What fun it was. Everyone had a great time – particularly the children, who chopped, stirred, smelt and tasted their way around their very own food festival. This year the Children’s Food Festival was held on the Northmoor Trust’s farm, ten miles south of Oxford in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. It was a site that had never been used this way before and proved the perfect setting for a festival staged to inspire youngsters to take an interest in food and the way it is produced.

Festival patrons Raymond Blanc and Sophie Grigson, who both worked tirelessly to enthuse the youngsters, were delighted at the way their audiences responded to their talks and hands-on demonstrations.

Raymond and Sophie believe that the sooner a child shows an interest in food, the sooner they will begin eating a healthy diet. That said, they weren’t surprised to note that one of the most popular attractions proved to be the Chocolate Tent where leading chocolatiers dazzled audiences with their artistry and distributed samples of flavoured chocolate with extraordinary generosity.

Another popular attraction was the 12-metre inflatable pink pig that blinked its big brown eyes and sighed contentedly as children watched a farmyard drama unfold inside its tummy. Festival director Eka Morgan booked this pig for the first Children’s Food Festival a couple of years ago and was so delighted by the youngsters’ response that she simply had to include it again. The children loved the vegetable orchestra, too, and the Eat a Rainbow Every Day drama.

The youngsters also appreciated a chance to talk to 15-year-old Emma Cianchi, the country’s youngest pig farmer, who was there to discuss her passion for pigs. Emma’s interest began when she asked her parents if she could have some piglets for her 14th birthday. She had intended to keep them as pets but, a year on, Emma is breeding pigs in a field at the back of her family home in Herefordshire. She now has 20 rare-breed pigs and sells her meat to parents of schoolfriends and her teachers. Those who met Emma at the festival were particularly impressed to learn that she gets up every morning at 6am to feed and look after them.

Pigs were certainly among the stars of the show. One pink model pig, which stood at the entrance of the livestock area, even burped with gratitude when visitors made a charitable donation. It was all great fun, educational too, particularly when film actress Greta Scacchi joined forces with Sheila Dilion of Radio 4’s Food Programme, and visiting teenagers, in a lively debate which questioned whether celebrities should promote junk food.

When it was all over, and 14,000 families made their way home, Eka Morgan looked round the empty field with satisfaction and remarked that everything had gone to plan. Even the weather behaved itself, despite the forecast that warned of sudden downpours.

She said the festival proved a resounding success with parents who were delighted to see their young children eager to try out new foods and recipes. Some children even munched on fried grasshoppers cooked for them by television chef Stefan Gates.

“We have been overwhelmed with highly positive feedback from happy parents. Our hope was that whichever way you looked in the festival fields there would be something compelling to do – and that really was how it turned out.”

Raymond Blanc admits being totally exhausted when this two-day event was over, but he says that was a small price to pay to be involved as he was. He was particularly excited by the way the youngsters of today respond to food. “You should have seen them,” he said, “they react to the way food is prepared and environmental issues in such a positive way. They know far more than their parents and, what’s more, they really want to know. They really care in a way their parents never have.”

Raymond didn’t stop working when the gates closed on Sunday night – he was busy editing a video for his website: www.raymondblanc.com which shows extracts from the show.

He laughs at the moment a hundred little fingers reached out towards a mousse he invited them to taste, which was captured on camera and can be viewed by us all.

“I’d cooked a mousse and invited them to taste when it was finished, and that is exactly what they did. It looked like a flock of little sparrows flying towards the dish,” he said. He added that he realised that the law now stated that food should not be tasted by the audience at the end of a cookery demonstration, but he didn’t care.

“It’s madness – total madness. It’s health and safety gone completely mad. If you cook you want it to be tasted. How can anyone judge a dish unless they taste? Impossible,” he added.

Raymond says that the festival was such a success that he hopes it will now become an annual event. “I want to be much more involved and am proud to think that it all began in Oxfordshire. With luck, other cities will follow, so that kids all over the country will have a chance to become more involved with food.”

He says today’s children are the future and we owe it to them to get them involved in food, its production, its health giving properties and – last but not least – its taste.

Raymond has vowed he will now spend much of his time fundraising to this end, so that a 2010 Children’s Food Festival will happen and on the Northmoor Trust site, which he considers the perfect venue.

“The Food Festival is far too important to ignore. It’s up to us all to ensure it goes from strength to strength,” he said.