Open Writing

At a recent family gathering, I took the youngest member of our ‘clan’, my three year old grand-daughter, Imahna Alice, for a walk down the garden to see the chickens. The hens, ever creatures of habit, had retired for the night in their nice ‘safe from foxes’ hut. Without disturbing them too much I lifted the hinged roof over the nesting boxes so Imahna could see inside. Most of the hens were too far gone into roost mode to take a lot of notice but one old bird, obviously slightly broody and turned crafty with it, had laid an egg long after collection time.

Imahna had never been as close up and personal to a hen before, so I gave the bird a gentle push to expose the egg for my grand-daughter to pick up. It was still warm and its rich brown shell promised a yolk of deep gold inside. Delicious!

Clutching the egg with both hands Imahna ran up the garden path to show her mother the prize. Of course, it was near disaster, you just knew it would happen. She tripped on the doorstep and only the quick reflexes of my eldest saved the day.

It is moments like this that make you realise many children are growing up without any idea of where their food comes from. It’s almost like the saga of the war time evacuees all over again. Story books can tell the tale of the hen that lays the egg or the cow that gives the milk, but it’s not the same as reality; collecting eggs for your own breakfast, tasting milk warm from the cow or coating new baked bread with freshly churned butter.

Forgive me if this seems overly sentimental. I have pushed my trolley around the supermarket with the best of them…and still do. Pigs do not wallow in my back garden nor do I rise at dawn to milk a cow. I freely admit that whilst I may gather herbs from under the kitchen window I do not, to my shame, have rows of neatly sown veg, nor beds with succulent asparagus waiting for the knife. Our home plot is mainly lawn, trees and shrubs that need little attention from me.

Where possible though, I do try to buy fresh produce from close to home. Luckily living on the edge of Fen, in the very heart of vegetable and fruit growing country, that’s not a hardship. The markets here positively pulse with locally grown produce and farm shops also attract a huge following. There can be no doubt either about the best buy of meat or fish. East Anglia has one of the longest coastlines in the country, so our fish is fresh and varied, particularly shellfish, while pork on the hoof is all too obvious and Musk’s Newmarket sausage have claimed royal patronage for a century, if not more.

When my own children were young it was easier to give them the hands on experience of where their food really came from. Our very first holiday when they were toddlers was to a Devon farm and later, when they were old enough to be useful, to a Derbyshire one where they collected eggs, dipped sheep and rounded up cows. We also had friends who were pig farmers and on one visit a large saddleback sow went into labour and we all mucked in to help. Fascinated by the appearance of multiple piglets, the children even gave up giving them names! As each was born they helped to rub them into life and get tidied up before being given access to the ‘milk bar’.

I guess the truth is I would like that kind of upbringing for Imahna and I am sure she would love it, but life and times change. Working parents have so many things to cram into their busy lives. Hygiene and Health and Safety issues are more stringent than they once were. Unless you have a farmer in the family the chances are ‘getting up close and personal’ to livestock is not so easy now.

In the 1970s and every repeat of the series since, The Good Life has re-awakened a sense of self sufficiency in many of us, although the majority of viewers probably didn’t feel the need to dig over the back lawn. My concession to the programme’s ethos was to come home with four day-old ducklings to hand rear. The result was disastrous. They grew to be so much part of the family they even sat in our laps to watch the programme for themselves. Did they ever lay eggs? No. Did we eventually eat them? No.

As far as Imahna is concerned, if I want to make sure she experiences the reality of food first hand I will have to just keep an eye open for opportunities. The hen and egg was a start, now onto strawberry picking and maybe a trip to a goat farm when my sense of smell can stand the pace!

I have read in the papers that school children are still addicted to chips despite Jamie Oliver’s attempts to educate their taste buds. Perhaps if this generation of techno-cyber children were given the opportunity of being part of the food production process from start to finish and we stopped trying to disguise what we are eating by making it into ready meals and anonymous burgers, their appreciation of food would improve. Or failing that, perhaps we should let them grow their own potatoes to make into chips for a modern twist on ‘Digging for Victory’.