As I posted yesterday, today is Food Revolution Day. This is a thing started by Jamie Oliver as a way to reconnect kids to food. Reconnecting them to how it is grown, where it comes from, how to prepare it, how to serve it and all those wonderful things that food can be.
As a way of connecting our own children to food we made the decision to put garden boxes on our front lawn. This served a couple of purposes – first, I no longer need to mow the lawn!
But more importantly, it gives our kids a chance to see where food comes from and to learn to connect the food they eat to the effort that they put into the garden boxes.
The cool thing is that planting garden boxes is so simple! If you plant your plants intensively then the weeds don’t stand a chance. Also, I make my garden boxes about 42″ across so that it is easy to reach in and weed from either side of the box.
As well as garden boxes in the front yard we plant cherry tomatoes in pots on the front
porch of our house. They absorb a degree of heat from the southern exposure that our deck has and the heat they get convinces the tomato plants that they are in Mexico so they grow like wild things.
Kids absolutely love cherry tomatoes and to see a little kid pick one directly from the vine and eat it on the spot is very gratifying.
Same story with strawberries. Who cares if you ever pick a bucket of strawberries or tomatoes if you can enjoy a sunny afternoon in the garden simply eating?
Food Revolution Day 2014 … what are you doing to reconnect with food? Whatever you do, enjoy it.