Essex is noted for wonderful Piers. Southend, Clacton, Brentwood. The last of these is here at Old Macdonald’s Farm, and in our opinion is far better than the others.

When you go to Southend and stroll down the promenade one of the first things you notice is the lack of Pigs. What can you see? Just the sea! Nothing squealing, squawking or grunting, apart from you and the kids of course, but when you walk down ours, lovely and rare Kune Kune pigs are there to be viewed. Whelks and fresh air have their place but the fragrance of fresh pig is special. Sort of.

Plus, take Clacton. Stand at the end and all there are will be ships. OK we suppose, but where is the M25 with the wonderful variety of lorries and cars, and sometimes flying and occasionally crawling full of frustrated motorists? Nothing like that to be seen from Clacton Pier.

Also, these piers are nice but not rare. Go around Britain if you must and you will find lots of these stuck out in the Ocean, but our Pig Pier is unique. No one else has built one of these, and to be honest no one is likely to either.

Also new here at the farm, following pressure from the Goats who nagged him endlessly about the time and money he was spending on building brand new play areas for children, Old Macdonald has built a new climbing ladder for his flock. Now they want him to build an indoor play area for their kids as he has done for your kids. They will be lucky!

There is nothing that Old Macdonald likes more than going to the Cinema, well apart from counting his money of course, and also providing you with a great time when you visit, plus reading the Sun and Guardian (see other stories on this webpage), so let us start again. Amongst the things Old Macdonald likes is to visit the cinema and sneak in at half price claiming to be either under 12 or over 75. Anyway he managed to get in very early to see the new film “We Bought a Zoo” and is convinced it is about him, because in 2005 he bought a zoo, this one here, your favourite animal attraction at Old Macdonald’s Farm. Also, the similarity between him and Matt Damon is incredible, well he things so anyway.

Plus like the character Matt plays, he put a lot of hard work with his family into making it a great place to visit, and lots of people come and enjoy their day out here in Brentwood. He knows it is supposed to be about Dartmoor, but who can really tell? After all, the only real difference is that the head keeper in the film is Scarlett Johannson while we have got Darren. Now, who would you prefer to see here?

I refuse to give my choice!

Browsing through his favourite papers on 13th March, Old Macdonald was amazed to read about your favourite animal attraction, and in particular those pesky Meerkats. Every day he carefully studies The Sun and The Guardian, the Sun for their informed articles on the environment, politics and social matters and the Guardian for their fascinating photos on page 3. Or at least he tells me it is that way around.

Anyway, whichever it is he found news on the new Coach Trip around the M25 and discovered that one of the highlights is that all those on this new tourist day out are told to look out for all the famous London Landmarks which as you know would include the Tower of London, Canary Wharf, Buckingham Palace, Old Macdonald’s Farm, and only one of these, as the tour points out, has meerkats. Now we will ignore the sarcastic suggestion that our meerkats sell dodgy insurance policies, though we have warned them about this before, but now they are enshrined as the closest Meerkats to the motorway!

So if you fancy a day driving around the M25, we will wave at you from our hill, or you can come and join us, compare the Meerkats, and look at the drivers from behind our Victorian Steam engine. Now, what exactly does he like on page 3 of the Guardian?

Old Macdonald was going to try and persuade you that he had just bought this new house, but really he was visiting Layer Marney Tower, between Colchester and Chelmsford, as he launched the English Tourism Week, and the Visit Essex Promotion Live Local Love Local.

We actually he did not launch it on his own but with others but as you can see from the photo above he was there as was our Cow Van, parked outside this historic building which is part of the great facilities available in this county that we all share and love.

Look out for the Archant/Visit Essex money off booklets, and hurry here this Spring to enjoy our wonderful visitor attraction. By the way, as you can see Old Mac was there with representatives from the very best of Essex including our friends from Visit Essex, Archant Group newspapers, Essex County Council and Heart FM as well as people from some of the other wonderful places in the county. Great fun.