Last week, a Philadelphia student, about seven years old, cocked her head at a piece of fruit in the cafeteria. There was something strange about this pear — its stem was still attached to a small branch, and there was a leaf dangling to boot.

“Pears grow on trees?” she asked in wonderment.

There are dozens of moments like this one occurring daily in schools and community centers across Philadelphia, where a clutch of dedicated organizations work to bring healthy, whole foods into the lives of their neighbors.

I recently took a video camera onto the city streets to document the profound disconnect that exists about where our food comes from. (See some of that footage in the video below.) With so many packaged and processed foods filling the grocery aisles, we have successfully distanced ourselves from the knowledge that was once integral to our survival: how our food grows. Make no mistake, I’m guilty as charged: before asking strangers how a chickpea grows, I had to look into it myself.

That’s why, along with my husband, veteran journalist Mark Jolly, we’ve started How Does it Grow?, a food education initiative targeting agricultural illiteracy. At its core is a video series that tells the stories of our food from field to fork, one crop at a time. We’ve shot the first episode — mushrooms (lucky for us, “the mushroom capital of America” is an hour outside of Philadelphia) — and we’ve just launched a Kickstarter to complete the first season.

We hope these videos will be a companion piece to school gardens, lunchroom revolutions and nutrition programs across the country. Because you can’t take every child to the farm — but you can bring the farm to them (and their parents) through video. And let’s face it, video is the language of young people everywhere.

That aforementioned pear epiphany occurred at Community Partnership School in Philadelphia, a city of food innovators. This is just one elementary school where the Vetri Foundation for Children has introduced its Eatiquette program. Once a week, the students enter a transformed lunchroom where they serve each other platters of fresh food family-style. Kids take turns as “table captains”: wearing crisp white chef coats, they set the tables and serve up an unconventional menu, like fish tacos with cabbage slaw and fresh fruit for dessert.

Katherine Rapin, a dynamic Vetri intern, told me that she’s continuously stunned by the students’ enthusiasm for good food. She’s witnessed a child beg her table mate not to “hog” the salad (yes, salad), and a full lunchroom cheering when fresh orange slices were announced as dessert.