Category Archives: family

Canavese-Naffziger Family

Two-year-old girl harvests strawberries

Ann and Paul, shared excellent tips for involving kids in backyard farms in Backyard Roots. At first glance their backyard in Alameda California looks typical: a beautiful deck above a lawn bordered by trees and bushes. But it’s a farm incognito: it’s packed with 33 fruit trees, vegetables and chickens. Ann and Paul didn’t grow up in gardening families but she wanted her kids to have the fun of farming and to learn something too.

Ann and Paul have been amazed at the runaway success of some of their plants. Last year they harvested over 100 pints of strawberries. She wanted to grow them because her kids love them and organic strawberries are pricey. She never imagined her family would be picking and eating strawberries every day. “You really can get tired of them,” she says, but luckily the neighbors didn’t.

Follow Ann and Paul’s blog: www.paulandann.org

 

Two young girls feed the family chickens.

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Gunderman-Raskopf Family

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Nine-year-old Katie, who is featured on the inside-back cover of Backyard Roots, described the importance of chickens best when she was interviewed for A Family is a Family is a Family, an HBO special about gay families. “Daddy and Poppy met in a coffee house, then they got married, then they had us, and then we got chickens.”

David Gunderman describes it more as a plan concocted between Katie and her other dad, Andrew Raskopf. He says Andrew has always been a frustrated farmer, and just took him along for the ride. They’ve had an average of seven chickens for the past three years, and David is now a true believer. “it’s been a great experience for the kids. It teaches them empathy, responsibility, and wonderful, unconditional love.”

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