Where it all began!
Food maketh the man!
Well that’s how the old saying goes, I think! The human body is a most wondrous machine. My understanding of this began as a young boy reading the many books my mother supplied us as children. Our house was always full of books and I devoured them as rapidly as my peer’s devoured lollipops. From teeth to intestines my enthusiasm for understanding the ins and outs of the body saw no limit.
Living on a farm of course helped – you definitely get to see the ins and outs of living things! From conception to death the full marvel of life is rolled out before you! In no time at all you see the importance of food and how the quality of that food impacts on the growth and development of all life forms.
My enthusiasm for living things meant that as a student at school the sciences were my passion. The life sciences became a source of even more marvels, more at times than I could ever comprehend. No doubt this is why my later secondary years saw me vying for the “top of the class” in science with my best friends. We battled year by year for the top three positions – I accomplished top only once!
Ultimately I ended up in the classroom sharing my passion with thousands of children. For nearly three decades I have striven to reveal the wonders of life and most of all the importance of good food!
Students were given oppportunity to grow vegetables!
FARMS AND FOOD
Young broccili growing on my sisters farm!
Life on a farm brings you close to your food sources like no other environment can – we planted the seeds and watched the cabbages grow; we were there when the piglets and lambs began their tenuous first steps after birth! We were also there at harvest time!
Now retrieving a few potatoes from the backyard is not all that confronting. However, helping butcher the porkers and cut up the steaks from a hand raised bullock is quite a different story! Farm kids learn very early on not to get too attached to little critters.
Farm life is demanding at the best of times and left little time for weekend trips away or sleepovers as they are called now-a-days. It was much easier to have friends come over and stay with us for the weekend. Such an event drove home to me how different our relationship was with what we ate compared to the average townie.
Next time I will continue with the story of the Body in the Bathroom!
March 5th, 2010 at 3:32 pm
Good points…I would note that as someone who really doesn’t comment to blogs much (in fact, this may be my first post), I don’t think the term “lurker” is very becoming to a non-posting reader. It’s not your fault in the least , but perhaps the blogosphere could come up with a better, non-creepy name for the 90% of us that enjoy just reading the content .