farming

  • FARM, GARDENING, INFORMATION, OUTDOOR ACTIVITIES

    Teaching Kids About Where Food Comes From

    We all know kids are innately curious and soak up new information like sponges, especially if it’s something they’re naturally interested in. You’re likely here because you’re looking for ideas to feed that curiosity in your kids. Today, we have creative team member Jake Smith of Black Ridge Farms, sharing a little about feeding your kid’s minds, as well as their bodies in one fell swoop. Jake is a farmer in Washington state and dad of four little ones. He’s sharing how he helps teach his curious farm kids about the origin of the food that ends up on their plate and the importance of knowing where your food comes from.

    where food comes from

    Grow something, grow anything!

    Let’s start with the easiest thing to do in teaching kids where their food comes from…grow something. Anything! It doesn’t have to be difficult or an entire garden worth of plants. Just start with planting a seed or two in a pot in your house or in the backyard. If you live a nomadic life on the road you can still participate. Let those plants sit in the window as you trundle down the road.

    You’ll only need a few things to get started with growing food. Grab some organic potting soil or compost from your local hardware store or nursery, a couple of pots to grow your plants in, and the seeds of your choice. That’s it. It doesn’t have to be overwhelming to be considered growing something. You don’t have to be a farmer or a gardener or even have a “green thumb”. Just give it a try.

    Get the kids involved in growing

    Let your kids have fun getting a little messy filling their pots up with potting soil or digging in the soil in the backyard. Growing something doesn’t have to be dirty per se, but when you mix kids with dirt, a little mess is bound to happen. I find it easiest to just embrace it and not fight it. Let them have fun and they’ll be more likely to participate and enjoy the activity.  🙂

    Once your kids have their pots loosely filled with soil or the soil loosened in your garden beds it’s time to plant the seeds they’ve chosen. Each seed is a little different about how it responds best regarding germination. Some seeds like to be left on the surface of the soil. Some seeds like to be pushed into the soil a little ways. Others like to have small mounds piled over them.

    Your seed packet should provide ideal planting conditions printed on it, including helpful information on the depth to plant the seed in the soil, watering intervals, hours of sunlight it desires, etc. Reference those for the best chances to succeed at germination and growth. However, we’ve also let our kids plant things any way they wanted at times and plenty of the seeds still sprung forth. Where there’s a will there’s a way.

    Teaching kids where their food comes from - planting a garden

    Let it grow, let it grow!

    After their seeds are planted it’s just down to watering and time (i.e. patience). If you’re growing indoors, find a window or ledge for the plants where they will have about the right amount of sunshine. Keep them up high to protect them from younger siblings looking to do their own dirt exploration activity (speaking from personal experience here). Then, you’ll just need to keep your soil adequately watered (but not over-watered) while waiting for their little seed to sprout.

    We’ve had everything from overenthusiastic waterers to potentially some watering neglect. You name it, we’ve covered the watering spectrum. Once again, the plant wants to grow, it wants to sprout. Don’t stress about having everything perfect for it. There’s an area of grace around its ideal growing conditions, it’s not something you need to meet 100% to succeed.

    Of course, your kids will be confident their seeds are never going to sprout about an hour after they’ve planted them. Because surely, they should be up by now. It’s been forever! Patience, grasshopper. In a few days, you should start to see little sprouts coming forth out of the soil.

    Each plant is different, so some will sprout quicker than others. Let the kids check them first thing every morning. They’ll likely give them a little poking and prodding. It’s alright, it’s part of their curiosity in learning about the growing process. I like to let it happen. Worst case scenario, the seed doesn’t sprout and they’ve learned what they can’t do and will just need to plant new seeds. No biggie.

    Teaching kids where their food comes from - growing flowers

    Be curious and observant

    As their plants grow they’ll notice leaves springing forth. Some plants will have different stems growing out of the main one. Some will be a main stalk, some will flower, some will spread over the ground. Every plant is different and has unique qualities. My kids ask me loads of questions about observations they make about plants and animals that I’ve never noticed nor thought about. I regularly have to look up their questions to find answers. It’s a part of the growing process (the plants’ and the kids’) I never anticipated but have come to love.

    Over time, with regular care, the plant will start to produce whatever fruit or vegetable it’s supposed to produce. More questions come along with this process. And more patience is required as they wait for it to grow to maturity. Eventually, the time comes for the harvest when they can pick and eat the fruits of their labor. In my opinion, this is the best part. 

    There is no more satisfying feeling than seeing my kids eyes light up as they bite into a tomato they’ve watched grow from a tiny seed, or plucking raspberries off the plant for a snack as they run by. From having experienced the entire growing process, kids have a deeper understanding of where their food comes from and how much work and love goes into growing each plant.

    Teaching kids where their food comes from - eating beets

    Follow a farmer and get a tour

    So, what if you’re wanting to dig deeper into growing fruits and vegetables than you can in your backyard? What if you want more of a field trip than the hands-on growing experience? Kids love this. There are likely plenty of small farmers in your area that would love to give you a tour of their farm. If you live deep within the heart of a city, you might have to venture an hour or more away. But, most people should be able to find a farm within 30 minutes. It all depends on your area, but you might be surprised how many small farms there are around you.

    You say, “That’s great, Jake, but how do I find these farmers?” To which I say, “Google it.” If the search results in your area don’t turn up a whole lot (which isn’t uncommon) you might have to get a little creative. Plenty of farmers exist on social media. Once you find one farm locally, you’ll likely find quite a few connected with them. From there you can follow them, learn from them, and get to know them even from the comfort of your home.

    We have plenty of farmers we follow and know their farming ups and downs. We consider them friends and we learn from them regularly even though we’ve likely never met in person. Follow local farms on social media and get to know them. Maybe once you feel comfortable, reach out to them, express interest in visiting their farm. They’ll likely be more than happy to show you around. If you’re still struggling to find any farmers in your area, message me on Instagram @blackridgefarms and I’ll be happy to help you out. 

    Visit a farmer’s market

    Another way to find farmers in your area to talk to is by visiting your local farmer’s market. If there are farmers at the market, it’s likely they’re from a farm nearby. If you’re comfortable with it, strike up a conversation, and chat with them. Ask your questions and get to know more about what they grow.

    If you’d rather contact them after you’ve procured their farm name and location on their booth, reach out to them via email or social media. Mention you saw them at the market and would love to visit their farm. I’ve yet to turn someone down from a request like this.

    Farmers are doing what they do for a love of the land, the plants, and the animals. We love to share that with anyone interested. Especially kids.

    Teaching kids where their food comes from - planting garden

    Map out where food comes from

    A lot of our homeschooling involves following our kids’ natural curiosity. We take the opportunity to teach by exploring the questions that pop up from our kids when they come across things they’re unfamiliar with or haven’t learned about yet. Whenever we come across an interesting new food, the first thing we do is look it up and figure out where it’s from. We end up exploring the area of the world the new food grows. We learn about what the weather conditions are like there, soil conditions, farming practices, etc.

    Over time, as we end up looking up more foods and animals, our kids start to make connections. They consider what the climate might be like in an area of the world they’ve never been to. They start to connect the dots of “oh hey, this chicken breed is from the same country as that type of cheese we made and that variety of grapes we have growing in the garden.”

    In this regard, the experience and learning is less about the growing of the food or the farm where it was grown and more of a geography lesson about where certain foods grow well and where they originate from. In our northern climate with cold, snowy winters, this is how our kids now understand that it’s not feasible for us to grow bananas or kiwis outdoors. And they also appreciate how far those foods have to come to get to us. 

    Teaching kids where their food comes from - kids with flowers

    Connecting with your food

    Connecting with your food can be as much or as little as you want it to be. For us, our lives revolve around the growing, care for, and enjoying of food. For you, it may be just a slight curiosity to know more about how your food is raised and where your food comes from. Or maybe you’re curious about what life may have been like for your grandparents that were farmers. There is no right or wrong answer. But hopefully, this post inspired you to get curious about where your food comes from and make it a priority to teach kids a little more about the growing and farming process.

    What steps are you going to take in teaching your kids
    about where their food comes from?

    About the author

    Jake and his wife Jessica are raising four adorable children on Black Ridge Farms in the wilds of the Pacific Northwest. Jake enjoys any time spent on the farm taking care of their various animals and seeing how quickly the kids learn to care for and love their animals. He bounces back and forth between the farm and his 9-5 while Jessica shoulders the bulk of responsibility of homeschooling the kids, keeping the house in order, and keeping a watchful eye on the farm in Jake’s absence. While he has one foot dipped in the 1800s, the other foot has danced around the marketing and tech fields. Jake has worked as a Graphic Designer, Digital Designer, and most recently a User Experience Designer. Beyond those pre-packaged titles, Jake is a creative dreamer with an entrepreneurial streak that believes in the power of one’s mindset, time spent with loved ones, and real, healthy food.

    You can find more from Jake online in the following locations:
    Instagram: @blackridgefarms
    Website: Black Ridge Farms
    RWMC posts: Jake Smith

  • FALL, OUTDOOR ACTIVITIES, RECIPES

    Family Traditions: Making Open-Fire Apple Butter with Kids

    If this past year has taught us anything, it’s that family matters more than ever before and we should not take the time we spend together for granted. We’ve also learned that sometimes it’s nice to slow things down and it’s even nicer to do that outside, surrounded by those you love. Today, our Creative Team member and Ohio homeschooling mom of four, Leslie Alvis, shares her family’s tradition of making old-fashioned homemade open-fire apple butter. This is a time-honored tradition that’s been passed down generations, from great-grandparents to the grandkids. It’s a beautiful story of slowing things down, getting everyone involved, and spending quality time together. Grab a cup of tea and enjoy this one!

    Apple Butter

    Good old-fashioned traditions

    The skills of past generations were often passed along verbally and through hands-on experience. Children learned the wisdom of their parents and grandparents as they worked alongside them. Sometimes we call the ways of past generations “old fashioned” because they didn’t have the modern conveniences we use today. But often the slower ways tied people closer to each other and the rhythms of the earth. This fall our family had the opportunity to experience this firsthand as my husband’s grandparents taught us a new skill in an old-fashioned way: making apple butter over an open fire.

    Apple Butter

    Apple butter tradition

    Years ago, my husband’s grandparents would get together with a group of friends every fall to make apple butter. They peeled the apples by hand—five bushels of them. Then, they gathered together for a full day of cooking, stirring, and canning the delicious results. Several years back, Nanny and Grandpa acquired their own equipment and began teaching their grandchildren the tradition of open-fire apple butter making.

    It’s been a few years since anyone organized the event and we all missed it. So, this fall we decided to make it happen. We wanted our children to enjoy this experience, spend time with their great-grandparents, and make these memories together. With practical wisdom, special traditions, and a lot of laughter, they taught us their way of making apple butter.

    Making Apple Butterstirring apple butter

    Old-fashioned apple butter

    Making apple butter over an open fire is a slow process. Even if you precook your apples to soften them, it still takes lots of hours of stirring and cooking. Peeling bushels and bushels of apples takes a lot of time, too! We spent most of a Friday and Saturday on our apple butter project. But, an important part of the experience is the gift of spending time with friends and family, working and visiting together. We had four generations involved with our apple butter making this year.

    Peeling ApplesApples for apple butter

    In my mind, this is the heritage of doing things “the old-fashioned way.” It’s slowing down and spending time with your people, learning from each other, and helping each other. Plus, there really is something about the taste of food cooked long and slow over an open fire. No other apple butter tastes quite the same.

    Making Apple Butter

    Kids helping make apple butter

    Even though making apple butter involves a lot of sharp knives, hot fire, and boiling liquids, our children found plenty of ways to be involved. Even the little ones used apple peelers (with careful supervision) and helped us with the peeling process. Our bigger kids helped stir the apple butter. All of them helped add the cinnamon candies and cinnamon oil into the apple butter as it cooked. Our son is always ready to build and feed a fire, and our oldest daughter also joined the canning assembly line. We found ways to get them all involved.

    Making Apple ButterKids making apple butter

    All four of our kids were all outside with us all day, playing and helping and eating. One of their cousins was able to join us, and they also played in the woods and played board games near the fire. They especially loved getting to spend time with their great-grandparents, since Covid has limited our family activities this year. The time together was a gift, and I think the pandemic has reminded us of just how precious that gift is.

    Making Apple Butter

    Peeling the apples

    The process of making apple butter begins with peeling the apples the day before. We bought several bushels of “seconds” apples from an local Amish orchard. Nanny taught me to get several different varieties of apples to give our apple butter the best flavor. Several family members came over and helped us peel apples all afternoon. I found my children out peeling apples while I made supper, and they filled a half a bucket of apples by themselves. Then my sister-in-law and I picked up our paring knives again that evening and peeled until late into the night.

    Peeling apples

    The apples can sit in covered pans or buckets in a cool place overnight. Nanny assured me that it wouldn’t harm the apple butter if they browned a little. A few of us took some apples home to pre-cook before putting the apples in the big copper kettle. This cuts down significantly on cooking and stirring time over the open fire. We worked off an old photocopied recipe with Nanny’s handwritten notes and instructions on it. She thinks perhaps this recipe is for a 30-gallon kettle, and we only had a 20 gallon one. We modified the ingredients based on the amount of apples we could fit into the kettle.

    Apple Butter recipe

    Weather challenges

    Although the weather was beautiful and warm the day we peeled our apples, a stormy cold front blew in overnight. Saturday morning dawned gray, raw, and blustery. We tried to set up our cooking fire in our backyard and found that the wind made our project impossible. We had the apples all peeled–people invited–cinnamon rolls ready to eat. Somehow we had to save our apple butter making day.

    My husband and I walked across the road and down the farm lane to a small clearing at the edge of my dad’s pine woods. It was a little farther from our house, but the trees gave us just enough protection to start a fire and spend the day in relative shelter from the wind. We were still chilly, but it was bearable. We built a second fire to heat water over for hot chocolate and cooked soup over it for lunch.

    Making Apple Butter

    Apple butter equipment

    A copper kettle is essential for open fire apple butter making because it conducts heat so evenly and helps keep the apple butter from scorching. You can buy a copper kettle new, if you have several hundred dollars for it. They’re a pretty major investment. If you’re really interested in making apple butter this way, I’d recommend watching farm auctions or antique stores. Or go in together with some friends and begin your own apple butter tradition together!

    Stirring apple butter

    Fire it up

    We had a hard time getting the fire the right temperature at first. Too much flame and the apple butter will bubble right out of the pot. When it’s really bubbling, you also need to watch out for it popping out. It can burn if you stand too close!

    The apple butter has to be stirred constantly with a long-handled paddle with holes drilled through it. Nanny and Grandpa bought theirs at Lehman’s Hardware, a local store that has made it big by specializing in old-fashioned equipment. You can find one online at http://www.lehmans.com. Again, buying one new is pretty expensive. If you know someone with rudimentary woodworking skills, you could probably get them to make you one for a fraction of the price.

    Making Apple ButterApple butter

    Apple butter traditions

    One of Grandpa’s traditions is for the children to toss a couple silver dollars into the kettle to help keep the butter from sticking to the bottom of the pan. (Nanny says they use two because only rich people can afford to throw more money than that into a pot.) After putting in the silver dollars, our kids raced off to get their own pennies to add to the kettle. At the end of the day they had some shiny clean copper pennies to remember the day by. They washed off Grandpa’s silver dollars and he slid them back in his pocket for next time.

    Making apple butterapple butter pennies

    After all the apples had cooked down and the mixture was smooth, we got to experience another one of Nanny and Grandpa’s unique apple butter traditions. Their recipe calls for cinnamon red hot candies to be stirred in for color and flavor. So the kids munched on candies while tossing them into the pot by the handful. I think that may have been their favorite part. (Also, I spared myself the angst of running from store to store, trying to find red hot candies at this time of year. I ordered these off Amazon.)

    candies for apple buttermaking apple butter

    Finishing the apple butter

    After the cinnamon candies comes the sugar. 15 lbs of it! (That’s about 1 lb per gallon of finished apple butter, so that’s not quite as alarming as it sounds!). We stirred it in gradually, then cooked it for a couple more hours.

    The girls and my husband took turns stirring, and we drank coffee and hot chocolate while we waited. We also set up a sawhorse table for the finishing assembly line. When the apple butter is finished, it will appear “set up” when you dab a bit onto a glass dish and turn it from side to side. No water runs out from the edges and it holds its shape. At that point, you add cinnamon oil and stir for another half hour while preparing to can it.

    cooking apple butter

    Canning apple butter

    Hot apple butter can be canned with the cold pack (or hot seal) method. We set up our assembly line and Nanny assigned us all our jobs before we moved the kettle off the fire. Then, as fast as we could, we ladled our apple butter into clean canning jars. One person ladled and the next wiped the rims. Another person pulled canning lids out of hot water and set them on top, and the last one screwed the rings on. I moved the hot jars off the table to keep the workspace open. You have to work quickly to can the mixture while it’s still hot. The apple butter will create a vacuum and seal itself in the jars as it cools. 

    canning apple butter

    Cleaning the kettle with biscuits

    It was at this point, as we began filling jars, that I realized I had totally forgotten about another important tradition. Nanny had told me we needed to have hot biscuits ready to eat as soon as the canning was done. Hot biscuits are how we would clean out the copper kettle. I raced across the road to our home and whipped up the fastest batch of biscuits I’d ever made! Then, I set a timer on my phone and ran back to join the assembly line again while the biscuits baked.

    apple butter jar
    apple butter on biscuits

    Thankfully, the timing worked out. There was a tray of hot biscuits waiting when we were ready to scrape the last bit of apple butter out of the kettle. Everyone spooned apple butter onto their biscuits and we got to enjoy the fruits of all our labor. The kids broke off pieces of biscuit and wiped the kettle clean. It was a perfect way to end a long day of work on a chilly fall day. We all enjoyed the experience, the apple butter, and the memories we made together.

    apple butter kettleapple butter on biscuits

    Passing down the traditions

    Thank you for letting me share this experience of passing down our family’s tradition of making old-fashioned apple butter with you. The process and time spent together are so special to us and our family. I hope our apple butter days are a memory my children never forget and may even want to create with their grandchildren someday. Does your family have any special traditions or recipes they’ve passed down generations? 

    What old fashioned skills or traditions
    have you learned from someone special to you?

    About the author

    Leslie is an Ohio farm girl and chaser of light, children, and sometimes chickens. She’s a lover of Jesus, wife to her high school sweetheart, and a homeschooling mom of four wild rascals who love the great outdoors as much as she does. As a family, they love hiking, camping, fishing, and just about any outdoor activity. She and her husband are just beginning the process of building a homestead from the ground up, doing most of the work themselves. Leslie has a lifelong obsession with writing and capturing everyday life from behind the lens. You can follow along with their homesteading, homeschooling, and everyday adventures on her Instagram account.

    You can find more from Leslie in the following locations:
    Instagram: @c_l_allofus
    Client work: @lalvisphotography
    RWMC posts: Leslie Alvis