the newborn babies to see first.

She says: "We can safely say that new arrivals at Down at the Farm in April will include chicks, ducklings and piglets, and children will be able to bottle-feed the adorable newborn lambs - something all children love to do.

"There will also be a range of Easter-themed activities, including Easter egg throwing and rolling competitions, an Easter panto, sheep racing, face painting and Easter egg hunts and trails. Visitors will be able to help groom Thistle the new Shetland pony and enter a 'name the new animals competition for a chance to win an animal adoption goody pack."

As well as experiencing the excitement surrounding the new animals, visitors will have plenty of opportunity to meet other creatures who call Down at the Farm home. There are many rare breed animals that are unfamiliar and very distinctive, the residents' list including prairie dogs, pygmy goats, a pygmy hedgehog, red and fallow deer, kune kune pigs, alpacas and raccoons.

The cutest prize might go to Bethany the miniature Mediterranean donkey, but the scariest is nearly always Xena the 20-foot python!

Down at the Farm encourages visitors to interact with the animals, which Catherine Weightman feels is important. "Learning how to care for creatures and interact with them is a vital part of a child's development and when you see the children enjoying themselves with our animals, it is really rewarding. It's almost as if they grow up a little during their visit."

The attraction will be open from 10am to 5pm throughout the Easter holidays and admission costs £4.75 for adults, £3.75 for children aged over two and £3.75 for concessions. Family tickets cost £15 for two adults and two children and £18.75 for two adults and three children.

Down at the Farm can be found just off the A690, between the A19 and A182, at DH5 8JG. More details about the farm can be found at www.downatthefarm.co.uk or gained by ringing 0191 584 1873.