At this time of year, it’s always nice to hear stories of large organisations sharing their good fortune and giving to worthy causes. This happened today on a short visit to Woods Farm (one of our outlying farms) on the outskirts of Sidmouth.

I arrived at the farm to find Jim – the farm manager – busy unloading lots of vegetables from the back of his Land Rover, assisted by Laura and Lyndsey. Apparently, Waitrose had contacted Jim to see if he could make use of ‘a few vegetables’ that were just past their sell by date!

All in all, there were about 50 crates of carrots, parsnips, lettuces, courgettes, red cabbages, broccoli and sprouts!

The whole operation took just over an hour, with Nigel and Nicky using a van to help collect the veg from the local Sidmouth store. Nicky gave some of the sprouts – complete with stalk – to her older group of donkeys, they absolutely loved them!

After lunch, we herded a group of donkeys into their barn and placed a selection of vegetables on their yard. When we let them out, they were very excited to find their little food parcels! The least well received vegetable was definitely the red cabbage, but their favourite was parsnip! Sprouts were not that popular with the majority of donkeys, but there were a few takers.

Anyway, on behalf of Woods Farm and the rest of The Donkey Sanctuary, I would like to say a very big thank you to Waitrose for being so kind and donating the vegetables to the donkeys. I think they will be munching their way through them for many days to come!