Time Out To Agro Park, Senawang

Parents Without Partners Bhd’s single parents children and underprivileged children from Trinity Homes, Petaling Jaya  was able to enjoy a trip to Starfresh Agro Park, at  Senawang, Negeri Sembilan thanks to Kiwanis Bandaraya, that sponsored the trip.

Starfresh Agro Park founder,  Alex gave a short introduction of the company and the park during a tour of the place.  

The children were introduced to  local fruit trees, including star fruit, durian, ‘duku langsat’, rambutan and many more. The beauty of the tour to the orchard was the fact that, the children were able to harvest the fruit themselves and eat them! Many were ecstatic never having done it before. 11 year old, Hanuthasan gathered a few duku langsat and carefully wrapped it in his handkerchief as a gift to his mom for when he returns home.  He was happy he could pluck them from the tree himself.  Sadly, many of the fruit trees were not in season including the durians and the rambutans but the kids still had a fun time with a jam making session.   

 It was the children’s first effort ever making their very own fruit jam! And what’s more it was also Agro Fresh’s first effort at making jam from star fruit! Guided by their group leaders, each child learnt the art of jam making from the washing of the fruits to slicing and dicing it, blending them, cooking and mixing them with sugar before pouring the finished gooey stuff into a jam jar. Little did they know that, at the end of the session, they were actually allowed to take a bottle of jam home!  Single father’s son, 11 year old, Jack Justin Tan said this was his first time making jam and he really enjoyed the experience very much.

 Famished after the tiring walk in the orchard and jam making activity, it was time for a buffet lunch. The children were so hungry they opted for a second serving of the delicious lunch.

Lunch over, it was paint ball target shooting time! The tour guide shared safety tips, and information on how to handle the paint ball guns. Each child was given 20 pieces of paint ball pellets, placed in the paint ball gun by the guide and given clear instructions on how to aim and shoot the target. The target in this case were aluminium cans tied to strings hanging from a steel bar. Muhammad Iqram, 9 years, was truly having a ball and scored by hitting 3 cans! Like Iqram, the other children had a whale of a time with the paint ball guns! 

Topping off the day’s event was what most rural children loved the most, swimming in a real river! The children could be seen laughing and giggling, busily splashing water and some swimming happily up and down the river itself. Having spent around 45 minutes in the stream, they were mighty reluctant to quit swimming begging for “another 5 more minutes, please”. The outing was a huge success, offering a great opportunity to bond with nature, it was indeed a time of fun, fun, fun and will hopefully add to the many sweet childhood memories of being one with nature.