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How does your garden grow?

As a child I had a name plaque on my bedroom door, and as part of my name is Mary, it also had the nursery rhyme “Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow”.

My parents are very talented gardeners, and the fruits of their work can be seen not only in their own beautiful gardens, but in the many plants and well fed lawns at our house too. Our neighbours joke about our gardening service, who come to “rescue” our garden from us at regular intervals.

Their green fingers, however, appear to have skipped a generation.

There is nothing my son loves more than to help his Papa in the garden, as he enthusiastically clears away leaves and follows my dad around.

He was therefore delighted when, as a blogger, I received this very cute gardening set, as part of a campaign by McCains to educate kids on where food comes from.

I took the tools and watering can out yesterday to photograph them for this post and forgot to put it away before he discovered it, otherwise it may have turned into an additional present at Christmas…..but I was too late!

Did you know that 1 in 10 children aged 7-11 think chickens lay potatoes? And they have no idea that chips are made from the humble spud!
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In a totally unscientific test I decided to “interview” my 5 year old son about his knowledge of the origins of food and here is how we got on:

Me: Where do eggs come from?

My son – chickens

Potatoes? – garden

So far so good

Apples? – trees

Carrots? – fields

Bacon? – Chicken (ooops!)

Peas? – fields

Cars? (a car had just driven past) – Jesus makes them in factories

Chicken Nuggets (not that our kids eat them of course!)(maybe I should have asked about chicken goujons instead!) – chickens

Sausages? don’t know …. you tell me – he giggled when I said pigs, not sure he believed me.

Milk and butter?  – cows

My son then decided to educate me on how our ice/water dispensing fridge/freezer works, and his imagination took over!

Penguins go to the north pole, and peck the ice into little squares, put them in buckets, and bring them to our house in the middle of the night and fill up our fridge/freezer with ice-cubes?
And do you know where the cold water comes from? “People” drive to the North Pole and fill up lots of bottles with very cold water and drive to our house and fill up our ice-water bit in the middle of the night.

So there you have it – he may know where his food comes from, but on dodgier ground when it comes to ice and water!

McCain Foods (GB) Ltd are running a non-branded campaign to educate kids in a fun way about food provenance and the humble potato. For more information you can visit The Potato Story online – there are some educational games and resources for parents and kids to explore. During this school term there has been a bus (painted to look like lots of potatoes – honest!) traveling around the UK, visiting schools in a effort to teach children about food provenance.

So, if you have kids, do they know where their food comes from? Tonight as you eat your dinner, have a chat about where the food comes from. You might just be surprised in the answers you hear!

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13 Comments

  1. Oh, so funny! I wish penguins would come to my house to bring me ice. Not certain I would welcome the cold water strangers, though!

    Glad to hear you’re getting a lot of jewelry orders!! 🙂

  2. omgosh, that was too stinkin’ cute! Love the cars coming from Jesus one! And the penguins!

  3. Well of couse the penquins go get the ice… Sadly the gardening bug skipped a few generations with us – we’re experts at sad, sickly little plants and veggies.

    Stan at Scrapper Workshop

  4. Oh My GOSH, you have me giggling so hard! Leave it to children. What I absolutely admire about them is its rare they ever say “I don’t know”, instead they invariably make their minds cook up just how something comes about. Why do we often lose that as adults.

    Thank you for another lovely post. I plan to check out that website, for sure.

  5. I can’t wait to ask my little guys the same questions…

    Such cute gardening tools!!

  6. Hi Janmary! I’ll never forget when my father told me where black pudding came from! I was shocked. But I got over it. Incidentally, I never eat it now. I married into a vegetarian family. But let me go back to Ireland for a visit, then we’ll see!

  7. oh janmary!! i totally love our post!well, kids do say the darnest things..hahaha. i am trying also to teach my kids about the food they eat, but i haven’t interviewed them. i might try that one of these days.
    i don’t know if you have gotten my message about exchanging christmas cards? i hope we can… i would love to have your address if that is ok. you take care and have a great week!!

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