On a good traffic day, our farm in Lehigh County is only a one-hour drive from Center City Philadelphia. But from the stunned looks on the children’s faces as the big yellow school bus pulled up in our driveway recently you might think we live on the moon.

“It’s SO quiet here!” says one wide-eyed girl.

“What happens when it gets dark?” asks another.

“Aren’t you scared with all of these animals around?” asks her friend.

We can’t help but chuckle. No, we have nothing to fear from the deer. The low electric fences usually keep Bambi, Thumper and the groundhogs out of our vegetable fields. We like seeing squirrels, a red fox or painted turtle in the fields and woods or a red-tailed hawk soaring in lazy circles above the farm.

That so many animals call our farm home means that we are doing our job as farmers in keeping the springs and streams free of pollution and growing a wide enough variety of plants and trees to provide the animals with food and shelter.

The children shake their heads in wonder. We know how they feel. We’re always a little overwhelmed when we drive to Philadelphia on summer Saturday mornings for the farmers’ market at South and Second Streets. Wildlife in the big city means flocks pigeons, stray dogs or rats.

It’s a classic case of culture shock. We’re not just from different worlds. We speak different languages.

“You grow weed?” several children gasp as Melanie explains how she plants, waters and weeds her flowers.

The differences don’t end there. When we go to work, we don’t put on a suit and tie and commute to an office or a factory five days a week. We just walk out the back door and we’re at work.

“Cool!” say the kids.

Yes, and no. Animals must be fed and watered at least once a day, seven days a week, not just Monday through Friday. With livestock, there is never a day off. Suddenly, living where you work is maybe not quite so cool.

The kids are amazed that we still use a 1947 tractor. The faded gray Ford 2N was made long before their teacher was born.

“How much does this cost?” a boy asks as he climbs on our well-used John Deere tractor.

“Fifteen thousand dollars,” I say.

“Yo! That’s more than a new car!”

Later, he asks how much it costs to get started in vegetable farming on a small scale. He’s not being rude. Those are the kinds of questions his teacher wants the children to ask. After all, these are not just any kids swept off of the streets of one of America’s largest cities. They are the best and brightest seventh and eighth graders Philadelphia has to offer, explains Keith Newman, their teacher at Morrison Elementary School. The children are hand-picked participants in a pioneering program that teaches them about proper nutrition, new business development and sustainable agriculture.

Simply put, the students are in business for themselves. With the help of the non-profit Philadelphia Farmers’ Market Trust and Einstein Medical Center, the children make fresh fruit salads, fruit smoothies and tossed salads that they sell to students and teachers at their schools. Some actually grow their own salad greens in greenhouses or school labs.

“Profits are counted at the end of each day and the kids in charge know immediately that they’ve accomplished something positive for themselves and others,” says the Trust’s Cynthia Cooperman.
“Many inner-city children are stuck in an unresponsive education system disconnected from the rest of their world. Absenteeism, boredom and health problems abound. As a result, a generation is growing up unskilled and ill-equipped to survive in a challenging world,” she adds.

“Giving these students an opportunity to visit an operating farm is giving them an experience they cannot get in their inner-city environments. For most it will be a new experience and one they will most likely remember for the rest of their lives.”

What one girl will remember most, I think, is our family flock of 10 laying hens. They are Silver-laced Wyandottes, an old-fashioned breed that lays large brown eggs. The hens lay their eggs in the straw in the dark corners of our little barn. After feeding the chickens, I retrieve an egg from one corner and hand it to a little girl.

“Oh!” she squeals. “It’s warm!”

In her world, eggs are ice cold and snow white with pale yolks. They come by the dozen in sterile Styrofoam cartons from refrigerated display cases in the supermarket.

The warm brown egg is like an electric shock. I half expect her to drop it like a hot potato. Instead, she presses the warm egg against her right cheek, gently caressing it like a precious gem. The sudden bond is so strong that she almost refuses to pass the egg along to the other children.

A few days later, we receive a warm letter from their teacher. “You have exposed these children through firsthand knowledge to experiences they could never have gained from a textbook,” writes Keith Newman. “Our area is about as far from farming as one can get, which explains why one of my seventh graders is convinced she can make money by growing a garden in her backyard and selling the surplus. “The one thing these kids don’t know about is hard work, so I especially liked what you said about always being at work. The care and effort you put into your farm is obvious. I think the message did get through.”

The message got through to us, I know. Our cheeks were also deeply touched by the warm egg of understanding. We’ll see more of these young people, both at our farm and in their other world of the big city. More and closer meetings between city and country can solve a lot of problems we face as a nation.

George DeVault is a market farmer and the editor of Rodale’s Russian-language magazine New Gardener and Farmer, from which this article is reprinted with permission.