What growing up close to your food does for your outlook on life

It's amazing how growing up close to where your food comes from can change the way you see not only food, but life itself. We hear this often at YFM, so we thought who better to shed some light on it than someone who grew up on a small farm. Here's some perspective from guest blogger Hannah Rivers. Growing up on a small hobby farm in the Hunter Valley, I was first introduced to the notion of pulling carrots out by their heads at an early age. Likewise, my beautiful mother had a sustainable market vegetable garden in which she sold the vegetables for income. Her whole childhood she was raised knowing where food came from, recycled everything down to bread bags and hence was framed by the words; waste not, want not. Little did I realise many years later when I attended university, how many people did not know that my dear carrot friends even came from the ground.When fellow students ask me, “What do you want to do when you grow up”, I answer with, ‘I want a vegetable patch and an orchard’. The response is usually a scratch on the head followed with a mumbled response involving Woolies or Aldi.My dream is to live a simple life, to have a huge vegetable patch adorned with colour and hard labour. Perhaps not a life like my mother’s for I want to consume the produce. I want every type of rainbow vegetable out there, the meanest herb plot and the most extensive array of fruit trees. I want to know that the produce I consume is organic and pesticide free. To know that the mileage is simply the dirt on which my feet have trodden. I want to raise a family appreciating and understanding the importance of locally produced food.Now, in 2013 it is becoming more and more apparent that in our globalised, connected world there is a discourse that shouts out ‘fast, now, cheap’. This dangerous mentality is putting pressure on the food industry to produce food more rapidly, and more economically. Food sustainability and security is no longer a problem for everyone else; we have to start taking small actions ourselves. Retaining the ignorant attitude of business as usual has the potential to do fatal damage to the human race.It is an intelligent decision to want to live a life off the land for we are what we eat, we are all nature. It is good for the environment, good for your health and great to ensure food productivity for the increasing population. Learning to appreciate the earth on which we abide and the abundance of nourishing foods that it provides us is one of the many great joys of this day and age.Taking time out to pull the odd weed or nurture that basil plant humbles us, connects us to the earth in which we so easily take for granted. We don’t all need to have grand dreams of living on properties to start our own small vegetable garden. Just growing some seeds in a polystyrene box is a great start. A bit of hard work makes the benefits of growing your own food oh, so much sweeter. We learn to be appreciative a bit of slowness and gratitude can do wonders for our plates and our soul.By Hannah Rivers