Free range, heritage meat from Tasmania grown by Eliza Wood and Guy Robertson
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
A farmer for a day
There was a time when your ‘country cousins’ were actually blood relatives. They had a farm way out the bush somewhere, kept a few cows and pigs, and you went to visit them during the holidays when you were kids. You collected the eggs, played in the barn, and ate vegetables for tea pulled from the garden.
But with farms becoming larger and 85 per cent of Australians now living in urban areas, the chances of being related to a real farmer are pretty slim. Country cousins are now the tiny twigs of the family tree, and the gap between people from the city and people from ‘the bush’ is getting wider.
Does it matter if town kids haven’t visited a farm? Does it matter if they don’t know the difference between a boar and a sow, a heifer and a steer? Will their life be worse if they haven’t held a warm egg straight from a chook’s bum?
They'll probably still grow up to be good wholesome people without these experiences, but there is a thing called Nature Deficit Disorder – it describes the human cost of being alienated from nature. If children don’t get regular contact with the environment they can have trouble concentrating, get anxious, become depressed, and get fat. We all know that, but now there’s a name for it, and a movement to get kids playing more outside.
We had a great response to our request for volunteers to help us plant 600 native trees in a shelterbelt. More than 30 people rocked up, most we’d never met, wearing gumboots and carrying digging gear. And perhaps that’s an indication of the desire of people to get outside and get their hands dirty. One’s man’s work is another man’s novelty nature experience.
Guy gave them the full tour of the pigs, while Eliza cooked up pork shoulders and bellies, and as lunch was digesting the kids all had a cuddle of a piglet. Now that’s paddock-to-plate education.
One tree planter told us we’d ‘restored her faith in community spirit’, and it was lovely to hear the sounds of strangers chatting and laughing, birds calling, and stakes being hammered in.
But with farms becoming larger and 85 per cent of Australians now living in urban areas, the chances of being related to a real farmer are pretty slim. Country cousins are now the tiny twigs of the family tree, and the gap between people from the city and people from ‘the bush’ is getting wider.
Does it matter if town kids haven’t visited a farm? Does it matter if they don’t know the difference between a boar and a sow, a heifer and a steer? Will their life be worse if they haven’t held a warm egg straight from a chook’s bum?
They'll probably still grow up to be good wholesome people without these experiences, but there is a thing called Nature Deficit Disorder – it describes the human cost of being alienated from nature. If children don’t get regular contact with the environment they can have trouble concentrating, get anxious, become depressed, and get fat. We all know that, but now there’s a name for it, and a movement to get kids playing more outside.
We had a great response to our request for volunteers to help us plant 600 native trees in a shelterbelt. More than 30 people rocked up, most we’d never met, wearing gumboots and carrying digging gear. And perhaps that’s an indication of the desire of people to get outside and get their hands dirty. One’s man’s work is another man’s novelty nature experience.
Guy gave them the full tour of the pigs, while Eliza cooked up pork shoulders and bellies, and as lunch was digesting the kids all had a cuddle of a piglet. Now that’s paddock-to-plate education.
One tree planter told us we’d ‘restored her faith in community spirit’, and it was lovely to hear the sounds of strangers chatting and laughing, birds calling, and stakes being hammered in.
Thank you to all our volunteers, we hope you can continue to be involved in the farm and watch your trees grow.
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