Grow Your Own Food

Growing Food In Your Backyard

Growing Teenagers

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Sending your youngest children out into the lettuce patch with a handful of seeds, a trowel and a rake may — according to some authorities — make it five times more likely that they will grow up loving vegetables. It’s their active involvement that does it.

Food researchers at Ohio State University and Cornell University in New York found that children were far more likely to eat salad when they had grown it themselves. On the back of this study some have been emboldened to suggest that gardens might help children eat better in future.

The general principle has been articulated by British scientist, Professor Marion Hetherington ‘If you want to encourage your children to eat vegetables, make sure you start early and often’. Her findings add to mounting evidence from around the world suggesting that early life interventions can radically change dietary habits.

child gardening

This has got to be good news. Anything that avoids the need to bribe our offspring to get them to eat a single Brussels sprout is a tick in the box worth having. But what if this general principle could be applied in other areas? Could we courageously attempt to build the perfect teenager by using similar methods?

For example, might you give your two-year old a dustpan and brush and a twelve week course on tidying up after him and expect him twelve years later to rise at seven in the morning to vacuum his room? Think about it — no lazily discarded pizza boxes strewn across their rooms, no half-chewed cheeseburgers concealed beneath bedclothes.

What about teaching our three year olds the 24-hour clock and making a virtue of turning up at the breakfast table in time for their Cheerios in the morning. Would this act foster teenagers that returned home at a decent hour, or got out of bed before the middle of the afternoon?

If there were debating clubs for the terrible twos, could we look forward to reasoned debate with our thirteen-year-olds on lively subjects such as fashion, mobile-phone use and respect for elders?

Would introducing our young ones to a wider variety of foods much earlier than we currently do help avoid the age-old teenage complaint about there never being anything in the refrigerator worth eating?

I fear that the general principle of introducing good habits early might not extend beyond growing lettuce. Teenagers have been troublesome since the beginning of time. It’s their job to do what their parents don’t. Perhaps we adults should just continue to eat up our greens so we have the strength to take on our children when adolescence rears its ugly head.

boy picking fruit

Fresh Eggs Taste Best

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As a kid we had chickens, I helped my Dad feed them, broke the ice on their water in the Winter and I helped to eat their eggs for breakfast. All and all I never thought much about having chickens. As the years grew on our chickens grew old and eventually my Dad decided to cut back on his animal husbandry, and since their last two cats have passed on, my parents now own ZERO animals (for the first time in over 30 years).

But I digress. I love chickens. Or more specifically I love the yellow, golden, creamy yolks that are found inside eggs harvested fresh from hand raised chickens. So does my 16 month old son. When I scramble up a fresh egg from the chickens, my son gobbles up every last bite. When, on ocassion our girls have not held up their end of the deal and we have had to buy some eggs (oh, the shame) when I have served him up a pale grocery store egg — even a cage free omega filled Nest Fresh egg — he gets a little peckish. He eats a few bites and leaves the rest.

The average omnivore might think that I am imagining things, but I happen to be a “taste” connoisseur. I can copy recipes pretty good simply by tasting them (no recipe in hand). When I taste wine (or chocolate or coffee) I can honestly taste the spice, the bloom, the black cherry, the grapefruit. I KNEW when our local vineyards sold out and changed the grapes going into their Red Truck table wine, but it wasn’t until over a year later that I finally got confirmation. In other words, I am absolutely certain, that fresh farm eggs TASTE BETTER than factory farmed eggs, even Certified Humane, but still factory farmed eggs.

holding eggs

However, fresh farm (urban or country) eggs not only taste better, they are better for you. In fact any animal product that comes from an animal that eats a natural diet, getting in some greens (usually grass), some bugs or other foods from nature, has a different balance of fats and proteins than the same animal products factory farmed cousins. Wild venison, grass fed beef, and eggs from the little farm down the road are characterized by an increase in Omega 3 fats, a decrease in Saturated fats, and an increase in lean protein. This is because similar to the obese American, modern livestock were not meant to live on corn and soy. Corn and soy may fill you up and out, but growth in itself is not always good. Especially growth that involves excess fat.

But again, I digress, so back to chickens. I love farm chickens (urban or country) for their quirky personality, the beauty of their plumage and their ability to bond with small children. In fact, 4-H recommends that kids who want to get involved in livestock, but who have little experience raise poultry. We are what we eat (literally) and yet our culture is frighteningly disconnected from our food. Many today can’t cook from scratch or think that cooking from scratch means opening a boxed mix and adding eggs and oil. Others don’t even bother to use their kitchen — allowing strangers to feed them 3 square (or not so square) meals per day.

And thus, perhaps I should not be in total shock that some US cities are still coming upon strong resistance when it comes to approving an ordinance to allow urban chickens. And yet, surrounding cities, which are arguably MORE urban already allow urban chickens. As does the great city of New York (seriously), as well as, other hip towns like Portland and Seattle.

For some reason, a good number of probably nice folks in these chicken-free zones think that the approval of the urban hen will send their city to the dogs. Others are afraid that chickens will attract predators like fox and coyotes, which already happen to live in good numbers in cities. Others think chickens smell (they don’t if you clean them out regularly) or that they are noisy (roosters are, but not particularly hens). What’s more they are concerned about the mess….

Cooped chickens don’t poop in their neighbors yard and they don’t bark at raccoons after midnight; however, they do provide those yummy, golden yolks that my family genuinely appreciates. Now given all this, I am not sure that many will want to start their own little brood of laying hens, but I do think that they should have the legal right to do so. ~~ A. Greenme

The chicks are growing fast

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There seems to be very little to do with the young stock this month, but to feed them regularly and well, keep the drinking fountains or pans well filled with clean fresh water and keep the houses clean and well ventilated writes Mrs. Irving F. Rice

The chicks on “Sunny Bank” are given their breakfast early, before the sun has time to over-heat the small colony houses, in which they are locked for the night. Their dinner is taken from hoppers which are kept well filled with dry mash, and supper is again carried to them and scattered out-side of the house. The drinking pans are rinsed and filled, three times daily, and until very recently, they have had access to a spring, which has now become dry. They have their liberty, but during the heat of the day, they lie around in the shade of the corn and bushes and grow, and how they are growing unlike most other crops, this extraordinary dry weather seems made for them, and they are fast developing into very promising chicks. They are allowed to enjoy the coolness of the evening as long as possible before they are locked in for the night. We wish it were possible to leave the houses open all night, so that they would get better air and be able to run out as early as they cared to, in the morning, but “Safety first” must be our motto, and in this case seems to mean well locked houses at night. To keep them safe from both two and four legged marauder, a skunk will destroy a large number in one onslaught, and a thief will cause equally as much havoc, certainly they can break the locks if they are bound to do so, but this naturally makes the crime more serious, and will give the owner more opportunity to hear them or the alarm of the watch dog. This is also just the weather for the insect pests to get in their work, so keep a close watch upon the perches and cracks of the house to see that mites and lice do not get the better of you.

youngsters

There are several kinds of insect pests, but the ones with which we have more to do are the ordinary hen louse and the red mites, and of the two, I verily believe that the mite is more to be dreaded, especially is this true in regard to the young stock. These mites do not live upon the body of the chick, but are nocturnal, like the bedbug, living in cracks and crevices and the underside of the perches during the day and decending at night upon the victims and sucking their life blood, it is easy to detect chicks which are troubled by mites, they simply cannot thrive and grow, but merely exist in a half-hearted way, but remove the mites and you will be able to see an improvement in a very few days. These mites will multiply very rapidly, so that a close watch must be kept, that they do not get a start. Neither young or old fowls can thrive when pestered with these enemies.

There is a white carpet in our winter houses where the laying hens reside, and the ladies of the houses are taking their vacation, they have earned it and are getting full rations and every attention to make their vacation pleasant, and we know that every attention given them will be like the ”bread cast upon the waters,” and will rebound to our benefit, in the way of eggs this fall and winter.