We live in the middle of no where, surrounded by wheat fields. We’ve lived here for, gosh, 12 years now?! (wow, this is the longest I’ve ever lived in one place in my whole life!)… anyway, my husband works for one of the local farmers and is trying to start his own farming business.
Land isn’t cheap around here… but we have a little over 3 acres of property. Ryan decided to plant 1 of our acres into corn this year. Not yummy sweet corn, but commodity corn, just like the other farmers. It seemed a little crazy to me quite frankly, to plant one little acre of corn… but it’s a start, and it’s actually been quite a lot of fun.
As with everything, I saw this corn as the perfect opportunity for learning. In fact, I found an entire curriculum online about corn!! We started by learning about seeds, and how they sprout and grow. I am still utterly amazed by the fact an entire 10 or 12 foot corn plant and entire ears of corn comes out of one little tiny corn seed. It really is a miracle.
But I digress… after the corn sprouted and we could finally see it above ground (and yes, we did dig up kernels a couple times to see if they were sprouting ~ and my husband tried to tell me “all the farmers do it” lol). We talked with Hanna about the important elements our corn will need to grow. We put together a chart so we could collect data on our corn through the Summer. We decided to track the date, the height of our corn, how much water it got, and the high temperature for the day. We’ve already seen some interesting things happen when it got really warm. Now every night, after dinner, we go out with our chart and our measuring tape and measure, check the rain gauge, and write down our findings. We usually get the temperature reading off the news or weather.com.
This has been amazing practice for Hanna to learn her numbers (which she’s been struggling with a little), as well as measuring and learning about growing. It was interesting at the last parent teacher conference I had, Hanna’s teacher was talking about how next it would be good to start doing measuring with different things, like blocks, and pencils ~ whatever, just start getting the idea of measuring. I was like “ummm.. we use feet and inches mostly”. She looked a little surprised… but I’m no teacher, and we’re just having fun learning. I don’t know if I’m doing things in the “right order”. but I have also started pulling in what we’re learning with the measuring tape to other things as well.
Here’s where it gets tough for me… I’m a mostly organic gardener. I have a big garden where I grow our food. Unfortunately commodity corn is not really an “organic” crop. Nor is commodity farming an organic endeavor. So I’m in a quandry about what to tell/teach Hanna, about living naturally, taking care of the Earth, and us poisoning it in one acre of our space.
I’m also at a loss, because I can’t really believe that my family is now adding to the overwhelming corn surplus of the world, and contributing to the high fructose corn syrup, GMO, and corn fed beef industries. That truly appalls me, but what can you do? A farmer has to make a living… and right now corn prices are through the roof. We have watched the movie King Corn together, and we do teach her about making healthy choices when it comes to her food, and what’s good for her body (although my husband and I disagree on some of this as well… including not using food with HFCS in it).
How do you teach your kids what you value when it’s being undermined in your very yard? It’s a tough topic, one that my husband and I go around and around about, and at this point I haven’t found an answer… I’d love to hear how you would tackle this issue, and living with beliefs at both ends of the spectrum in our home.
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