To be able to answer that question is one thing that is in the curriculum for our children this fall. A simple question, but the truth is that most children in America today, never see the source of the food they consume. We decided to plan part of our travels this fall around this question and have spent the last few days in Stratford, Iowa. The reason we ended up here is that one of our Swedish friends have relatives here and he suggested we go visit them.
Because of our incident with a blown tire, we arrived a lot later than we had originally planned but our host Mr. Young still managed to fit a lot of learning and adventures into the few hours that were left before bedtime.
First, we get a tour of the town. It doesn't take long to see this little town with a population of around 700. It was first settled in 1880 and many Swedes were among the settlers. Our host's grandfather, Jonas Young, came in 1880 from Sweden and built a homestead that the family still farms to this day. The center of town is just one block and has buildings from the early 1900s on both sides of the street.
After the quick tour of the town, Mr. Young takes us out to one of the fields they farm where his son and two of his grandsons are tiling the field. None of us knew what tiling meant but he explains that they are putting down draining pipes that will help get rid of excess water. Water is needed but too much water is bad and even though it is quite expensive to tile a whole field it is worth it in the long run.
After watching the tiling process and meeting his family that worked there he says we have one more stop to make before we're done for the day. He takes us out to one of their properties that have some work that needs to be done. It turns out that the work needed is to cut back a tree that has branches growing in over the roof of one of the buildings. To get up and cut the tree we're going to use a bucket-truck.
He tells us that not all farmers have a bucket-truck but that they have had theirs for a long time and that it often comes in handy. After he starts it up the kids get to help lower the support legs.
Now the truck is ready and the two older kids get in one bucket and Mr. Young in the other. It's impossible to miss the excitement both kids feel as the buckets start going up. Soon they are up where the tree needs to be trimmed back and Mr. Young takes out the electric chainsaw and begins to cut away the branches.
After the work is done they get to see just how high the buckets can go. The excitement is still as high or even higher when they come back to the ground.
Tired and full of new impressions we return to our home, parked in the very nice city park.
This was the first day learning about farming in Stratford, Iowa. We knew already then that this would be a great weekend of learning and experiencing new things.
The following day, Sunday, our focus would be more on fellowship than on learning. more about that will come in my next post.
Thanks for reading!