Spring Barn Farm Park

Spring Barn Farm Park is a lovely, child-centred farm based on the outskirts of Lewes. Though I haven’t yet tried it, it’s probably walking distance from central Lewes and it’s only a twenty odd minute drive from the Dean towns and the far end of Hove so its location is superb.

The staff are absolutely lovely, very calm and open to questions from the little ones. The staff not directly involved in the animal care are also brilliant with children and very friendly.

The farm itself is great, the hill is a workout though! A nice variety of animals are available to see and the petting/feeding sessions are frequent. The children I look after are really looking forward to spring and seeing all of the baby animals! (They do have a couple of gorgeous piglets there at the moment, well worth popping by to see them! Very cute!)

There are some brilliant time fillers just in case the children get bored between feeding sessions and running around to see the animals. They’ve got some bouncing pillows outside which look like brilliant fun, a zip wire, some pedal go karts for the older ones, a little maze and a couple of forts to scale and slides to go down.

Inside the barn are some mini-tractors for the kids to pedal around, a lovely wooden play area and large building blocks available. There are also benches both inside and out to eat (and a restaurant/cafe on site to get food from if you have come empty handed! They have some delicious options available)

All in all, a great place for a day with the kids or to pick up high-quality supplies!

EDIT: October 2012 – Over the summer SBFP renovated the indoors play area. They now have 3 slides indoors as well as building blocks, the wooden ship play area and tractors. They usually have a staff member up top, helping children (and adults!) brave the Drop Slide and regulating use of the other two types of slide (a dark swirly one and the traditional bumpy slides) though with younger children you do need to be able to go up with them.

This area is good fun and I find that when I take the children there now they spend more time on the slides than outside with the animals! I’m really impressed by the member of staff who is usually up top on a Thursday/Friday, I have seen him sitting with a child for a good 45 minutes at the top of the Drop Slide talking to them and trying to get them to go down. He also sat with one of my charges for about that length of time trying to talk her into going down and showing me how to make it easier for her (by me holding her over the drop rather than her forcing herself over the edge).