While growing up, during secondary school, majority of us took a subject called Agricultural science, not to brag or anything but it was one of my favorite practical subject and I was her best student. My Agriculture teacher then was a very practical woman, we had a backyard in our school, not too big but not cemented. When it was time for Agriculture after we were done with the theoretical aspect, we will head down to the farm and that was where I learned how to cultivate and plant various things, we were lucky in the sense that during harvest we were not deprived of eating from our toils and sweat which many students complained about.


After secondary school, through my university days, I never had the chance to farm until my parents were able to acquire our own land. My mum who grew up in Ghana explained that during her school days, they went through so many home management lessons which included cooking, farming, cleaning, washing and ironing, even sewing as all this were to prepare the children to one day manage their own homes. So when we got our land, one of the plans for the compound was our very own farm. We had issues with our schedules of course, but we were able to work something out. Most evenings and weekends we would clear and make beds and we planted a whole lot of things, from vegetables to cassava to yam to corn to plantain to banana to pineapples to trees like mango, avocado, pawpaw and loads more and there I understood the importance of farming. Experiencing the concept of sowing and reaping on a practical level is something I feel everyone should experience to better understand life as a whole.

We were farming for our own consumption but the little time we were able to put in saved us a lot, money wise. For example, our first cassava harvest was an experience, the tubers were so huge that we couldn’t pull them out ourselves; we had to hire some people who helped us in harvesting. From the cassava produced that first year, we divided the harvest into two parts, we used 70% to produce garri and 30% to produce fufu granted we spent a little money processing the garri but we were able to realize a bag and half of garri. This carried us for almost 6 months as we were a small household, together with the fufu we had. That period the only thing we were going out to buy was onions, oil, spices and meat because our vegetable farm was producing as well, we had ugu, water leaf, bitter leaf, ewedu, curry leaf, tomato and pepper. Virtually anything we needed to prepare a meal was in our compound.


Yes, it took time and effort but in the end it was worth it because while working with my mum I learnt a lot from her, so many words of wisdoms, life experiences and more. It is sad that we no longer make time for family activities anymore due to our businesses, jobs, social media etc. Basically the point I am trying to bring out here is that as a family, we can look for activities that will bring everyone together as one and what better way than by showing them a practical example of sowing and reaping.

From this you can instill in your children the importance of sowing and reaping, of investing because truly we invested in our land and we yielded profits in foodstuffs. Likewise, when you talk about investments, they understand what you mean at that tender age, you can teach them to invest in various sectors and this knowledge will be something that they grow up with. By doing this you aren’t just giving them fish to eat but also teaching them how to fish.


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