Farm-Raised Kids

I found this book to be very helpful for me! I am a mom, married, with 4 children on 15 acres that I aspire to live off of as much as I can. We are also looking to homeschool in the future. This book was very informative on how I can include our kids around the homestead, what I can expect as a parent, what types of books we can be reading to learn from and journaling prompts after every section to help organize your thoughts and goals. Overall, if you have land and want to homestead, or are thinking about buying some and starting, this is a great read to help you find what will work best for you and provide you some solid ideas!

I find this book to be an incredibly important topic today. People have become so detached from the land and their food sources, there are important lessons here not only for farming and homesteading families, but even more so for those who are not. We need to expose more people to this way of living, partly so they understand they have a choice in how they live and how they eat. I would love to see more information about incorporating gardening into non farm families, but this is a great resource for teaching about the farm life.

I read this book through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I have always dreamed of running a homestead with my family. As someone currently neighborhood living, but supporting a CSA this gives me big dreams that one day we can have land and give our children this life. I love how encouraging this book was while also not sugar coating that sometimes it will be hard. And love the idea of getting the kids involved in everyday operations. This book gives me hope that one day we can achieve this!

Delightful! I am adamant about living on a farm and teaching my kids hard work and valuable life lessons. This book is a great starting point where I can learn how to bring my kids into that kind of life.

I want to start by thanking NetGalley for this amazing ARC. I have been wanting to start a homestead/hobby farm and while this book describes more about living on a large farm I was able to take away many important points in regards to how farming in general impacts children’s lives. If you are unsure of how to work farming into your everyday life or unsure as to whether you want to and whether your children will benefit from it read this books as part of your decision making process. This book helped me and I know it will help you to.

This book is full of wisdom and valuable advice for bringing children up on a farm or homestead. It covers play, safety, homeschooling and so much more and ranges from pregnancy up to teen. It is also very honest about how hard it can be, as well as showing us how beneficial this way of life can be for children. There are journaling prompts and interviews with other families that give us the opportunity to see other perspectives on this way of life. I recommend this book for anyone who wishes to learn more about rearing children on a homestead or farm, as it contains plenty of advice for including children and making the most of this lifestyle.

This is a highly enjoyable and practical book about the modern farm family. I love all the colourful photos, the outdoors shots, the engagement with farming work. Mainly the book looks at the parents' point of view, whether expecting kids or raising them. We also see the issue of moving to a farm after starting a family, and instances when the young person is the farmer. There's a chapter on grown-up farm kids. Also a look at what to post on the internet and what to keep private.

The three main hazards for children on a farm are quite foreseeable - machinery and tractors, large animals, and chemicals. In America, there are also wildlife hazards, but keeping young children and the main three separated is the only way to go.

I once saw a short documentary on ranch daughters. Some of the daughters were winning rodeo prizes, others were learning how to ride and care for ponies. This book has no horses whatsoever, though there are beekeepers, and I think the greatest benefit of having the land available would be keeping ponies and horses. This gives kids another outlet, a sport and more friends. Horses are expensive, but could potentially provide income. Another farm family book, 'Would You Marry A Farmer' by Lorna Sixsmith, similarly has no mention of horses except to say they are considered expensive. In the past, every farm depended on horses.

Farms grow food, and a lot of the photos and stories mention the joy of eating your produce. The kids get involved early, with suggestions for what work they can do to help out at what age, and they can preserve and sell the goods. Kids learn seasonal foods and recipes.

The main lesson most people say they learned, is that life changes utterly, you can't do everything, and you have to reprioritise. Raising the next generation of farmers is a huge responsibility, and this has to be done while the current farmers are young and fit enough to be working. Some parents homeschooled, even for a few years. This took up the working day. Lovely book, great advice and stories from real farm families.

I read an e-ARC from Net Galley. This is an unbiased review.

In this first-ever book on the topic, author Katie Kulla offers her own hard-won wisdom, gleaned from more than a decade of raising kids while running a CSA farm with her husband. The book also features invaluable advice and insights from other farmer-parents and a wealth of practical tips and ideas for how to engage children on the farm—including activities for learning and play, and suggestions for how to enlist kids in chores and other farm responsibilities. Included are experiences and stories of diverse farm families encompassing a variety of identities and backgrounds across geographic locations, race and genders, family sizes, and farm scales, to represent the real face of farming today.