PROACTIVE pupils at St Ronan’s Primary School brought a fantastic feast of local fayre to Innerleithen at the weekend.

Primary 5s and 6s were showing off their entrepreneurial flair with the farmers market they organised; learning real-life enterprising skills. They also managed to raise an impressive £645.54 for the school.

Class teachers Mr Doug Crabbe and Mrs Jane Hobbs came up with the idea for a farmers market to tie in with their ‘reducing food miles’ topic.

A food mile is the distance over which a food item is transported during the journey from producer to consumer, as a unit of measurement of the fuel used to transport it.

The pupils have been learning all about the benefits of eating local produce, reducing their carbon footprint, as well as how to organise an event.

Mr Crabbe said: “It wasn’t about raising money – although it was great we managed to – it was about the kids learning genuine life skills.

“They had to apply for different roles such as marketing supervisors and financial officers, they had to phone up businesses and ask if they wanted a stall at the market, they had to collect money from the stall holders, apply for an operators licence from the council, make sure all the stall holders had filled in all the legal forms, and had to buy certain produce at cost price and work out how much to sell it for to make profit – it was really full on for them.

“A lot of projects in primary school’s aren’t real but this was great because they actually organised and successfully put on a real event. For nine and 10-year-olds that’s an amazing achievement.”

Local business owners paid £20-a-head to secure one of the many stalls set up to sell local produce, including fruit and veg, Coltmans Deli, and Caldwells Ice Cream.

Shaw’s Fine Meat donated sausages for the BBQ, the pupils and PTA ran the Farm Barn Café and stallholders also donated delicious desirables for a raffle.

Mr Crabbe was thrilled with how successful the event was, which he said only died down when all the food sold out!

He added: “Mrs Hobbs and I would like to thank all businesses for joining us in our school community with a fantastic array of locally produced food and drink and for donating some terrific gifts for the raffle hamper.

“We’d like to say how proud we are of all the children in P5 and P5/6 who carried out their roles diligently and showed how exceptional St Ronan’s pupils really are. They really excelled themselves and rose to the challenge.

“In total, after the children worked out income and expenses, we managed to make a fantastic profit of £645.54 for the school.”