Butterfly Lodge Education

General information

Butterfly Lodge is a care farm that is run, owned and managed by Ellie Goff a fully qualified teacher and equine specialist with a lifetime of farming experience. All of the team at Butterfly Lodge are DBS checked and combine a wealth of experience and qualifications from teaching and mental health professionals to reflexology and meditation. Based on a small holding in Colchester, Essex, Butterfly Lodge Education Centre offers holistic one to one training and therapeutic experiences in a farm environment. All work is done at your own pace and the centre is open to anyone who would like to benefit from this form of therapeutic and educational activity. The centre offers educational courses such as the City and Guilds National Land Based Studies in animal Care and is an approved Gateway Qualifications centre. We offer Equine assisted Psychotherapy (EAP) and Equine Assisted Learning (EAL) fully qualified and delivered under the EAGALA model of practice. The site itself boasts a fully equipped classroom, including a disabled toilet and kitchen facility, stables, goat barn with fully operational mechanical dairy as well as fields of grazing animals such as pygmy goats and sheep. The farm also aims to be as environmentally friendly as possible, recycling water and using renewable energy from the farm's wind turbine and solar pannels. As the centre is set in the heart of the Essex countryside certain conservation activities are also available alongside a horticultural project making use of our vegetable plot and polytunnel. Students and farm helpers coming to the centre can choose to specialise in one area of agricultural or animal expertise, for example horse care or poultry care, or they can choose to come to enjoy the experiences as a whole and engage with all animals across the board. In this manner we can create tailor made courses for individuals and small groups.For more information on any aspect of our centre or to arrange a visit please contact us.