A first field experience for parents and kids: a three-month-only vegetable course

An answer to "I'm not sure I can keep it up"

"It's my first time farming." "I'm worried I can't keep it up." "I'd like to try, but there's no chance." We often hear voices like these at the farm. So from July to September 2017, we started a three-month-only "Summer Vegetable Experience Course." Including a section the staff had grown in advance, it is a course where participants try growing and harvesting vegetables with support on two plots (12 square meters).

With little work gloves and kids' shovels

There were eight participants, including children. On the children's first day in the field, watched over by their mothers, they started work with small work gloves and kids' shovels. They softened the soil, mixed in fertilizer, and sowed komatsuna, radish and Swiss chard seeds. Mindful of how each crop needs different watering, with "just a little for tomatoes" and "plenty for eggplants," they worked hard with a big watering can. At the end, everyone shared and harvested the eggplants, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers and basil we had grown in advance. The children even took care of the cleanup.

From September, we also started an "Autumn Vegetable Experience Course." The participants were preschool children and their mothers. Orange Chinese cabbage and red cabbage are planted as seedlings, while daikon, turnips and carrots are grown from seed. The trick is to smooth the soil gently, as if stroking it, so that it does not pack down. The tiny seeds were hard to pick up, so they planted them with their mothers' help.

Family time in the field

In a town full of asphalt, there are few chances to put on rubber boots and pick up a shovel. There are also few places where a family can spend unhurried time together. The experience course was an attempt to create that kind of parent-child time in the field.

For children, it is the first time harvesting vegetables they grew themselves. For adults, it is a doorway to trying out life with a field. Time spent touching the soil together, parent and child, can be a small richness in raising children.