Dinnercraft helps bring your (and our) protracted adolescence to an end. Our authors cover topics ranging from cooking and eating, to home and garden, to crafting and DiY, and all the rest of the things you find yourself caring about these days.
From Vine to Mouth: A Two-step Process
I’m a city girl. The countryside is all right in theory, but it’s also covered in bugs and dirt and more bugs. I happily watch nature documentaries, safe in my dry and (mostly) clean living room. I will never retire to the country; I like living in a bustling town too much.
However, I think it’s important to have at least a basic knowledge of where our food comes from — not a sterilized plastic box of pre-packaged, perfectly shaped berries from the local grocery store, but the fields where those berries actually grow.
Because our back garden is mostly paved or covered with decorative gravel, we don’t do much gardening. Instead, we take the children to a pick-your-own farm once a year. This year, we picked strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, gooseberries, potatoes, carrots, cauliflower and onions. The kids were eating blackberries straight from the bush, covering themselves in enough juice to look like they took part in a grim blackberry massacre.
There is something immensely satisfying about eating food that was still in the earth a few hours before. As if by magic, the children will merrily eat vegetables that they themselves plucked out of the ground. We all marvel over the taste of fresh foods compared to items on offer in the shops.
I could lament the loss of local farming to big conglomerate farms; I could witter on about the evils of intensive farming techniques; I could regale you with my dreams of having a larger back garden and owning cute little bantam hens. I am not a farmer, so I don’t really know all of the legal and political influences that form today’s farming landscape. However, I do appreciate the opportunities to buy fresh produce direct from the farms. I love the experience of plucking the berries straight off the bush, even if my hand gets scratched on a thorn or two. I enjoy driving through the country and seeing signs on the side of the road for “fresh eggs – £1/dozen” or “plums – 30p/pound”.
The children may not ever live on a farm, but they know where their food comes from, and that’s important to me.
I very much agree that it’s important for kids to understand where food really comes from. I grew up in an rural area dominated by agriculture and only as an adult appreciate the bounty of the land and the work that goes into it. We buy our beef from my sister and her husband who are USDA-certified organic farmers. Funny how I hated having to go pick green beans as a kid and now people pay to do that sort of thing. But still very valuable!
I need to find a pick-your-own place around here, my kids have no clue where food comes from