Farm News

Skye had a birthday. Southern Blu Skye is now one year old. :) She is a good dog. She has a couple of bad habits, but we are working on those.

The garden is in. I would still like to plant some flower seeds, but I can't find the ones I thought I had. :) We also have one more planting of corn. The taller green stuff in front of the sheep shed is my garlic. I need to pull a bulb and check them. The leaves are starting to turn yellow.

The beans are coming up nicely. So are the cukes. I just pray that the cukes do well. We eat lots of pickles and I have had to buy cucumbers the last couple of years to get enough.

This is part of Joshua and Brittany's garden. The have a large L shaped portion of our garden.

I love seeing how green the grass is and how long it is. I pray that we continue to get the sporadic rains to keep it growing.

You can see that the grass is as tall as some of the lambs.

My kitchen often resembles a science lab. I have things growing or brewing. :) Here is my artisan bread dough. I made it yesterday and it sat out over night. I will make it this afternoon.

Here is one of my batches of kombucha. I have been getting really thick nice scobies on it. I have been able to have a starter for others.

I also have some raw peanuts soaking. I will put them in the dehydrator later today.

I also had a batch of yogurt in my Yogotherm. It is already in the fridge though. It might take a bit more time to fix foods the traditional way, but the way we are feeling is WELL WORTH the effort. We both have lost weight and feel wonderful. I have not felt this good in at least 10 years.

Cravings - The Mother of Invention

We are enjoying the eating plan we are on. It has also made us feel really good and lose some weight. The weight is coming off a bit slower than I like, but I am losing inches too! I am able to get into some dresses that I could not wear before!!

I was a carb queen and was eating way too many of them. I have been trying sprouted whole grain breads and bagels. I also make spelt bread. My co-op offers a sprouted whole grain tortilla. I bought some to try. The thing that I miss the most is something crunchy like chips or crackers. We did not buy potato chips, but we usually always had tortilla chips on hand. I decided to try something for lunch today. I put some Tropical Traditions Expeller Pressed coconut oil in the skillet. I took a tortilla (they are big) and cut it in half. then I cut one of the halves into small chip size pieces. I put them in the oil and let them get a bit brown on both sides. I drained them on a towel and sprinkled them with salt. They were good. They were not as good as the chips we normally have, but they satsified the crunch factor and they did taste good. After I had eaten them, I realized I did not take any pictures. I will do that next time.

I am also making the coconut bark recipe with Stevia. It is so good that it tastes just like candy. I really notice a difference in my energy level and also my clearness in thinking when I am getting plenty of coconut oil.

Our Food is Killing Us!!

If you or anyone in your family has heart problems, I URGE you to get a copy of this book and read it. Diet & Heart Disease - It's NOT What You Think by Stephen Byrnes, PhD, RNCP.

Many people think we are nuts for choosing a farming type life. Most of those people are family. :) Neither one of us were raised on a farm. We were both suburb kids. We started making changes as we became informed about things. You NEED to start looking into what you are feeding your family.

Most of the conventional heart treatments and diets recommended today are based on what is called the Lipid Hypothesis. It has never been proven and it is very faulty. I urge you to do some research on it.

Just today I read several things which makes me want to be sure and share more with you my readers and also with our customers who read this blog. One of them was called Microwave Popcorn: Yes, It Just May Kill You. It is short and worth the read. Another one showed where Researchers checked blood samples of 39 pregnant women and 30 non-pregnant women for the presence of the Bt toxin (from GMO foods). None of the women were exposed DIRECTLY to Bt, but all had conventional diets. The results: The Bt toxin showed up in 93 percent of pregnant women and 80 percent of their babies. It was also present in 69 percent of non-pregnant women in the study.

I have been amazed at how much of our food comes from China. Someone gave us decorated cookies and they were made in China!!! That blew my mind. Why would I want a cookie that had to travel all that way and from a country where there is heavy metal cadmium found in rice, toxic melamine in milk, arsenic in soy sauce, bleach in mushrooms, and the detergent borax in pork, added to make it resemble beef? The newest thing from China is exploding watermelons. They are exploding because they are being injected with something to make them grow faster. They have no clue what they are doing, and we eat it without a second thought.

I think one of the saddest things about food in our country is the raw milk issue. Our government spent a lot of money and a lot of time to run a year long sting operation to take down one Amish farmer for selling raw milk. How sad is that. There was a protest by milk advocates in Washington DC. They were milking a cow on the grass outside the U.S. Capitol. "The FDA warns that raw milk can contain dangerous bacteria, including salmonella and e. coli." They act like they are trying to protect us. How about those same dangerous bacteria that has caused deaths and been found in hamburger and other beef, salad greens and other foods? All of those foods are still available for you to buy. How about cigarettes. Right on the package is a buyer beware: Known to cause cancer and death. Yet, you can still buy them if you want them. There are many people in this country that have done the research and have decided that they want to give their family raw milk. Ron Paul has actually introduced a bill to make it legal for raw milk to legalize the interstate sales of raw milk.

The FDA has also stated that they have the right to tell you what you can and can't eat. When are we going to stand up and let them know we are not going to allow this. To let them know that they do NOT have that power?

Start doing research. I hear many people say, "It is too expensive to eat that way." You may not be able to change everything, but start somewhere. Get rid of all that processed box food you buy. Start learning to make some things from scratch. Learn about the differences in fats. I love Joel Salatin's quote when someone told him that his food was too expensive. He said, " You think my food is expensive. Have you priced cancer lately?"

If you find something you would like to share or if you have questions, PLEASE share with us or ask us. We don't know everything, but we can point you in the right direction much of the time.