The Journey Back to Nature - Educating Ourselves About Our Food

The Journey Back To Nature:^[1]

Educating Ourselves about Our Food

Taheisha Garside

We always went out in the morning, making our way across the dewy grass and into our neighbor’s yard.  You knew you were close when the smell of horse manure filled the air and the horse shavings mixed with the grass. When we got close to our destination my mom and I would exchange a knowing look and roll our eyes. His name was Leo, short for Napoleon. He was a mean and fearless rooster that protected his hens at any cost, even when my mom was wielding a broom. Yes, a broom. It was needed to enter the chicken coop. Once we were able to get past Leo and enter the coup, we locked it behind us and took a deep breath. Next on our list: retrieve the eggs. The coup smelled awful and the hay on the floor stuck to the bottom of our shoes, but our mission was to collect the eggs as quickly as possible. We could hear Leo becoming anxious, strutting back and forth, and we knew it was only a matter of minutes before he realized there was a back entrance. Once we gathered the eggs, we would brace ourselves to race out of the coup, across the yard and into the house. It was only then that we would look at the eggs we collected and start the careful process of washing them.

        This was a typical routine for my mom and me. Not only did we collect eggs for our neighbor, we often helped her milk the goats and take care of the horses and tend the garden. For a resident of Hollis, New Hampshire, this was not an unfamiliar occurrence. It was a farming community and if you didn’t have a farm, at a minimum you had garden or farmable land that was leased to a local farmer.  My family had a flower and vegetable garden, a 5 acre pumpkin patch, and a hay and peach orchard across the street. I am fortunate to have grown up in a place where I was able understand where our food comes from and that it doesn’t just magically appear in neat little packages in the refrigerator. I have seen firsthand the hard work and patience it takes to farm the simplest of foods. Take our garden, for example. We planted what we thought were easy fruits and vegetables like tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce and potatoes. But what we thought was easy ended up being a summer full of weed and beetle picking and the overall frustration that comes with having an organic garden. I have a full appreciation of the amount of work, time and money that goes into farming a small organic garden. I can only imagine the complexity and level of responsibility that goes into farming acres and acres of land that produce food for thousands of people.  

        Aldo Leopold, in his book A Sand County Almanac, says that “[t]here are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace” (Leopold 6).  This is not to say that these are the only spiritual dangers we face today, but these are the two that need our attention right now.  Leopold is referring to how humans have come to naïvely believe that we are an independent species. It is indeed easy to fall prey to that notion. Today, our lives seem much easier than they were. We have cars that can park themselves, cellphones that keep us connected to the Internet, and grocery stores that give the illusion of a never ending supply of food. However, thinking we are independent and self-sufficient is dangerous and it comes from the fact that many of us have never seen nor fully understood the process of the harvesting food or creating heat. These are the types of things that people take for granted and have come to expect.  The mere act of doing chores on a farm and helping grow a family garden, led me to realize how dependent we are on things like the weather, animals and bugs, and variations of microorganisms. It’s easier for someone who grew up around a farm to appreciate the amount of work that goes into growing food.  Leopold says it best when he comes to the conclusion that “the modern dogma is comfort at any cost” (Leopold, 71).  People are so focused on getting what they want when they want it, they lose sight of how they are getting it.  That’s not to say nobody cares about the process, but when people boast about buying all organic, do they really know what that means?  Leopold’s fundamental message is that we need to humble ourselves and learn to appreciate the land we have. So how do we get people to appreciate the work and effort that goes into getting us what we want, when we want it? Education. Educating is easier said than done but it can be done.

        It is said that children are the future. If this is true, then teaching them how to protect the planet should begin at an early age.  Some towns, like the one I grew up in, already have an education program geared towards nature. Other towns such as Somerville, MA are also do this with a school wide community garden.  Clearly, not everything we do helps protect the earth and makes the world a better place. But what is possible, and can happen, is that we continue to educate children about the land what each part of the world has to offer.  Because the world does not have a limitless supply of food and energy, there needs to be a more mindful policy about how we consume its natural resources. Children are limited in their understanding, and in addition to reading books about farming and food processing, showing them how food is grown through field trips to working farms will reinforce the importance of conservation of nature. These types of teaching methods will help solidify for them, for example, how the weather affects the kinds of crops that can grow and which animals eat and destroy crops. Growing up in Hollis was like a perpetually informal education about how nature works. School field trips were made simple because we didn’t have to travel very far to see a working farm, or to learn how to extract sap from a tree, or to see how a salmon farm operated. Nature was all around us. We got an education about it and how it works whether we wanted it or not. Children should be exposed to nature as much as possible when they are young and impressionable so that they appreciate what it has to offer. This will help with their ability to pass along an appreciation of nature to their own children.