At Harton Grange, we decided to do something a little different, a blind tasting day! We prepared lots of tasty titbits like fruit, cheese, vegetables, chocolates and sweets in small pieces and covered them so nobody could peek!

We invited some residents into the dining room and with anticipation, we all experienced different tastes and tried to guess which food they were by the flavour, texture. The fruits went down lovely and some managed to guess correctly, the chocolate cake was the favorite, followed by the strawberries. After we finished the game, we ate all the left overs and it was a lovely day trying different things!

This year’s care awards were a little different as held virtual. Harton Grange's lovely volunteer Brenda was nominated for “Volunteer of the Year”

Brenda has been at Harton Grange for 1 year and is a valued member of the team, she supports activities, doing one to one's with residents, helping to prepare rooms for activities. Brenda’s friendly nature makes all at ease and her good sense of humour keeps everyone going! Brenda also helps the care assistants with the tea trolley.

The care awards took place virtually in the comfort of Harton Grange, we had beautiful food, the atmosphere was excellent. When the time came for the winner, we held our breathe in anticipation but Brenda did not win this time but in our eyes, she is simply the best!

Making the Harvest Sheaf is an ancient tradition that is worldwide. We have thoroughly enjoyed taking part in the Barchester Harvest Festival Sheaf competition this year and we are waiting patiently for the winner to be announced.

The ingredients were flour, water and salt mixed in with lots of elbow grease! Our residents enjoyed the many stages that took place to create it, the needing of the dough brought back memories of bread making, unlike modern day methods like a bread machine or buying readymade dough from the shop. After the dough had rested, we rolled it out and created the shape of the sheaf, we then brushed egg onto the dough and then popped it into the oven on a low temperature, this makes the sheaf harden and turn golden brown. After this was cooled, we made the 2 mice. A few days later we went into our landscaped garden and collected amber coloured leaves to decorate the sheaf and to make it stand out.

Everyone at Harton Grange thinks “it’s a work of Art”

At Harton Grange, we have beautiful landscaped gardens with each part a different theme.

Today we enjoyed the sunshine and had a lovely walk around the gardens, we fed and petted the Harton Hinnies Hens which have been with us for a long time, and the hens are hand reared as they hatched at Harton Grange.

We have just had the chicken coop re-modelled with new driftwood themed fencing with a gate. The joiner installed a swing for the chickens along with a sandpit. This was funded by “Henpower” who secured us a £10,000 grant through the national lottery.

After a cup of tea and biscuits we then had a walk around the garden and chattered about the bandstand which we use for brass bands and ukulele singalongs in the summer and also this is used for family and friend visits when the weather is dull. We then went to the farmyard feature, we saw a fox, squirrel and lambs and many other animals, we then went to the old wash house with the poss tub and mangle, and we reminisced about using the tin bath. We finished off with a lovely ice lolly to cool down.

At Harton Grange, we enjoy plenty of joyful exercise to keep the blood pumping. Today we moved to music while sitting, we enjoyed this very much. We also used a balloon, we had to keep this in the air without it falling to the floor, we had a right laugh!

We also played ten pin bowling with many prizes to be won! We class this as our daily exercise as there is plenty of movement and stretching. If the white ball hits the Jack the team won by points after the bowling, we got out our colourful beachball and played “Name an animal from the alphabet” this is an excellent game and keeps the mind stimulated. We had a fabulous day and are really looking forward to doing it again.

At Harton Grange, we love to be creative and what a better way than working with flowers! We decided to have an afternoon of flower arranging. The colours and smells were amazing, we chattered about our own gardens at home and the types of flowers and shrubs we had.  One Resident said “I love roses but they are hard to manage as they are prone to greenfly but all in all they are beautiful and well worth the effort!”

Whilst another was talking about her hydrangea bush and how it had grown over the years and also her fuchsia plant, this reminded her of little fairies with their elegant skirts on!

Our flower arranging day was brilliant and we created some wonderful displays for the home!