Little Urban Farm

Children growing up in cities often do not have access to farms or ranches.  Over the last few generations, fewer people have direct contact with food production than ever before in history.  We have transitioned to become a generation of consumers.  The Little Urban Farm at the Museum of Nature & Science provides children an introduction to the world of agriculture and husbandry.  The Urban Farm is located on the lower level of the Science building, between the Water Room and the Store.  

 

The Water Room evokes the elements of the World of Nature, experientially capturing the global water cycle:  oceanic evaporation, atmospheric condensation, rainfall and tributary collection, and the return to the seas.  Nature provides matter and energy in a multitude of forms: soil, water, atmosphere, weather, seasons, sunshine, heat, flora, seeds, etc.  Science articulates the relationships between matter and energy in those forms, and the processes by which they interact to produce and nurture life forms as plants and animals. 

The Farm provides children an opportunity to experience the critical ingredient that makes agriculture and husbandry viable: the element of human work.  We step into what Nature provides and give our work to it.  Our work harnesses the processes that encourage growth and stewards the plants and animals to provide for our needs as food sources.  Without work, what ‘grows’ is wilderness, with some provision for our needs.  Farming and agriculture concentrate production to feed the billions of people who now live on our planet.  The garden grows vegetables, the orchard grows fruits, the grain fields grow wheat and corn: but they only do so after the work of planting, feeding, and harvesting organizes those processes.  The animals provide foods for us, meats and eggs and dairy products: but only after the work of husbanding, caring, and processing organizes these foods for us.  By the end of the Farm experience, children have participated in the process of giving their work to yield food products.  They then sort out their products – the vegetables, fruits, grains, and animal products – in baskets to be carried by trucks from farm to market, where we ‘city people’ finally encounter them, after a great deal of work has been invested.

Exhibits in the Farm

Garden

Orchard

Grain Fields

 

Chicken Coop

Dairy Barn

 

 

Farm to Market

The Store provides the ‘end process’ experience.  Foods transported from farms and ranches have been processed and packaged, delivered to the store.  Sometimes foods are presented ‘raw,’ as vegetables and fruits in the produce section or meats in the butcher’s shop.  More often, nowadays, foods are processed and packaged.  Vegetables show up in cans, bags or boxes frozen to preserve them, or integrated in off-the-shelf meals in boxes or frozen meals.  Their appearance in these forms misleads us ‘city people’ to contrive naïve notions about where foods come from, what they originally were.  The old saw of chocolate milk coming from a brown cow is not far off the mark.  The Store is not really an ‘end process’ of consumption.  It is a distribution point in a process of our economy.  The process continues, then, with the impact of waste, the need to recycle, and the need to steward resources for continued efficient production.  It continues with the impact of dietary habits and lifestyle practices on our health.  All of these processes are interwoven.  The ‘butterfly effect’ illustrates how movement of any one variable in a long chain of causes and effects has profound effects.  There is a lesson in that for us: what we choose to do, even as an individual, can have a long-reaching impact on everything else going on in our world and our lives.

 

Resources

US Department of Agriculture: http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/usdahome

Texas agriculture: www.agr.state.tx.us

National Agricultural Statistics Service: http://www.nass.usda.gov/Statistics_by_State/Texas/index.asp

Texas dairy: http://www.texasdairy.com/

Historic Texas ranches: http://www.6666ranch.com and http://www.king-ranch.com/