We were taking up the last of the crops this week in the school garden before the summer holidays. The radishes 7D had planted, nurtured, and watered over the past six weeks were ready to harvest.
I asked Pupil K to firmly hold on to the leaves and pull one up. On seeing the bright red ball of a root vegetable, he exclaimed “It’s magic Miss!”. I retorted, ‘It’s not magic, it’s a radish’. When did young people get so unattached from our food systems? Was it the emergence of Vesta curries in the 1960s and ultra-processed ready meals or was it the inexplicable rise of the fast food industry? No idea but having children thinking that a radish is magic rather than a plant which uses photosynthesis to create its own chemical energy does fill me with some concern for their understanding of where food comes from despite my best efforts.
Free school meals
We do have some good news! Labour’s plans announced in King’s Speech suggest pupils in every primary school will get a free breakfast club. This is needed and, most importantly, funding is being increased. As a result of the cost-of-living crisis, teachers have seen increasing levels of hungry children coming into schools. On Tuesday Pupil M was falling asleep in my very interactive lesson on designing a sustainable school using our understanding of material properties. I went over to ask if he was okay, and he said he hadn’t had anything to eat as the fridge at home was empty. I sent him off to see Mrs A, our valiant, reliable catering manager, and she gave him some toast and jam. He came back to the classroom 10 minutes later with a smile on his face and surprisingly ready to use his powers of creative thinking. The science is simple, without food the mitochondria in our cells can’t respire and our bodies don’t have the energy to function properly. I think when some children seem grumpy, they might just be a bit hangry, it’s a trait I occasionally see when Hubster comes in for lunch after toiling in the veg patch for hours.
I’m really concerned that during the six week break that some of our pupils will actually go hungry. In a developed country this is just not acceptable or excusable. Maybe Starmer’s child poverty task force will provide feedback on the urgent need to scrap the two-child benefit cap which has sent so many families into difficulties. If you’re reading this Mr Prime Minister know that Mrs Bird is watching, you!
Starvation and other social and economic calamities
Sometimes I think I should stop taking notice of the news, or maybe I could just stop reading the Guardian as it seems to be the bearer of the worst tidings. Other papers are filled with frivolous stories of football players, pop stars or royal escapades. I’ve just seen an article that the predecessor to America’s largest refiner of oil, Marathon Petroleum, explained in a company periodical nearly 50 years ago that global temperature rise potentially linked to “industrial expansion” could one day cause “widespread starvation and other social and economic calamities”. Obviously, I’m not going to stop reading the news, it keeps me abreast of information such as which oil company is backtracking on green pledges while peaceful protestors who demand climate action are being sent to (our overfull) prisons for 4- or 5-year sentences. This isn’t just topsy-turvy, it’s mind-boggling. For some reason these types of issues really aren’t covered in democracy lessons, maybe Labour’s new curriculum review body will address this omission.
I really do harp on about food security, but floods fuelled a 19% drop in income from farming in England in 2023 and our harvest on the smallholding is even lower this year. It’s been so cold & grey. Hard work, mainly by Hubster (he might read this one day), means we have reasonable crops of potatoes, carrots & broccoli. But the berries are suffering from slugs. The onions are small & the garlic got rust. Green beans & squashes are a disaster, but we may get some peas. Don’t even ask me about tomatoes, chillies, or courgettes. It’s probably our worst harvest in a decade but at least radishes are relatively indestructible.
We are just getting some much-needed sunshine & warmth but I don’t want the intense heat that other parts of the world are struggling with (temperatures of ~50⁰C are also not good for growing food). We could have such a good life but it’s starting to feel that the challenges of climate breakdown are insurmountable. It makes me tired and grumpy, or maybe that’s just because we had an off timetable ‘fun’ day yesterday that shredded my nerves.
The 7th Generation
Call me a tree-hugging hippy if you must but I love the idea of Seven generation stewardship, a Native American concept that urges the current generation of humans to live and work for the benefit of the seventh generation into the future. It is believed to have originated with the oral constitution of the Iroquois, “In every deliberation, we must consider the impact on the seventh generation… even if it requires having skin as thick as the bark of a pine.” One interpretation points to seven generations counted from one’s own and looking toward the future, there is an awareness of a legacy to honour or a debt to bear in mind to those three generations before one’s own, as well as an awareness of one’s own legacy bequeathed to the three generations to follow one’s own. By reckoning 25 years per generation, the span of lifetimes stretches 75 years before one’s birth and 75 years beyond one’s death.
Putting myself at the centre of this timescale, three score years and fifteen before I was born was the year 1894, Tower Bridge in London was just opening for traffic and the CO2 levels were 295 ppm. By the time I was born levels were 325 ppm. Seventy-five years after I was born will be the year 2044 and levels are predicted to be 470 ppm with temperatures above 2oC warmer than pre-industrial levels. We don’t seem to be thinking about this generation, let alone 7 generations into the future. Our own kids are young adults but are already suggesting they might not want to bring children into this world which is both incredibly sad and relatively understandable.
Anyway, now, I’m off to eat cake. Our youngest is stress baking as she waits for exam results and there are so many treats in our house that our kitchen bench almost rivals the table in the staffroom which is under threat of collapse through the sheer weight of sugar and fat. Luckily, as we’re flight free, there is no requirement for me to tone my beach body for the summer and the guilt factor is relatively low as the school has done plenty of fund raising for the local food bank this year.
Note to self: Look up more radish recipes. Except for thin sliced radish on salad and some pickles there must be something else we can do with our crop to get through it and make it more tempting to the kids at school. It might not be magic but it’s also not something that really tempts their taste buds compared to junk food snacks.
