The real harvest is the joy of a new experience.
I don’t know how much truth there is in all these studies that try to determine why some people behave in certain ways and other people don’t. I realize that both heredity and environment play a big role in how kids develop, but when those children reach adulthood, they become responsible for their actions and shouldn’t be blaming anyone else when things don’t go right for them.
I will tell you one thing that I do believe in very strongly. I believe that the habits you develop as a child will carry over into your adulthood. And that’s why good parenting is so important. If you grew up as a slob because your parents allowed that, you’ll probably be a slob as an adult. And if you grew up learning how to handle money properly as a child, you will probably handle it more wisely as an adult. It’s crucial to instill good habits into children and provide them with opportunities to learn about the important things in life.
Here’s an example. As a general rule, inner-city kids are not given much of an opportunity to learn about planting, growing and harvesting food. There aren’t too many gardens in the concrete jungle, and even if there were more, it probably wouldn’t be considered a cool thing to do.
But the Mission Thrive Camp program taught Baltimore high school students how to plant, care for and harvest vegetables last summer, and hopefully they’ll do it again next summer. The camp’s goal was to help the students learn how to live a healthier lifestyle, in part by growing vegetables at the Real Food Farm in east Baltimore. The students also learned how to cook healthy meals with the vegetables that they harvested. The camp culminated with a student-run health expo.
Now, I have no idea what’s going to become of those high school students after they move on to college or a job. But I’m willing to bet that when they become adults, they will look back on this experience fondly and appreciate what they were taught. I would bet that some of them will make it a priority to have a healthy diet and maybe find a way to have a garden in their yard someday. And they will likely pass those good habits along to their children.
How about you? Were you taught about growing your own vegetables and fruits as a kid? Did your parents model gardening and self-reliance for you? If so, was that a factor in how you turned out as an adult? Sure hope to hear from you about this subject.
I am one of the lucky ones. I was raised on a farm. I can remember going to the spring for water….a lot of trips on laundry day. Wood burning cookstove…. had to split our own firewood. No electricty, no indoor plumbing. We raised our own meat and eggs. Kerosene lamps. We had a really large garden. One summer my mom canned a thousand jars of food. As the oldest girl I learned to cook, clean house, do laundry, gather eggs, milk cows, feed the animals. When I retire in a couple of years I want to live on a off grid homestead. It will have indoor plumbing and a septic tank!!! I don’t ever want to have to use a outhouse again….especially in the winter or at night….I don’t like snakes.
When I was in the first grade, I was given a butter bean, lima bean to those who don’t know, to grow. The entire class each got one of their own to grow in a orange juice container, that is to say orange juice concentrate container. Anyway it has been over 51 years and I still remember the miracle of growing a plant to maturity. As I remember when I got my plant home it died because my mom for got to water it whereby she threw it out.
As I grew up I would visit my grandmother that had a screen in porch where she had a lot of potted plants. Since I grew my own butter bean I asked her if I could take a plant home with me to grow for my very self. With a smile my grandmother handed me a potted plant. I took it home and had my dad plant it outside.
I never forgot the feeling of growing my own plants. It took a lot of patience, dedication and a certain amount of know how. It requires a lot of studying because you just can’t put a seed in the ground and expect it to grow big and healthy. A plant requires water, sunlight, fertilizer, insect control and so on. one mishap can take your plant out of circulation and you wouldn’t have a crop in your garden. You will either start over or wait until next year. You need to know when to plant and when to harvest your crop. It isn’t as easy as it sounds. Once you get a bumper crop ( a lot of fruit or vegetables at one time, ) you need to learn to can it, cook it or store it effectively and quickly as possible. It is well worth it when it comes together and you reap the rewards of your hard earned labor.
Check out Frank’s seed vault, it is worth a good hard look.
I’ve decided to buy another seed vault or two and use my first one to plant now. Do you have anything on seed plant method in my greenhouse to get plants ready?