Kitchen Garden Forum

Good morning everyone,

A local farmer fancied growing some veg but knowing nothing about it asked Sean, a friend of mine, to help him.
Various things were sown earlier in the year and yesterday Sean and the farmer visited the plot. Sean picked a pea pod and said "These are ready for harvesting now" and with that opened the pod and started to eat the peas. The farmer was aghast and cried out "Jesus, you'll be killing yer self." "It's OK" said Sean "they aren't like frozen peas". "No" said the farmer "But they should be soaked all night with a tablet."


Honest this actualy happened.

Regards Gerry.

Strange old folk these farmers, especially the farm girls.

I have a young lad of 16 that is my muscle in the garden. He is a good hard working lad, that helps me quite a bit. However, when he saw my carrots, he asked me how to harvest them. When I told him how they came out of the ground he was amazed! What do you do to them, he asked? When I asked him to pull one the consentration on his face was amazing. I asked him if he ate carrots, and he replied saying that he liked them disguised, what ever that may mean!

"he liked them disguised, what ever that may mean!"

something like "chopped into tiny bits , smothered with flavourings, preservatives etc then nuked in the microwave till its either half defrosted or got red hot bits to burn you tongue."

Dear Submariner, i bet your a hard task master.

I hope he learns a lot about gardening from you, as it's nice to see a youngster doing that sort of work.

Our company used to do work for a Young Offenders Institute nearby where they had a farm for rearing pigs, a dairy unit and grew vegetables for the other YOI's in the area. I was on site one day and the farm manager asked one of the lads to go down to the polytunnel and pick a couple of cucumbers - he was gone for quite a while and then returned empty handed. Confused, the farm manager asked him why he hadn't brought any back. The lads reply was that none of them were ready to be picked. The farm manager told him that all of them were ready, but the lad insisted "No, none of them are ripe as none of them have grown the plastic covering" I couldn't beleive it! He was the same lad that told us that the milk from the cows on their dairy unit wasn't proper milk - he told us that they make proper milk in the factory close to where he lives!

Perhaps the new curriculum announced yesterday which is supposed to include "real life" things like personal finance will tackle things like this. Mind you to believe that you have to believe in political initiatives!
Many years ago when I was in junior school before education was so fancy and directed I remember we did what would now be called project based learning where we looked at the breakfast table. We considered where everything came from including the food, pottery, cutlery and even the table cloth. As we were in Manchester this introduced the cotton trade and a trip down the Ship Canal to the docks as well as the more obvious how farming produced milk and bacon. Perhaps back to some old ways would work, mind you this approach would fail as I don't think many people sit down to any family meals these days least of all breakfast.

When I taught reception children, one child earnestly believed that cows provided us with wood.

Additionally, when my sister introduced her friend's children (and her friend) to her veggie plot, all three were horrified:

"But everything is covered in dirt!"

One of the children vowed never to eat leeks again because they were dirty. And when offered a box of her free range eggs, with specks of free range chicken poo, they nearly threw up!

When I was 21 my boyfriend of the same age came shopping with me one day. I picked a bag of potatoes and he asked me what they were. I thought he was joking, but he was absolutely serious. His mother bought everything from M&S including frozen roast potatoes, new potatoes, mashed potatoes, you name it. He'd never actually seen an unprocessed potato before.

Furthermore, when he bought his own house (we'd split up long before this) he invited me round for dinner. It was a revelation. We had a meal that came ready on a plate which was microwaved and you then ate the food and threw away the plastic plate and cutlery. He had a lovely kitchen and no need for anything except a toaster, microwave and rubbish bin!

Last week I worked for a few hours with a nice young lad on work experience.

He said that he hardly ever ate vegetables or fruit at home and looked at me astounded when I did my 'quality control checks' (tasting) the fruit we were picking at the time... I don't think he plucked up enough courage to try for himself

Mind you I have a granddaugher who is six and a half and she won't eat veg or fruit either... where did we go wrong with today's young people... Look at what are they missing.