My children’s upbringing has been vastly different than my own. It wasn’t a conscious choice. It was simply a straight forward financial fact. In the area we live in, owning land or a home out in the country is massively expensive. And the taxes…don’t let me get started. We started out in a modest home, in a busy neighborhood with a tiny postage stamp sized yard.
Dealing with small children and the food department is always an adventure. For myself, following a bout with intestinal distress which led me to a specialist, I knew we all needed a change in our diet.
I had this idea…I remembered running through my families small corn field and grabbing a corn straight off the stalk, ripping off the husk and eating it raw. It was sweet, juicy and tasting as wild as the earth around me. I remember running my hands over the spinach leaves and watching my mom as she added them to salads. I also remember the taste of raw milk. It was strong flavored and fresh. My brother and I rarely got sick. To this day we wonder if there was something powerful in that raw milk we consumed daily.
I decided to try and recreate some of my childhood memories with my children. I invested in some EarthBoxes. They are specialized containers for growing vegetables that act as a greenhouse. They are the ideal solution for urban gardening. My daughters had more fun, planting the seeds of bush beans and the small starts of cucumbers and zucchinis. As the plants grew and began producing, they grew excited.
Then an amazing thing happened…they wanted to try the vegetables and they liked them. They felt such a sense of satisfaction in growing their own food that they were finally willing to eat these green foreign objects that instilled such a loathing in them before.
We sauteed the zucchinis and carrots, added them to stir fries, to vegetable enchiladas and made zucchini bread. We ate the cucumbers raw and we added the bush beans to homemade chicken pot pies. When my children wanted an afternoon snack, they simply walked up to my cherry tomato plant and ate their fill. Even neighborhood children came over to view our container garden. I would always send them home with a cucumber to try!
Growing a vegetable garden takes time and patience. EarthBoxes are a bit costly but they are so worth it! To the parents of the children who refuse to eat their vegetables, this is a fun project and you never know…your picky little eaters may just surprise you!
