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May-June 2007 Selected Content
Community Supported Agriculture For Homeschoolers - Amy Hood
Together my four-and-a-half-year-old son, Vaughan, and I measure the fava bean we've just picked against his hand. We decide it's about one and a half times the length of his hand, and we shouldn't pick any smaller than that. We search for beans that are long enough and hand them to my two-year-old son, Nicholas, who drops them into the bucket. "Beans!" he says. They're a favorite of his, along with broccoli, which we will also eat fresh from "our" farm this week. We are working off half our share in a local CSA, which stands for Community Supported Agriculture, and community is definitely the right word. This is the perfect place for the farming and homeschooling communities to intersect.
I have always loved the idea of a garden. Not so much the process as the product, the thought of being able to pick in-season, organic produce in my backyard and serve it for dinner. I also want my children to have the experience of growing their food and to know that food does not magically appear on supermarket shelves. However, I've come to realize that gardening is simply not one of my strengths. I'm not interested or knowledgeable enough in the actual planning, preparing, planting, weeding and so on. My boys and I plant flowers, and we've sprouted beans. Currently we have pea seedlings growing on the window sill. We all enjoy checking on the progress of these small planting adventures, but we're not going to get any dinner this way. Truth be told, I'm not so good at keeping plants alive. What's a homeschooling mom with not one green digit to do?
We're lucky we live in a somewhat rural area of our state, and local farms and CSAs are abundant. Farmers who run CSAs sell shares in their farms. Members pay a fee at the beginning of the growing season and then share in both the bounty and the risks of farming. The farmer has a guaranteed income to cover the cost of farming, and shareholders receive a portion of the harvest each week. Many CSAs sell half shares as well as full shares and also offer working shares; these members can work off all or part of their share by assisting the farmer. Some farms require a small number of working hours during the season from each shareholder. CSAs, especially organic ones, are popular where I live, and many fill up quickly. One of the larger ones is difficult to get to during the summer, when the area is visited by tourists and traffic piles up.
This past spring I saw a flyer advertising a new CSA only a couple of miles from our home. While the cost was somewhat prohibitive for our one-income family of four, Pete, the farm manager, encouraged working all or part of a share. This seemed to be the perfect solution, provided my children were welcome on the farm. They go where I go, after all.
Pete is young, just starting out, and wonderfully flexible. He was open from the start to having a toddler and a preschooler in the garden, although he admits his CSA is unique. Most larger, more established farms aren't likely to let kids as young as mine into the garden. But Pete also says it's good to have kids in the garden. I agree. The first time we visited, just to explore, Nicholas didn't want to leave. He cried all the way home, telling me he wanted to go back to the farm. On just our second visit, he delightedly sang out "Farm!" when we pulled into the driveway.
We have participated in various ways so far this summer. We began by pulling up roots of weed plants to help prepare a bed for planting. In the process of pulling up roots, we found lots of worms. On a second visit, many of the worms found were collected for a turtle that had been discovered by the boy who lives on the farm. During subsequent work visits, my boys and I have washed the produce as it was harvested, weighed and grouped various vegetables for pick up by members, and participated in the weekly pick-up. All of these activities contain inherent lessons, even for children so young. While my main hope is to give them the experience of greater connection with the food they eat, we are also adding, dividing, and counting; weighing; and learning about different vegetables.
And, of course, we get a chance to help harvest. Pete is patient with the boys and explains what we are looking for. I watch them carefully to make sure only the right plants are picked. While harvesting garlic, we were asked to pick 30 of the small variety and 30 of the large, since our farm has 30 members; lots of opportunity for counting there. A garden is full of all sorts of small, interesting critters--not just worms but millipedes, ladybugs, spiders, beetles... a whole world can be found under a leaf.
There's time for unstructured fun, too--time for playing with trucks on a dirt pile or chasing a butterfly through the tall grass. A recent study by Cornell researchers reached what I think is an obvious conclusion: Young children who have time for free play in nature grow up to be adults who care about the environment and take action on its behalf (Nancy M. Wells, 2006).
Once we've picked up our week's share, we get to cook and eat it. Home with the fava beans, Nicholas and I check a cookbook to figure out how to cook them. I split open the pods and he picks out each bean and places it into a bowl. We boil the beans, drain and cool them, and remove the outer skin. Then we all eat the beans we picked just the day before. Whenever I serve a vegetable from our farm, I make sure to tell the boys, "The risotto has farm carrots," or "The broccoli tonight is ours."
"Farm broccoli good!" says Nicholas, and I am pleased that he, at only two, connects the food to its source.
Vaughan's jobs are a bit more involved. He helps more with counting, bundling and picking. We listen for birdsongs together, and he notices just about every bug that walks, crawls or flies past. We wonder together--why so many ladybugs on the chard?--as we pick out the fourth ladybug from the washing bucket and save it from drowning. We know ladybugs like aphids. Do aphids like chard? Both boys like to plunge the produce into the tubs of water to rinse them off, a fun job on a hot summer's day.
The benefits to us all defy counting. My boys think nothing of "going to the farm;" it's part of their experience now, like going to the market or the library. While we were no stranger to farm stands and farmer's markets before, and have visited local farms on field trips and for fairs, they now have a sense of ownership. They both are comfortable in the garden, and they are gaining stewardship over this piece of land. I stress the importance of being careful in the garden and with the produce because each share depends on the success of the garden as a whole. I am thrilled with this opportunity for all of us: to eat the vegetables, to stick our hands in the dirt, to bite a carrot still warm from the ground. I cannot explain to my older son, who is of preschool age but not enrolled in any school for the fall, that this is part of our school. He's a literal child, and he wouldn't quite understand, yet, what I mean. But I trust that this experience, which I hope to repeat every growing season, will form a valued memory of learning through life, for both my boys and me. And who knows, maybe one day I will have gathered enough knowledge to plant a small vegetable garden of my own.
CSA ResourcesWhile farms are, of course, rural, some CSAs offer pick-ups in urban areas and periodic work days instead of regular work-share schedules. Shares begin, on average, at $300, depending upon the region of the country. A full share in our CSA was $420, and no half shares were offered. For more information on CSAs, see the USDA's Alternative Farming Systems Information Center website at http://www.nal.usda.gov/afsic/csa. The Wilson College CSA database (http://www.wilson.edu/wilson/asp/con
© 2007, Amy Hood
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