While most children think that their food comes from the grocery store, packaged neatly in colorful boxes and sporting their favorite cartoon characters. I was no different, although most of my foods didn’t have cartoon characters on it. I thought vegetables just magically appeared on the shelves in the grocery store and in cans, nonetheless!
About two years ago, when my son was 3, I decided to introduce him to the world of “Just Where Does My Food Come From?” This began the process of tearing up my neatly manicured, society-approved backyard. With my very active little boy bopping around the backyard, I plunged my shovel in to the grassy area on the side of the house and began the process of reclaiming our backyard. My son’s current fixation is on those little “Rolly-Pollies” and I put him on duty to pull them all out and provide them with relocation assistance. Teaching him to value all life, even the smallest insects, is something important to me.
He tired quickly of this task and we set in to digging holes and planting our plants. The feeling of soil in our fingers, the squish of the water turning the soil in to mud, and the occasional squiggle of the worms made my son squeal with delight. Watching the joy of my little boy experiencing the world around him and absorbing the experience.
Juicing is also a huge aspect of our lives. Many of the vegetables and fruits that we tend to in the garden become our beverages throughout the day. But what to do with all of that leftover pulp? Tossing it out seemed so wasteful! So we turned it back in to fertilizer for our garden and each morning my son dutifully walks out to the backyard garden and pitches the pulp (and that morning’s pastured egg shells) in to the plants. Each week the soil is carefully turned and the dried pulp is mixed in and used to provide further nutrients to the soil.
Natural fertilizers, no pesticides, no herbicides and the selective use of natural predators and beneficial plant placement provide the best foundation for a healthy garden. All parents want to feel good about the foods that we feed our children, but more often than not we have no idea what is on them. We trust that the stores will label them correctly, stock them in the appropriate place, and hope that the stickers that appear to be missing just simply fell off. In reality, the only way to be certain of what we are feeding our children is to grow our own fruits and vegetables. Not all are blessed to have a substantial-sized backyard, but everyone has some space. There are canvas cloth bins such as those found at http://www.smartpots.com/ that don’t take up a great deal of room or exhaust the bank account! Maybe you live on a second story apartment floor and would like to try out the ledge planters that straddle the railing or maybe a hanging plantar of tomatoes or strawberries, which by the way are on the dirty dozen list to grow organically.
What I have witnessed from this experience is that he is stronger in his desire to eat fresh fruits and vegetables, chooses them over candy and other junk foods. The delight of popping a blackberry form the bush in the backyard conquers the delight of any store bought treat with cartoon characters. The experiences that we give our children, the time we take to teach them where our foods come from, makes the imprint upon their spirits and produces healthier individuals.
