It is rather disquieting to think students in school in a small city on the Canadian Prairies are increasingly unaware of where their food actually comes from – the farm.
I suppose it is difficult to fully understand since I grew up on a farm. It was a farm originally homesteaded my grandfather, so while today I write about it rather than do it, agriculture is very much in my blood I suppose.
Growing up on a farm through the 1960s meant a mixed farm, we had chickens and pigs and a huge garden, so my connection to the food on my plate was rather direct.
It was the norm to butcher a pig in the fall and be eating pork chops for supper that night.
Or to watch dad chop the heads off the chickens, and watch mom dip the dead bird in boiling water to facilitate plucking the feathers – a smell that is definitely interesting to say the least – and then have roast chicken for supper.
And I was shelling peas and helping pick saskatoons and seeing those on the plate too.
I was of course aware not everyone lived on a farm. My best friend back in those days was the son of a local lawyer, and I am quite sure he never cleaned a pig pen. But, I recall he did work a summer job with a local honey producer, again connected to one’s food.
In those days most homes in town – one of around 2300 – had a backyard garden. We are not talking a few tomatoes for a few sandwiches, but instead full blown gardens designed to fill a deep freeze for winter food.
Now while I might like to forget – but that was a half century ago – and over 50 year’s things can change a lot. We live in a decidedly different world on most every level of our lives today from the one of the 1960s and 70s.
That includes how we relate to food.
With less farmers there are simply less family connections to farms. More and more people live in urban settings and never get closer to a farm than driving by a field of wheat or canola along the highway, and maybe not even recognize which was which.
So the Breakfast on the Farm program launched at four city schools is a good idea as a way to at least build a small connection for young students back to the farm. The program was through Farm and Food Care Saskatchewan which works to connect people with food and the farms where the food originates.
Today many might think food comes from a super market or restaurant, but the eggs in a breakfast sandwich, the bacon, the cheese, the flour in the bun all come from a farm, and that is something we shouldn’t – as a society – lose track of.
