Children In Bloom

It's so easy for people in 21st century Britain to live our entire lives without ever being exposed to the origins of our food.

Those who live in urban areas may only rarely see a sheep or a cow, and the link between them and the packaged joints of lamb and beef on the shelves of Tesco's may never be more than cursorily dwelt upon. We might glance out of the train's window at the right time and glimpse fields of wheat or rape but have only the loosest idea how it is sowed, harvested, packaged, transported, processed, and end up as an ingredient in our kitchen.

A spread we laid on for people on the Big Walk that Eden Project is running

Then there are the vegetables and fruit that Eastern Europeans are harvesting for us in England's rich south-eastern soils, although whether they will still do this post-Brexit, and who will do this tough work instead, is another question.

Many of us will never have sown a vegetable seed in the ground, tended to the plant and eaten its produce. I certainly hadn't until I joined Pilsdon Community in my mid-thirties. I don't remember it ever being part of my education.

Which is why I jumped at the chance to teach veg-growing at a local primary school. Although not part of their official curriculum they believed it was important for the children to learn to grow their own veg and had applied for some funding to run a series of gardening workshops throughout the year, based in their own small veg garden.

My raspberries at the back, my comfrey at the front

The first one was last Tuesday morning. It had been raining all night but thankfully the heavenly tap was turned off just as we were beginning. Ffion* was assisting me, and could also speak Welsh which was the first language of most of the schoolchildren here. We got our first group of ten, along with a teacher, and played a game with them, first to see if they could identify pictures of veg (the ones we were going to grow!) and then to try to match the seed with the veg. The kids were refreshingly eager to answer questions and get involved.

We then went outside and began sowing that very seed, some in pots with compost and some direct in the soil. After labelling and watering, our session was up and they trooped back inside, whilst the next group got ready.

After four groups it was lunchtime and our work was done. We had sown beetroot and radish in a bed, planted sweetcorn seedlings, planted seed potatoes in planters made of car tyres, and sown squash, chard, runner beans, dwarf french beans and sunflowers in pots. The kids seemed to have enjoyed it. Let's hope the veg grows otherwise it might put them off for life!

* name changed as usual on this blog