Our Other School

The kids helped to plant some more of the garden today. With 7 CSA customers this year, we've had to change our gardening style a bit. We're taking a more intensive approach, planting more of everything - and closer together.

Onion-planting has become a family tradition for us. The kids love how easy it is - onions are so tough and forgiving. They like the little bulbs we buy, and they like poking them in the ground. It's a job where even the 5-year-old can give significant help.

The other relatively new tradition we have (as of last year, when we began using a raised-bed planting style) is the creation of garden paths. The kids love this part. As we plant each bed, they get to walk or hop around it, creating a narrow packed trail that's fairly resistant to weeds because of its hardness.

Though we lay aside any books for a few weeks at this time of year, we'll pick them up again in mid-July when the afternoons become unbearably hot. Then, we're back to hands-on as the harvest and canning get into full swing in the last half of August.

Employability

I haven't told the kids yet, but they're getting a raise.

As my back spasmed its way through yesterday's garden cleanup and planting, my oldest became the keystone of the day's work. He removed last year's cornstalks and sunflowers, helped to plant strawberries, and hauled mulch. Some of the work was done with no supervision - he took the initiative, already knowing what tools he was expected to use and what he was expected to accomplish. He's 11 years old.

Our market garden is our family business. It's a training ground for the kids, more than anything. At this stage, it's too small to support us. But they're learning valuable lessons, and so am I.

In order to get it all done myself, even in this small format, I would have to hire a local teenager. The teenager would only be available after school and on weekends, assuming other commitments didn't exist. The teenager would have to be trained, and wouldn't have any sense of ownership in the business. Even a farm kid would have to be retrained, because we're small-scale, intensive, organic, and we're growing vegetables, not grains.

My kids already understand the nature of the business. They know what's important to its success, and they know how to meet the necessary goals. My son took the extra time yesterday to ensure he wasn't disposing of earthworms along with the root balls he dug out.

The kids are familiar with what we plant, and they're constantly learning more about how to grow it successfully. They ask questions and are engaged in the agricultural processes. They're motivated.

Their value to the business already meets or exceeds what I could expect of any other local kid. They may be a bit slower, because they're still small. But they have enough other qualities that make up for it.

Someday, when they're ready to step out on their own, I wonder if I'll end up handing over the community-supported agriculture project to one or several of them. That assumes we'd still be living here, doing the things we do now. However, I'm sure they'd be capable of taking it over seamlessly by then.

And if not, they're already building skills and attitudes that will make them more employable wherever they do go.

Planting Season Begins

Our home business is a Community-Supported Agriculture project. People buy memberships at the start of the year, and we deliver vegetables to their doorstep for 10 weeks through the growing season.

Today, we started green pepper and tomato seedlings, or so we hope. The kids helped out, putting soil into the potting trays and doing some cleanup. We log what we've planted, how many, and on what day. We also log the time spent, so that we can track the value of our work input.

Through our CSA, the kids are learning plant science, business skills and the life skills involved in growing your own food - something sorely lacking in the developed world.