In Northern Ontario’s not-too-distant past, schoolchildren of all ages lived off the land, as their families had for generations.
The agrarian society was a way of life, with mothers and fathers providing food for the children from the land they lived on.
Today, with most children living in cities, the connection to the land has been a little lost.
On Thursday students from St. James Public School got a little taste of what life was like in the time of their forefathers, learning what it takes to make the ingredients required to make a simple pizza pie – from milling the flour to milking a cow to growing the tomatoes and making sausage.
Jessica Silen said it was a great way to spend a morning, outside of the classroom and learning how pizza comes to life, so to speak.
“I thought it was really fun and that what I learned was really cool,” the eight-year-old said.
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Of course, each child took something different from each of the eight stations set up at the Canadian Lakehead Exhibition ground’s Coliseum building.
For Jessica, it was the history of potatoes.
“I learned that 500 years ago potatoes were just little tiny things,” she said, adding she has a new appreciation for farmers and the work they do putting food on people’s tables.
“I realized it was really, really hard. It was lots of work,” she said.
Emma Sofea, also eight, said she learned that cups and dinnerware can be made from the ground-up bones of animals.
She added she had little idea what went into putting the ingredients together to make a pizza.
“I think it’s very cool,” she said, “because I don’t really eat pizza that much. I eat it maybe once or twice every few months. I didn’t realize it was so hard.”
For the CLE’s Donna Gradner, the annual Slice of Farming Pizza Project is a labour of love.
“We think it’s very important,” she said. “This is our 20th year doing this, and every year we have more and more families and more children coming through. It’s important for them to find out where their food comes from.
“The reason we chose pizza is because every child can relate to pizza. They have to find out where wheat comes from, sausage comes from, even the sauce and the tomatoes. And it’s amazing to see their faces when they find out exactly how things are grown and where it comes from.”
