Eat your veggies

My son love fruits and veggies.  I'm lucky, I know.  A lot of my friends say their kids won't touch much of either.  We started Nick early on veggies though.  According to his pediatrician, kids get a sweet tooth early on so starting them off on fruit baby food makes them crave that.  If you start them on veggies and introduce fruit later, they usually eat both.  Not sure if that true but it seems to have worked with Nick.

Last fall, we did the Tanaka Farms Pumpkin Patch tour with his class at school and he loved it.  He got to pick some veggies and see how the farm works.  Well, we missed the strawberry tour this Spring.  I made it a point not to miss the watermelon tour in August.

 We entertained ourselves while waiting for the tractor to pick us up by running along the bales of hay.

 Last year, when we were here, they had a petting zoo.  He was a little upset to find the zoo was only there during pumpkin season.  Thats not a happy face....

Our first stop - the herb garden.  They grow pretty much everything fresh here.  We got to smell each one right from the ground.  Nothing like fresh herbs.

 And then they bring you fresh picked veggies to eat.  They don't use pesticides there and the water is not reclaimed.  So they pick them, wash them and hand them out to the people on the tour.  Nick wanted to know why his carrot had 'green hair'.

 Finally he didn't care anymore and just ate it.

The next stop was fresh corn, yellow and green beans.  He didn't care for the yellow wax beans but he ate his corn and mine.  Corn picked fresh off the stalk is sweet and juicy.  The sugars haven't processed yet so the corn is best I've ever tasted.

 Pumpkins growing.  They had a countdown calendar there and its 42 days til pumpkin season.

Next, we got a chance to get off the cart and we got to taste more fruits and veggies.  Chio, our driver and fruit chopper, chopped up the fruit picked fresh that morning.  So good.

Someone really wanted the watermelon.  Every time they'd pass around a new fruit or veggie, he'd take a bite and ask where the watermelon was.  I think he was thinking I lied to him and it wasn't a watermelon tour....
Zucchini and yellow squash.  He ate 3 slices of the zucchini but not the yellow squash.  I'm not a fan of that one either.

Next was canteloupe

Cucumbers

And FINALLY watermelon.  Everyone around us laughed when Nick saw the juicy red stuff come around.  And the first thing out of his mouth once he'd had a bite.....

'Its like a party in my mouth!'

And then they passed out yellow watermelom.  Never heard of this before but I tried it.  Its not as sweet as regular watermelon but its still good.

And a second helping of regular watermelon too.

Next, the guide took us for a walk through the fields.  They got to see the watermelon on the vine.  Most were bad though and they left them there for the bees and birds to snack on.

At the end of the walk, there was a pile of mini watermelons for us to choose from.  Some of the people had done this before and brought bags to carry theirs home in.  I had two watermelon in my purse - not easy to carry.

And then back to the beginning.  They have a small market there were you can purchase some of what they grow.  Nick was antsy so I didn't have a lot of time to shop around but we got some fresh strawberries, corn and green beans for dinner.  I need to go back soon.