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.

Old MacDonald has got a great half term gift for all you kids. Realising, as a shrewd old farmer, that it can be a bit chilly at this time of year he has improved our popular indoor play area with lots of new slides and glides, so hurry down to our value for money Farm Park, meet your farmyard favourites plus the Meerkats and other exotic animals, and enjoy your half term with us!

If January 2011 was anything to go by, then you’ll know that all the spring babies arrive early at the farm and it looks like January 2012 will follow the same pattern. So, it just proves that even though it may be chilly outside, spring can never come too early!

Old MacDonald’s Farm now has a total of 4 Lambs at the farm, with the first to greet us on Friday 6th and another 3 following on Saturday 7th January and we’re all sure that these won’t be the last of the spring babies either!