I found myself struggling this week. Not so much because I had to do any labour on the farm, but more so because I couldn’t get out of my way of thinking, if that makes any sense. My part at the farm over the course of three weeks is to write a lesson or activity that high schools can do during the tour. I found it really hard to think of these activities; I kept thinking about the tour as something that is already set in stone and all of my ideas for lessons were those to complement the tour as is. Changing my mindset from “this is what the tour offers, how can I incorporate it?” to “this is what I want the tour to have” has been a lot more difficult than I thought it would be. I’ve tried to overcome it by first writing the complementary lessons and then focusing on the tour, and it’s made me feel more at ease because I’m actually doing something, but I feel like the issue is going to pop up again. One of the staff said that it wouldn’t be out of the question to create a small plot just for the high school tours, so with that offer I may try to do a quick tasting activity during the tour.

The big question I want to focus on is: Where does our food come from? This question was brought up by one of the students in the lone high school tour I’ve seen so far, and I think it’s a great question. Where does it come from? I think it’s important to realize that the food found in the grocery store has traveled great distances to be accessible to us, and with that the huge consumption of resources (often fossil fuels). It also takes a lot of energy to produce food in general, especially meat products. I find this topic super interesting, but high school youth won’t be as much. I chose to study food after high school; most teens just want to get through high school.

It’s kind of interesting how that particular age group, between the ages of 13 and 18, children seem to lose their curiosity. The farm seems to do pretty well with tours; this past week alone there were about 5 or 6 tours (that I know of), however they are all from elementary schools. I wonder if it’s because of lack of interest or even competing interests; field trips are much harder to plan in high school, and students may choose not to go to focus on their more academic courses. I say this coming from a Home Economics perspective, and I believe it could very well be the conflict of interest. During my practicum at Moscrop we held a field trip for Home Economics students to tour a culinary school within Vancouver. Some students opted out of the field trip because the particular day it was held on was a heavy academic day. Of course these tours would also be good for Science or even Social Studies courses, but I guess the lack of a direct relationship between the subject and the farm means the idea is often missed.

This past week I was able to do a volunteer shift in the IHREG, where i actually got to do hands on work and work in the garden. I loved it, and it is definitely harder than I originally thought. It also gave me a greater understanding of how much work actually goes into producing my food. Granted a lot of my food is probably produced with machinery, it shows how much work it takes for people before machinery was invented. Also the plots of land we worked on were relatively small – I can’t imagine working a large scale farm by hand!

This week was also the first week I partook in the Landed Learning program on the farm. Landed Learning is done in partnership with 4 elementary schools in the Lower Mainland. One class from the school comes to the farm every 2 weeks for a total of 11 sessions, and they spend the whole day learning at the farm. This past week was about water, so the kids made compost tea for their own garden bed, planted and transplanted some seeds/seedlings, and did a little activity on the irrigation system. The group that I got to work with was a 3-4 class, and it was so much fun to work with them! They had so much energy and were curious about everything. They knew so much of what different plants were just by looking at them (which I can’t even do!). During the check out period, someone mentioned how as the groups get older, they become less interested in the farm and growing their own food and they wondered out loud, why is that? What happens in these few short years that makes them disinterested in growing their own food? Something to contemplate.

Now I begin my final week at the farm, and it’s surreal how quick this experience has been. I am hopeful that I can complete what I came here to do, and look forward to making the most of my week here.

Again, photos to come soon!