Discovering where their food comes from and how it’s grown can also be an adventure of exploration that widens kids’ perspective. On Monday, July 25, Slow Food Springfield will present “Kid’s Day at the Farm, 9:30 – 11:30 a.m. at Heck’s Harvest and Veentra’s Vegetables. Children will learn about chickens, take a look at tractors and farm tools, go into the field to dig potatoes, and participate in a scavenger hunt. They’ll help prepare a salsa with ingredients they’ve participated in gathering, then eat it with chips donated by Food Fantasies.
The first Kid’s Day at the Farm, in 2009, was a great success, according to Illinois Stewardship Alliance executive director Lindsay Record, who is assisting with the event. “It had a really big impact on the kids,” she says. “One parent later reported that their child had refused to eat potatoes in any other form besides French fries before. But after Kids’ day, he wanted them all the time, in all kinds of ways.”
Garrick Veenstra will demonstrate how to use various farm tools and give the kids a chance to sit on tractors. Andy Heck will be out in the fields, showing kids just where vegetables come from – beans on bushes, tomatoes on the vine, carrots and potatoes with leaves above ground and the roots/tubers below and more. He’ll also oversee the hugely popular potato dig.
Meanwhile, in the chicken yard, Slow Food Springfield co-leader Deborah Cavanaugh-Grant will talk about the birds, and Veenstra’s daughter, Sol, aged six, will show the children how she gathers the eggs, something she’s been doing for awhile now.
The cost for Kid’s Day at the Farm is $3 per person for both children and adults. Reservations must be made by July 18. Preregistration is required, either at the Slow Food Springfield booth at the Old State Capitol Farmers Market on Wednesdays and Saturdays, or by mailing a check made out to Slow Food Springfield c/o ISA, 401 W. Jackson, Springfield, IL 62704. Please include the names of adults and names of ages of children, as well as a phone number and email address. For additional information, call 217-528-1563 or email slowfoodspringfield@gmail.com.
Contact Julianne Glatz at realcuisine.jg@gmail.com.
