HERDING KITTENS

For those of you with any herding experience, or any kitten experience, the phrase 'herding kittens' conjures up quite the mental picture, doesn't it?  'Herding' is gathering a bunch of animals together and getting them moving all in the same direction to a pre-planned destination.  Kittens do qualify in the animal department, but trust me, they do not 'herd' very well.  However many kittens you have is the number of different directions they are going to go in, or refuse to go in, depending on their mood at the time.  Your only hope of getting them to head in the same direction at one time is to entice them with food or toys and hope for the best, but as they are nothing but cats-in-training, it will still depend on their mood.

They're independent little things, those kittens.  They don't necessarily want to be carried, except when it's inconvenient for you, and they tend to want to stop when you want to go, and go when you want to stop.  And, if you are in the middle of litter training the little darlings, there is never a litter box close by when you need one.

So, now that I have set the scene, replace the word 'kittens' with 'two little boys' and plunk the scenario in the middle of Agribition.  That's where this grandma spent Wednesday this week; it's been two days and I'm still tired.

Agribition has many faces:  it's a meeting place known world-wide for exhibiting cattle - the very top animals in each breed are shown, bought and sold for crazy amounts of money as cattlemen and women seek to improve their herds, but from that single seed of cattle exhibition conceived 46 years ago has grown a huge affair that offers everything from rodeo events to tradefair shopping, milking demonstrations to food pavilions, farm equipment showrooms to petting zoos; there's something for everyone.  This week was my first time ever and I can see it would be a whole other kind of day if I could do it at my own pace - but like I said - I was helping to herd kittens.

There were lots of other adults trying to do the same thing; judging from the traffic of groups of children it looked like there were many teachers using a day at Agribition as a teaching opportunity.  While I admired their courage and fortitude to wander into the crowds with that many kittens, I couldn't help feeling that if the lesson was to be about farming, origin of food, and the art of agriculture, it was probably missing its mark - bright sparkling tractors, pre-packaged samples of grain, small animals in a petting zoo environment, and watching show cattle being given showers and then blown dry is about as far from the truth as Hollywood is from how normal people live.  The closest it gets to the real thing is the smell of cow poop as you walk through the barns. 

The two little boys we were with, at 5 and 2 years old, already know more than this.  They spend time at Grandma's and Grandpa's farm and live on an acreage as well.  They have their own chores to do helping their mom to feed chickens and are looking forward to having more animals once their land is fenced.  They know that vegetables come from their mom's garden and they've picked apples off their own trees.  While the city kids with their one day view of farming come away with a sort of 'tunnel vision' these two have a panoramic view and will grow up feeling like participants in their food production, not spectators.

It's a subject near and dear to my heart - connecting urban populations, especially the kids, to a rural experience.  The freedom and space and independence that farm kids enjoy are things that city kids don't even know exist.  A while ago I wrote a bit of a memoire of the growing up years of our kids that provides a wide angle lens view of prairie farm life called True Story!  It's just a bunch of mostly funny short (true) stories of the real thing.  I should have had a few copies along with me to hand out to the teachers so they could back up their farming lesson with a little more reality.