Tesco's Farm To Food Trail

Last week Joe and I attended a farm to fork talk in Padiham at Tesco's Lancashire. It is an initiative that is open to Schools in the area, we were lucky enough to be able to go along during half term and see what it was all about.

The event was run by the fabulous Sabrina who first told the children how to act safely in store, gave them all clipboards and handouts, she then showed us to the fruit and Veg aisle. Here Sabrina told us all about the fruit and veg and discussed how to identify where food comes from. 

She then gave the children a treasure hunt where they had to find different fruit and veg and recognize where they came from. Joe loved this, he really enjoyed finding out which countries all the fruit and veg were grown in. It made him think about his food more. Up until this moment in time, as far as he was concerned; his everlasting supply of food and the copious amounts of fruit he eats came from the fridge in the kitchen. It is not something I had ever really discussed with him, but he was very interested.

There was a large selection of fruit for the children to try, which Joe enjoyed very much. Some days he can literally eat his own body weight in fruit, he loved munching on all the samples. I shouldn't moan about his love for fruit bless him, but honestly; it costs a small fortune keeping this child in fruit.

Sabrina then showed us the fish counter, talked about fresh fish and let them all hold a crab. She explained how the crab ate and digested food. Joe absolutely loved this; he is one of those children that would happily pick up a tarantula so a crab did not faze him at all.

We then visited the cheese aisle and tried different cheeses. Joe wasn't too keen on all the different cheeses, he did try them but just wasn't keen.  

From this we went on to the bakery where the children got to watch a baker mixing dough. They talked about how many loafs the bakery made in a day. The children were then able to decorate biscuits which he loved, and happily spent 20 minutes with the other children chatting away as he decorated.

From here Sabrina showed then the freezers and fridges and told them what temperatures Tesco stored items at. They loved this; in fact I am sure the freezer was the highlight of the tour.

So was it worth half a day of our lives? Actually it was. The tour was interesting and made Joe think about where food came from a little more. We live backing on to a farm and we are very honest with the Boys about where their meat comes from. But it was nice for him to see it from a supermarket perspective. 

Thank you Sabrina, and Tesco. You made it lots of Fun, yet informative too.