This entry was posted on Thursday, March 5th, 2009 at 11:44am and is filed under Food Safety, Local, ranch life, Parenting, Agriculture, Health, Farming, Food Production. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Amanda, over at Beef Daily Blog, is hosting a discussion about ranch chores, which got me thinking about my own chore philosophy.
I can’t say I was a big fan of chores as a child. Now that I’m a Mom, I have come to the conclusion that a good chunk of what’s wrong with our society, our economy and our food/health status could be fixed if all children grew up doing chores.
My boys go to a Montessori school where there is no homework. Instead, parents are asked to pledge they will involve their children in daily life activities, such as laundry, grocery shopping and cooking. I am convinced that, if a parent does so consciously, the children learn more of value that way than any amount of homework can teach them. It is especially so out on a ranch, but true enough in any home.
When children are responsible for helping take care of their environment, they are truly a part of the family. Face it, especially when they are young, having children “help” often just isn’t much help. It is tempting to do it yourself. BUT, if you are taking the time to teach them or to work beside them, they are gettting serious “quality time” from you.
I think we unconsciously teach our children to be passengers when we take care of all their needs. Without participating in life chores, how can we expect them to suddenly be competent parents or responsible adults once they leave home? Chores teach children responsibility. Perhaps as importantly, when children inevitably fall short on their responsibilities, they can experience the consequences in ways that are sooo much cheaper than learning that lesson later in life.
At our ranch, our boys are part of the food chain all the way through. They are there when we artificially inseminate, help name the calves, go with us when we take beeves in for harvest and they really love a good steak. In fact, we joke that at our ranch, we know our beef “from semen to sewer”.
Children don’t need to be on a ranch, though, for chores to contribute to an appreciation for where their food comes from. Chores such as gardening, cooking, grocery shopping or going to the farmer’s market help promote healthy eating habits. It’s amazing what vegetables children will eat when they grow them themselves. Especially if you get some of the cool varieties, such as purple ‘green’ beans, rainbow chard, purple carrots, zebra striped tomatoes or blue potatoes.
All this adds up to self-esteem. And it’s a lot cheaper than therapy, martial arts classes or reform school!
March 6th, 2009 at 5:56pm
I love this Sara, thank! My Mom has a column she cut out of a small newspaper in North Carolina. It talks about the “drug” problem the author had during their childhood. They were “drug” to church, “drug” to help people in the community who were sick, “drug” to help clean the house, “drug” to do yardwork &c&c&c&c. With all that “drugging” around they didn’t have time for those other drugs!