The Maine Harvest Lunch event seems to be a great way to provide students with a healthy meal while educating them about where that food comes from. While learning about the program, I couldn’t help but reflect on my experiences as a child, growing up in close proximity to my grandparents’ working farm.
In our home, every night was Maine Harvest Dinner. Not only did my younger brother and I know where the majority of our food came from, but we could also walk to the gardens that produced potatoes, tomatoes, green beans, peas, corn and a variety of other vegetables. Chances were good we also had a hand in planting or harvesting the produce.
For as far back as I can remember, helping out “down on the farm” has been a regular event. Family gatherings on my father’s side of the family were often cleverly disguised as opportunities to whittle down the farm’s never ending “to do” list.
My earliest memories are of summer days spent in straw covered strawberry fields. Intrigued by the concept of strangers coming to the farm to pay money for the berries I ate by the handful, I wanted to help with the operation, but likely spent more time getting in the way.
I also recall the sick pleasure of removing striped potato bugs from their leafy perches and dropping them into margarine tubs filled with an oily mixture. Weeding was my least favorite activity, as I often pulled up the good plants with the clumps of weeds, but 20 minutes of weeding was tempered by the opportunity to spend hours in my grandparents’ pool.
After swimming in the pool, I frequently wandered over to the garden where my grandmother cultivated a small patch of rhubarb almost exclusively for me as I seemed to be the only one who could stand to eat the fruit without first dipping it in sugar.
Although I didn’t broadcast my farm skills, I continued to help throughout middle school and high school, albeit unenthusiastically. I helped plant pumpkins, which continues to be a second source of income and labor of love for my father. I also discovered raspberries were a pain to weed, but if you were careful, you could get through it without acquiring any bee stings. To this day, I have trouble eating cantaloupe because the smell reminds me of hours spent buffing and boxing melons to be delivered to local farm stands.
I made myself scarce during blueberry season because I didn’t want to be in charge of manning the scales or making change for customers. Lacking in mathematical talents, I didn’t want to willingly put myself in an embarrassing situation.
After I left for college, visits home were a welcome opportunity to leave the books behind for manual labor. Loading trailers with pumpkins or picking up potatoes from their overturned rows was a refreshing break from writing papers and formulating thesis statements.
A visit home to this day isn’t complete unless I return to my apartment weighed down with vegetables and fruit. Purchasing produce in the grocery store feels similar to an act of betrayal. Eating store bought peas doesn’t bring back memories of sitting around in a circle, laughing while splitting the pods and pushing the peas into pails.
Thankfully, I always knew vegetables and fruit came from the earth, not plastic bags or cardboard boxes.
– Amanda Estes