"Name three animals that give us milk." No reply. I realized they probably did not know the difference between a cow and a buffalo, and they definitely did not know about goats, so I simplified the question. "Okay, name one animal that gives us milk." Still no reply. "Come on. Name one animal that gives us milk."
"But animals don't give us milk", the older one ventured tentatively. "Milk comes from a packet."
When people in villages consume milk from packets, can I really expect my city born kids to know better?
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A drabble is a story told in exactly 100 words.
13 comments:
Rayna - Oh, how interesting that your kids didn't make that connection! How time, technology and generation affect our perspectives! That, to me, is one advantage that farmers' children have: They really understand how we get food.
Very interesting and eye-opening...
Ask them about pepperoni! Bet they think there's pepperonis roaming on a farm somewhere.
Wow...that never would have occurred to me!
I blushed when my daughter and I were at a farm for a school field trip (she was 5 at the time) and the farmer asked the children where their food came from and she answered, "The grocery store." Oops. Felt I hadn't been really doing my mommy job of explaining things...
Wow. All the things we take for granted... this had never occurred to me. When I was a kid we were poor, so if we ran out of the 'delivered' milk we were stuck with powdered, but that was rare. Though I know my kids were oldish when they knew about goats and they still may not know sheep. Cows though, i think they've seen actually milked.
I was lucky - we had relatives that were farmers - I collected eggs and tried to milk a cow now and then. The trouble is that if we grow up not knowing where our food comes from how can we protect the farmers?
Your experience is common with city kids here too. I'm fortunate to live near a farm where children can go to milk cows, pat sheep, goats and other animals.
Jan is so right. Without good farming we're up the creek without a paddle. We've recently seen prime market garden land be rezoned residential. It's insane - they'll build McMansions with acres of concrete which could go on poor land. Where do they think the food will be grown? It's so short sighted. (Yet another thing I get worked up about. That's my rant done for the day)
I was out on a rural road. With me was an engineer from the city. He looked at a farm full of wheat and said, it was sugarcane ... i still remember that day .. though it was more than a decade back
It wouldn't surprise me to hear the same answer from youngsters in the area where I live. I know my young cousins have never seen cows milked.
Mason
Thoughts in Progress
Reminds me of when I found out chicken came from, well, chickens. Freaked me out completely! :)
That's so precious, and not all that unusual for city kids in any country. There's a whole generation that thinks meat and poultry are manufactured products.
We asked our Mobile Creche kids that, decades ago. Many of them thought that milk came from the Mother Dairy machine. Some knew it came from cows, so we asked them to name another animal who gave milk, and one of them said,'the cow's brother!!!!!'
@ Margot - how could they? I am pretty sure they haven't seen a cow (or any other animal) being milked. If nothing else, I think I should get them a good video.
@ Kerrie - and rather sad too.
@ Alex - for all you know, that is exactly what they think.
@ Elizabeth - but can you really blame them, or yourself?
@ Hart - precisely. I never realised they didn't know- I just presumed they knew, the way I did.
@ Jan - I had a childhood similar to yours, and that was the best possible kind, don't you agree?
@ sue - rant away. This blog is a permanent rant zone. And every word you utter is so true.
@ AS - amazing. But again, if he was a city boy, there is no reason for him to know better.
@ Mason - such a pity, isn't it? They are missing out on a lot.
@ Jemi - my kid made the connection some months back, and wasn't too happy with it.
@ Patricia - eeks. That's almsot worse than not knowing where milk comes from.
@ dipali - cow's brother- that's such a good one!
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