Four-year-old farmer making seeds, bread, burgers and memories

Vito Vessio is like your average four-year-old in every way. He’s inquisitive, enthusiastic, playful, full of laughs, and smart. 

He differs from other kids his age in that he is learning to live off the land, bake his own bread, grow his own vegetables from seed, and clean deer and rabbit for meat. He has even ground venison for deer burgers.

When you enter the backyard at Vito’s home, you come into a huge space bordered by raised garden beds filled with onions, eggplant, peppers, carrots, tomatoes and beans.

All the vegetables were raised from seed, which Vito helped plant.

“My grandma gardened. My mom learned from her, and I learned from my mother, and now he’s learning from me,” explains Melissa, who says they’re learning about seed saving and how much they need to plant for the family to have food over the winter.

Melissa helps Vito remember that there was still snow on the ground when they planted the seeds. 

Recently, Vito sold some of those seedlings at an annual market held by families of local homeschooled children. It gives the kids a chance to learn about commerce, sales, and earning money for something they’ve made.

“I sold some seedlings: cucumbers, hot peppers, peppers, and what else … tomatoes,” explains Vito. 

Melissa says they also sold some eggs, but they usually reserve the eggs for their own use.

“I sold some bread,” Vito pipes up with excitement when asked what else he sold. 

Melissa helps Vito explain that he made Bacon Loaf, a pull-apart baked with cheese and bacon, and a Jalapeño Bread. She has helped Vito learn to bake.

“I even baked burgers! Deer burgers,” says Vito excitedly. 

“We made venison burgers,” Melissa clarifies with a laugh.

Vito has been raising chickens and rabbits for so long it has become second nature. Each morning he feeds them kitchen scraps, or whatever can be salvaged from the compost pile. Sometimes the rabbits and chickens get strawberries and cantaloupe.

He cleans the enclosure and checks the animals to make sure they’re healthy.

They started the chicken coop with 10 chickens and are down to seven now due to natural causes. These egg-layers have had names since they came to Vito’s backyard farm. 

“Thunder and Lightning — you can hear Thunder before you see Lightning and they’re always together,” explains Melissa.

Then there is Torchic, a Pokemon character, Ketchup, Chicken, Omelet, Tiny, who was the smallest, and Princess Bubblegum who was bullied by the other chickens.

“The others picked on her,” explains Vito. “They picked her feathers, and there was a hole, so we gave her lots of food on her last day.”

“She became part of the compost pile,” says Melissa.

Vito is at home talking about his animals, the eggs of all shapes, sizes and colours that they produce, and the bunnies, which he and his family will eat. 

There are two rabbits: Thumper, the male, and Rotten Strawberry, the female. The two are pair-bonded and the female is pregnant. 

The female got her name because of her colour. 

“She’s brown and Vito thought she looked brown like a rotten strawberry,” explains Melissa.

The rabbits provide litters that are raised until they weigh about five pounds, which happens quickly over a period of weeks. Then they are cleaned and used for food. Vito participates in all of the processing and cleaning of the meat.

“I have my own knife, for cutting cucumbers,” says Vito, explaining he is learning to use a knife for cleaning animals.   

The whole concept of Vito doing backyard farming came about from the Waldorf style of education, and then transitioned into unschooling or self-directed learning. 

“Whenever he wants to do it, we do it and we help him,” explains Melissa about the process of Vito choosing what he’s interested in learning about farming and keeping and preparing animals for eating.

She says, as all parents know and understand, it does not always go according to plan. Either way, Vito is learning valuable skills to live off the land that he might not get in a traditional school setting. 

Melissa and her husband, also named Vito, decided to homeschool Vito because they wanted his first year in school to be free and clear from possible shutdowns from the pandemic.

“We wanted his first year of school to be a good experience. (Homeschooling) ended up being really fun and he is thriving," says Melissa. “He is getting a lot of experiences he wouldn’t get in a normal classroom."

While they plan to reassess when Vito is ready for Grade 1, the plan is to continue homeschooling Vito with his backyard farming for now. 

When Vito is asked what he wants to do when he grows up, he says he might go to school. Then, he says he might be a farmer. 

“Maybe one day we’ll have pigs,” he says, his eyes lighting up at the notion.

“Just because of zoning issues, we can’t do too much,” Melissa interjects. “With a bigger property, one day we hope to expand. Maybe we’ll have pigs, goats, and cows for milk.”

“We might even get a rooster,” Vito chimes in with a grin. 

“I don’t know about that. They’re pretty loud,” says his mother, laughing.

Vito has a lot of responsibilities in his backyard farm, learning about how to grow food, and growing himself. 

When asked if there is one part he likes best, he simply replies: “I like all of it the same.”

In a perfect example of how Vito is learning about the circle of life while living off the land, an egg breaks when the children enter the chicken coop, and Melissa breaks it open explaining that the chickens will eat it. 

“It has all the protein they need,” she explains, adding egg shells are full of calcium.

The chickens peck away at the remains of the egg and then move on. The children, Vito, Dante, his younger brother, Serenity, their cousin, and a visitor, watch with enthusiasm, then look up for what’s next to do and learn about life living off the land.