Roamer: Animal farm between city bog meadows and motorway

“It was a bit of a chase last night!” said Damien, community engagement officer of an ‘urban farm’ that started in 2015.

“There was no big plan back then,” he explained, “there were old vegetable plots here, and my friend Danny Kilifin was working with the homeless and wondered if there was anything he could get them to do.”

“They restored the old plots”, Damien continued, “and Danny suggested getting a couple of chickens.”

Via social media and word of mouth “we got a couple of wee goats down in Newry and someone suggested getting lambs and then other people phoned up and said, ‘I’ve two ducks here, do you take ducks?’ and other folk gave us hens and we started adding onto the farm.”

The sum became around 50!

They got National Lottery funding and public and private donations and then an impressive prefabricated ‘workshop’ was opened in May 2021, funded by BCC and Groundwork NI.

Belfast’s inner-city suburbs are to the west, the Bog Meadows Nature Reserve to the south, the M1 to the east, and the farm’s postal address and main entrance is 60 Rodney Parade BT12 6EE.

With virtually every other street and thoroughfare named after St James, this is where Damien was “born, bred and buttered - a St James’ man all my life!” he told me proudly.

I parked under one of the farm’s many colourful signs and murals, where a constant flow of people were depositing bags of empty drink-cans for re-cycling.

“Two million cans over the past two years,” said Damien, whose recent post on Facebook vindicates that remarkable statistic - “our animal feed bill was £227.00 this month. Your cans collected £202.00. Thank you!”

Entrance to the farm is free, so running costs are defrayed with “all sorts of wee ideas”, said Damien, confirmed by displays of garden furniture and window boxes ‘upcycled’ from wooden pallets; containers of ‘grow your own’ seedlings and recycled hanging baskets.

Tea, coffee and tubs of animal treats are also on sale.

Aptly, the main farm building looks a bit like a big, friendly, barn, painted deep red, with animal pens on one side, a workshop on the other and an open covered-space in between connecting the grazing land, beside the M1 at the back, to the gardens and polytunnels at the front.

Damien explained, “the workshop hosts the smaller animals indoors” where I met Geraldine, wearing thick gloves, holding Bobby, a South African pygmy hedgehog.

“He’s nervous with strangers,” said Geraldine, as Bobby retreated behind his prickles.

Other workshop residents included Alice the parrot, Speedy the tortoise, being fed by farm-volunteer Declan, and Curtis the terrapin, chaperoned by Lisa, one of Damien’s two part-time staff.

Meanwhile, in the pens outside, are Sheila the sheep; Chip, Grace and Finn the goats; Oisin the peacock, Niamh the peahen and all sorts of chickens, mallard, hens, ducks and geese.

The workshop is furnished with workbenches “for Maintenance Monday,” Damien explained “we don’t open to the public on Mondays, we fix stuff that’s broken, and build things.”

The workshop multi-tasks for “bingo every Wednesday at noon, mothers and toddlers, arts and crafts, talks…” Damien’s list burgeons bigger “and we have meetings in there, schools, disabled groups, student placements, special seasonal events, and of course, wee cups of tea!”

The farm relies on about 40 volunteers. “There’d be no activities without them,” Damien stressed, “like ‘Bap’ Kelly, shortly to have his 70th birthday - he’s here five days a week - and Declan, who started here when he was eight. And we owe a big thank you to the local residents for their continued support.”

They’re very important!

“Oisin escaped a while ago,” Damien recounted wryly, “he was on the run for six days and must have landed on every rooftop and chimney in the district.

"We’d residents up at three o’clock in the morning ringing us - the phone never stopped!”

For visiting and events - see St James’ Community Farm on Facebook.