we weren’t just picking grapes.

We don’t live on a farm.

But I used to.

And even though I thought the cows smelled rotten

and I vowed to never marry a dairy farmer

living on a farm taught me a few things.

I know where food comes from.

That a cow has to die if I want a burger.

And I know that people make the system work.

Labor.  Loads of labor.

Hauling hay on a hot July afternoon means that the cows can eat on a cold January morning when snow covers the pasture.

I know that eggs don’t originate from Styrofoam containers

and it requires a real human hand to pick an apple.

And I want our children to know this too.

So we pick blueberries from bushes and apples from trees and milk a cow in a barn and today we grabbed grapes from the vines.

There is no better teacher than experience.

They learned the subtle difference between ripe and almost ripe.

They know the pop and the juice of the so-purple-they-are-almost-black grapes as opposed to  the tart taste of the still-slightly-red ones.

You can’t read about that or watch a show where Mike Rowe picks a grape for you and holds it up the camera lens.

You need to plow through the vines yourself.

To emerge

sticky and stained

from under the shade of the arbor.

And when you drink the grape juice or spread the grape jelly on bread

you know how many grapes that took.

You know the sweat and the toil of picking and straining and creating and making.

And I think that’s magnificent.

And I hope it helps to make my children not only consumers, but producers as well.

I hope it breeds gratefulness and awareness

and a knowledge of all the ways people have to serve to provide for one another.