I spent a wonderful day in the Wyoming sunshine with my husband and children yesterday. A dear friend had joined us for the afternoon, to make pickles with my children and to help us lay out our garden.

We laughed with delight and bewildered amusement as the children helped place soaker hose and played tug of war with us, tromp through the clods of warm and moist dirt, and look for worms. We watched them examine bugs and hay mulch with intent. They asked silly questions, they asked serious questions. The entire day was filled with fun and learning. I was content in the warm spring sunshine.

My friend wondered abut the schoolwork we were missing. I pointed the the children laying on a piece of black plastic, meant for tomatoes, being “bricks” to keep the plastic from blowing away in the heavy Wyoming spring wind and I said “They are learning right now.”  She replied “Oh I know. But what about book work? Don’t they have workbooks to do and all that?” I pondered this for a minute and wondered about the image of homeschooling running through her head. she’s known us a long time, she knows we homeschool, so the question seemed odd to me.

“Cat, think about the last time you encountered your average public schooled person. When was it?”

“Last week-I taught a class on gardens at the University.”

“What did they know about gardening?”

“Not very much at all!”

“Did you consider them to be intelligent?”

“Of course they were intelligent. They were an honor student at the college level.”

“Yet they couldn’t grow their own food. How many calls have you gotten through this recession, from people asking you to teach them about garden, show to lay them out, how to plant seeds, when to plant things?”

“At least 3 a day in the last 6 months alone. A lot of people are worried about their food supply, but don’t know how to plant a garden, how to mulch, what to do about weed control, or how to harvest and preserve things.”

“Yet every time we see you, you work with my children and myself to teach us these things. Who’s got the better education? The person with workbooks or the child digging her toes into the soft, freshly turned earth, savoring the feel of success as she’s planted her first salsa garden?”

Cat stopped and thought about this and turned to me with a look of amazement on her face.

“A sustainable future starts with our children, doesn’t it?” she mused.

“A sustainable future starts with education that is tangible.” I replied.  “And we are giving my children that tangibility right here. When everything collapses, my children will be the ones to come out on top, because they are free from the constraints of the classrooms walls. They learn by living life and seeing success or failure. They run with the success and they learn from the failure.  Education doesn’t come from a book necessarily and tests don’t always prove what a person knows or doens’t know.”

We sat and watched the children plan where to put their garden and I pondered further our nation’s future. We’ve created so many people dependent on products imported, grown in foreign nations, built in a factory somewhere thousands of miles away and we don’t know how to do too many things for ourselves. I can’t help but wonder where our success will lie in the future.  What do we consider to be sustainable now? Is it the person who can wisely shop for prepackaged foods, or the person who can create their meal from foods grown in the garden in their back yard and preserved against the cold winter weather?

I’m content to spend the day with my children-the sustainable future being planted by their very capable hands.