Growing Food and Kids

“It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died,” said General George S. Patton. “Rather, we should thank God that such men lived.”

Today, I am thankful for the lives of those who made our freedoms possible.

Parents and teachers who garden with kids often allude to the benefits that gardening offers for kids, as I did in yesterday’s post. But fortunately, the evidence is not just anecdotal. While research on the benefits of gardening for children is limited, the field is growing, according to the National Gardening Association (NGA). And results [...]

Recently, while working on a magazine article about canning vegetables, I interviewed a woman named Deborah Lewis from Muncie, Indiana, who’s been growing vegetables and canning them for years. When I asked her what she likes most about canning, she said: “I love how canning requires you to slow down; you just can’t be in [...]

On Fridays during the WordCount Blogathon, I’m republishing popular posts from the past. This one originally appeared in August 2009.
Gardening is a lot like parenting; they both involve guilt. It happens every summer: I leave a couple of tomatoes or cucumbers on the windowsill above my kitchen sink to ripen, and before I know [...]

This is the third installment in my occasional series, “Gardens Doing Good,” which shares the stories of organizations and people who are using gardens to make a difference in others’ lives. (Read the first two installments here and here.)
Community gardens are popping up in cities and towns across the country. But many communities lack [...]

1. Go on a picnic.
2. Stage a relay race.
3. Find a creek and catch crawfish or minnows.
4. Hunt for snakes or frogs in your garden.
5. Climb a tree.
6. Read a book under a tree.
7. Pick vegetables in the garden.
8. Take a hike.
9. Pick wildflowers and share them [...]

Ok, so maybe we already knew this. But now Hollywood has noticed too: Farmers are the new sex symbols. Case in point: Alex O’Loughlin (pictured below) in The Back-up Plan (also starring Jennifer Lopez and now playing in theaters everywhere).
For years, Hollywood’s sexy leading men have been lawyers, cops, firemen, advertising men. Not farmers. [...]

Today is Haiku Day in the WordCount Blogathon. Bloggers across the Internet are posting in the form of haiku today. Fun, fun! As you might remember from elementary school, a haiku is a poem focused on one thought that is expressed in 17 syllables (five syllables in the first line, seven in the second line, [...]