*Eat right when you’re pregnant.

*Give birth without drugs.

*Eat right when you’re nursing.

*Nurse for as long as you can.

*Give you baby a variety of home cooked purees when they switch to solids.

*Always make the meals organic.

These are a few of the “rules” that natural mamas tend to follow.

Creating a healthy, chemical free environment for us and our babies is a top priority. This includes what we feed them, what we clean the house with, what we bathe them with and what they play with.

All of these are wonderful standards to try to live up to. Sometimes though, we can drive ourselves absolutely batty in the process. Just making fresh juice for my 3 1/2 year old and myself every morning can stress me out beyond belief when we have a busy day ahead of us.  I’ve set these goals for myself and I try my hardest to reach them. The truth is,  some days, I do better than others.

But, with all the hard work I create for myself to be uber-mom, there’s one simple thing that I do every week to improve their lives immensely. No, it’s not brewing up a giant jar of kambucha, like slightly more intense natural moms like to do. It’s bringing them to the farm to visit the animals and pick up our CSA share. Miles especially loves saying hello to all his animal friends each time and scaling the tall hay mountain set aside for kids to play on. What I love is seeing his eyes light up when I carry the box of produce and eggs to the car. I have to show him each vegetable and basket of berries, so he knows what we’re going to be eating that week.

When we get home from the farm, he helps to wash the produce and as I put it in the fridge, he sometimes gets a sample of the goods. So far he’s been able to try 3 different kinds of lettuce, fresh asparagus, strawberries, mint, basil and cilantro. He wasn’t so keen on the radishes, but most everything else has been a hit. Just picked produce tastes loads better than week old and that is something that he is learning to be true.

Basically, being a natural mama isn’t just what you feed them or surround them with. It’s also what experiences you share with them that will teach them the benefits of a healthy lifestyle. Show them the connection between what they see growing in the ground, on the bushes and trees and what goes on their plates. Letting them hold and wash the vegetables will make them more likely to want to taste them. I started having Miles help me wash the vegetables each week when he was about 2 ears old. This is when he started chomping on carrots, celery and broccoli like it was a bag of chips.

I’m not saying that every kid out there is going to go for this, but it definitely couldn’t hurt to try. The younger the better! For kids, new is exciting, no matter what it is.

Related articles

• CSA happiness (curlybug.wordpress.com)
• Local food delivered: CSAs give families a chance to skip the produce aisle at the megamart (blogs.vancouversun.com)