The Canary

I have been wishing for some inspiration for a new blog entry but I didn’t expect this.  I have been busy the last few months with the fall garden and being a caregiver for my husband who went through his fourth major surgery in the last two years.  I have been feeling really well except for some aches and pains that came with chopping wood, raking leaves and performing my bodywork sessions for others.  That was, until today.

Today I awoke before I was ready but got out of bed as I was unable to sleep even though it had only been six hours.  I couldn’t breathe due to the congestion in my nose, my upper back hurt even though I had not done anything physical over the preceding 48 hours, I had a dull headache and I was sick to my stomach.  These were familiar feelings, but they used to be the aftermath of a night of drinking alcohol. 

Two years ago a blood test revealed that my body could not handle the ingredients in the beverages that I had frequented and so this year’s Christmas celebration was alcohol free.  So since it wasn’t the alcohol that was making me feel this way, what was it?  As I reviewed my previous day’s food and drink consumption I realized that I had ingested more sugar and simple carbohydrates than usual.  At the time it seemed as if I was making better than usual decisions; drinking sparkling fruit juice instead of soda or alcohol and using organic sugar with raw goats milk in the organic coffee; dinner was wheat and dairy free even if it was a bit high in simple carbohydrates; dessert was a small piece of raw brownies with caramel frosting which used dates, maple syrup and coconut oil for sweeteners; but then the ‘dessert’ continued.  As we relaxed and watched television I continued eating over the next four hours: another small raw brownie; two large pieces of chocolate candy; another sparkling fruit juice; and a large serving of sweet potato chips. 

Except for the chocolate candy these were all better choices then I once would have made but the shear quantity of simple carbohydrates that I had eaten had obviously overwhelmed my system.  It is the only thing that could account for my symptoms.  Back in the day I would have taken some OTC pain-killers and drank some milk or Pepsi to help myself feel better.  But now that I know: about the problems with masking pain, the health concerns surrounding cow’s milk and how even diet soda depletes my body instead of adding anything to it; what was I going to do?  Nothing, I decided. I would just be with it.

As the day wore on I found that I was not interested in doing a thing.  Even though I had made myself a list a few days ago and knew exactly what I wanted to accomplish today I did not have the mental or physical capacity to do much more than the simplest of things: unload the dishwasher, water the garden, shell the dried beans.  As I sat outside in the sunshine, which I seemed to crave, I realized along with the physical manifestations I was experiencing, I was feeling depressed. 

Was it the self-recrimination I was going through for doing this to myself, or the fact that I was being so obviously affected by my eating choices while my husband who had eaten all of these same things, according to his report was unaffected?  Was it my frustration at a society that places such an emphasis on pleasure and fulfilling our wants that we are willing to risk our physical, mental and financial selves or the fact that I am encountering many people that sweep under the rug their health issues, thereby not helping others to avoid the same pitfalls or making their own problems worse by trying to ignore them?

I decided that since I seem to be the canary in this mine I wasn’t going to go down quietly and so I went into the house and wrote this blog. I have decided that the depression that I was experiencing, something I have battled with ever since I was a teenager, was due to both my physical as well as my mental condition.  Three days later I am happy to report that I am back to my new happy self.  As I reflect on this blog from this place of balanced blood sugar I realize that had I not changed my diet, I may have never left the world of depression.  And Big Pharm is NEVER going to tell us that!

Our First Summer’s Gatherings

I have managed to grow some summer vegetables after all!  At one point I didn’t think I was going to harvest my own squash until the year 2012 at the earliest but in the last 2 days I’ve picked 5 Romanesco Zucchinis, 2 handfuls of green beans and 4 Ronde de Nice Zucchinis.  It was wonderful.  They are beautiful.  I wish I’d had the time to take pictures but it’s been a bit busy around here.  We roasted them on the BBQ last night for dinner and they were marvelous.

After planting our first bed with beans and melons I was directed to plant squash and cucumbers in the second bed.  It seemed to me that it was all too late in the season to be planting any of this stuff at all, but who was I to question the Devas I thought to myself?  Here is the first bed that was planted in mid July.

And here is what the area looked like before we started construction.  I like the comparison.  I like seeing how far we have come.

I am glad I did follow the Deva’s instructions.  Now I have 2 beds full of summer goodies that are just starting to be ripe for the picking and we have a month left of 80-degree daytime temps to keep things moving.  Before it is all said and done we will have harvested 3 types of zucchini, yellow squash, 5 types of cucumber, 2 types of dried beans, 2 types of green beans, purple beans and edamame.  There is a slight chance of some melons and I will be really happy when they materialize.  Here are the two summer vegetable beds in all of their glory.

But wait, that’s just the summer vegetables!  Since planting the summer stuff in July we have been working on getting the fall beds ready.  I have now planted 5 beds with fall vegetables.  There are also over 100 seeds planted in 6-paks for placement into the beds later in October.

We have 3 types of broccoli, kohlrabi, cauliflower, radish, 4 types of carrots, red Russian kale, golden chard, red chard, red cabbage, bok choy, 4 types of lettuces, spinach and my favorite, brussel sprouts!  I love to eat these little babies and I can’t wait to grow them.  Have you ever seen them growing?

Are these puppies weird or what?  They look like they have cabbages growing on the tops and yet we eat the small buds growing along the stalks.  I can’t wait to try out some new recipes for these.

We have been dealing with critter control this year.  Some of you may know of our issues with the raccoons of late mostly surrounding the issue of their eating Daphne’s cat food.  The short story is that they are quite smart and nothing we did seemed to outsmart them.  We went so far as to make some “hot” appetizers hoping that it would dissuade them from every wanting cat food again.  But we must have a Japanese-American raccoon because the cat food encrusted wasabi balls we made were eaten all up.  Twice.  I can almost see them licking their cute little fingers and sighing, “Aaaaah”

Finally, we just started locking all of our sliding doors (as they easily opened them and tromped through the house one night) and placed cinder blocks in front of the cat door (it closes but does not “lock” and they opened this pretty easily and when I blocked it off from the inside they got pissed off and all but tore off the flexible plastic door).  The next day when I removed the cinder blocks so that Daphne could come and go as she pleased I noticed a bunch of red muddy raccoon prints.  First I noticed them on the sliding door that is next to the cat door and then I saw them 4 feet from the ground on the white wall of the house.  I could visualize them standing on the top of the cinder blocks slapping at the house yelling, “Let me in (Raccoon Explitive)!”

One of the issues with vegetable gardens is keeping enough for you to eat.  The beds are lined with galvanized metal cloth to keep the underground populations at bay.  I see the vole holes in the walkways and mole tunnels around the edges of the beds but they can’t get through.  We have never seen rabbits so that isn’t an issue at this time but I will be securing the bottom perimeter of the fencing soon just in case.  Our main concern has been the deer that come through the property on a regular basis.  The cost of extending the 5 foot fence another 2-4 feet just wasn’t in the budget but I had read somewhere that deer have depth perception issues.  So instead of spending hundreds of dollars I spent less than $25 and purchased some wire, shelf brackets, and reflective ribbon.  Here is the deer fencing I have installed.

It may be difficult to see at first, but I installed the brackets on the upright posts and strung wire between the posts, then I tied pieces of the reflective tape onto the wire.  Now I know the deer love bean plants as they continually ate all of the leaves off the 3 plants I tried to grow in containers last year and now I have about 60 bean plants which have all managed to stay intact.  I have also learned that they like grape leaves so I am going to make sure to cultivate our grape vines for them, especially since they are on the other side of the house, away from the garden.  I am happy to even sacrifice my roses for them as long as they stay away from our garden. 

I am not exactly sure why they have left our garden alone because a friend of mine has her garden surrounded by a 7 foot tall fence with the bottom staked into the ground and still they have all but destroyed hers.  My guess is that I am continuing to do this as a co-creative partnership with Nature and along with the Nature Sanctuary I set aside on the property, it is keeping things in balance.  

It's Planting Time? Then Where's my Garden Deva?

It is finally time to start planting seeds in the garden.  We have 13 beds constructed and 9 of them are filled with the awesome soil that we built.  The bed building ended up being a 2-person job as I have just not developed the upper body strength to enable me to manhandle getting those 3 inch deck screws all the way in.  I had hoped that my husband, who enjoys woodworking, would be the second person and we would push these things out like clockwork, but that proved not to be the case. 

So I just became more flexible as I know this is one of my lessons.  Moving from one task to another depending on the weather and who if anyone was available to help me.  After we had about half a dozen beds complete and I had no help, I started moving dirt instead of building. 

I needed to clear out a row of the finished dirt so that a bed could be laid down on the hard-pack clay dirt and later refilled.  After the first row was cleared my body began complaining.  I did some iliopsosas stretches, took some homeopathic Arnica and took a couple of days off from bending over and shoveling.  But when I got help placing the beds and started filling them by clearing out the next row and walkway, my body just about quit.   

So I got even more flexible.  This time I called Nick Fox, a local young man who did not have a summer job and asked if he would like to come and assist me for $8 per hour.  Now up until this time all of our work has been on a volunteer basis but his aunt said she would help to defray some of the cost so I went for it.  He had already done an ROP construction course so he was good at handling the power tools so I provided the counter pressure and together we finished building all of the 20 beds.  Then we worked together to place, fill and water them.

Nick Fox

Nick shoveling and Claudia watering.

N

Basically all of the first year building of the garden is done.  I can invest no more money into materials and no more free wood has materialized.  There are about 9 more beds that this space can handle, 5 of which are needed if we want to grow corn or sunflowers.  But we do have the meditation bench installed with two large terra cotta planters thanks to Nick and Christopher Fox.

Meditation Bench minus the flowers

And now it is time to plant. 

I should be really excited but my life has taken a really weird turn over this last month.  Up to now I have been using my connection to Nature to guide me in all of this, but I do not feel like I am getting a good connection for the planting and I can't figure out why.  Over the last couple of weeks when this has happened I just moved on to something else, tried to get more flexible, shoveled more dirt.  But there is just so much life hitting me in the face that I can't seem to find my focus anymore.  We planted one 8 foot bed but I am not happy with it.  I am almost sure that we have too many plants all stuck together and it looks as though melons should have been planted at least a month ago at the latest, although the beans will probably do well.

Besides not feeling connected I am being presented with a myriad of other situations that affect the garden and my back is not letting me continue to shovel dirt every day like my mind would like it to.  The landlord finally admitted that there was an ulterior motive to changing from a long term rental to a short term rental agreement and that he will be raising the rent in January by at least $300 per month.  My husband has become increasingly ill and has not been able to help out around the house, much less the property and depends on me to even schedule out what he should try and accomplish each day.  He is also going to be scheduled for surgery within the next 2 months which will take him out of commission for at least 2 months, assuming everything goes well and his compromised health does not impede his healing.   I am even wondering if we need to move somewhere in town to a small place with nothing outdoors to take care of and for me to get a traditional 9 to 5 job. 

You see, as I continue on my healing journey and get healthier and healthier, my husband is on his journey and gets sicker and sicker.  Even though we both have suffered from the same ailments and for the same reasons (depression and colitis), I got indignant when the medical community said they didn’t know what else to do for me, meanwhile I have watched my husband fall into despair and accept their last ditch effort by cutting out parts of his body.  I guess if it had worked I wouldn’t be so worked up, but unfortunately it did not.  One year after a surgery where he almost died and spent 3 weeks in the hospital, where they removed his entire colon, his physical and mental condition is close to the same as it was before the operation.  Why?  Because he has lifestyle diseases and he has not done enough lifestyle changes (in my humble opinion and those of most Naturopathic Doctors) and his medical doctors do not prescribe changes in lifestyle, just more medication, surgery and electroshock therapy.

I was surprised to learn today that my husband did not really understand my motivation for this garden.  I did not build it just because I love to grow stuff, although it is this thought that keeps me shoveling even when I want to give up.  I did not build it because I liked the work of building it, in fact it has been a lot of really hard physical work.  It is a concept I am after here.  I am building and growing this garden because of how important I think it is to help others learn to eat well and stay healthy.  I have named each of the four rows of beds after my grandchildren because I don’t want them to grow up learning to eat poor quality food like I did.  I don’t want my grandchildren to be plagued by preventable diseases like diabetes and depression that they have genetically inherited tendencies towards because of addictions to white flour, white sugar and processed foods.

A few years ago I realized that as our retirement accounts are dwindling that I would need to work for most if not all of the rest of my life.  Well I mused, in that case I had better get healthy now so that I can work and enjoy life and I had best find something to do that I love so that I never have to feel like I am working.  I can honestly say that I feel better than I have in years and I know I will feel even better when I figure out how to use my passion for healthy eating and Myofascial release healing to pay the rent.  Until then, I am as always, on the road.

While The Dirt Has Been Cooking

I am almost to the end of the thirty-day soil cooking process.  The next step is to add more amendments and do more roto tilling.  In order to do the next roto tilling however I must depend on my volunteers and their schedules.  I am not used to this.  I like being able to make a plan and stick to it.  I have been learning a lot about being flexible and going with the flow but this is all really different for me.  But I have no trailer hitch and I don’t have enough strength yet to do more than one pass per day and we need to make three passes this time.

I may have gotten myself a bit off the garden track.  I had hoped to spend this thirty-day period determining exactly what we would grow, starting some seeds and how it would all be inter-planted into the garden.  Instead I was met by the needs of a bookkeeping client and my own need to generate greenbacks for the family,

my need to spend some quality time with my oldest grandchildren... 

and my need to see my youngest niece graduate from Downey High School...

And because we were in SoCal we couldn't pass up the chance to hike in the Laguna Canyon Wilderness Park where my husband and I were once hiking docents...

All of these things seemed easy enough to handle, but the garden piece didn’t happen like I had planned.   I keep reminding myself that I worked on a lot of relationships and that those are what matters most but I am not at all happy with my relationship with the garden.  I did make a full scale drawing of the garden, its three areas and its thirty beds and we did go to the People’s Market and passed out flyers and networked, twice.  But I am just not feeling like I have done enough I guess.

I have found once again that being away from something long enough and letting my system unwind and then returning to it again really underscores the previously un-noticed impact.  It happened the first time when I left my homeland of almost 40 years and moved from Southern California to Farmington, New Mexico, a quiet little town in the four corners, high desert area.    After some months I came back to visit and flew into John Wayne airport in Orange County and as I disembarked from the plane I walked literally into a wall of frenetic energy.  I used to live in this 24/7 I remember thinking to myself.

Recently the same thing happened while assisting my bookkeeping client.  I used to sit in front of a computer for eight to ten hours a day and I never thought it bothered me.  Now I am there for only six hours and even though I take stretch breaks and lunch breaks that include a little Tai Chi when I come home I head straight for my back deck where I can bask in the breeze and the energy of the trees that surround the house.  I come home tired in a way I can’t quite describe that is different from the physical work of the garden.

I also had a much more difficult time being in the Los Angeles area in June.  I thought it was the cumulative effect of traveling and staying there three times in three months together with the unending noise and vibration of sleeping next to the Santa Ana Freeway.  We stayed for three weeks in a row during our first trip but we stayed in a home that was a few miles from the freeway and it seemed to make a big difference for me, or so I thought. 

What I finally figured out was that I had also increased my consumption of caffeine by virtue of drinking what seemed like a harmless iced tea each day on top of my daily cup of green tea.  Whew, what a mistake that was.  My whole system was affected and I was much less able to handle the energy of Los Angeles.  So on the drive home I stuck to water and my edginess all but disappeared.

So my advice for the day; listen to what your body is telling you, keep well hydrated with clean, pure, fresh water (buy a Brita filter and a stainless steel bottle) and cut out the caffeine, especially during these Dog Days of summer.  Of course we already know that alcohol is dehydrating.  Enough said.

South Fork Naturals – In the Beginning

 May 25, 2011

Our first official volunteer day was a rousing success.  We accomplished a lot even though the weather did not exactly cooperate with us, by completing 5 out of the 15 steps for the soil building process.

The day started off marvelously.  It was partly cloudy and cool.  Randy Weiss, Teresa Reed, Michael Paul and myself were the volunteers for the day. Teresa and Randy arrived with the “Barretto,” a red, 15hp, rear-tined rototiller and a new spinning drum composter and it was feeling like Christmas!

 

The Barreto

We began by marking off an area in the north pasture for the Nature Sanctuary.  This is an area that is now roped off with yellow nylon rope and is off limits to humans as it has now been dedicated to Nature.  From there we headed right in to playing with the power equipment.

Randy in the Main Garden

Randy tilled the main bed singlehandedly and Teresa and I took turns tilling the herb garden and what we call the long beds, while Michael documented the process as photographer.  It all went really well and we had a lot of fun.  We broke for lunch, which was provided by Chef Paul.  He presented us with a colorful, organic, vegan salad made with black beans, corn, and red peppers.  Spiced with cumin and lime it was served over a bed of fresh greens with tamari rice crackers.  Can you say delicious?

Randy being helpful.

Teresa having fun.

Claudia working it.

The next step was to spread around the mulch and manures.  We spread: used stall straw, fresh straw and pine shavings.  It started to rain lightly so we all put on rain gear and kept on spreading.  The subsequent layer of soil amendments, were the manures.  As it continued to rain I kept reminding myself how we would have less work to do as we no longer needed to water the beds as the weather was doing it for us.  But things were starting to get messy.  We had steer manure, bat guano and earthworm casings to spread next and we were getting colder and wetter every minute.

These pictures don’t really show the amount of rain, the amount of wet, or the amount of guano that stuck to our clothes, so use your imagination.

Bat WHAT?

These gloves used to be yellow.

Can we roto more NOW?

After all of the spreading it was time to rototill  again incorporating the whole mess into the soil.  Randy manned the Barretto while I started picking up and cleaning tools and Teresa jumped into a hot shower.  By the time we were done, Randy and I were such a mess I took the garden hose and washed us down as there was just too much mud on us to even take into the mud room!

After hot showers and dry clothes we sat down to another of Michael’s amazing meals.  But first we toasted the day with a pomegranate wine from Casa de Fruita.  Then we feasted on marinated, grilled, wild caught Ono; saffron rice; and steamed broccoli and cauliflower.  A beautiful tasting end to a beautiful, if somewhat messy, start to the South Fork Naturals project. 

Our Co-Creative Garden

I am surprised that no one has asked how I could possibly think I could manage a 2000 square foot garden and have it produce enough food to feed 10 families.  After all I have always until fairly recently been a city kid and could barely handle growing houseplants.  Well 2 growing seasons ago I talked my employer into letting us build him a raised bed vegetable garden for his 5 acres in Shingle Springs.  It took a lot of talking as he was of the mind that you just threw some seed into the ground, watered it, and waited for it to grow just like his dad and grandparents had done.  But they didn’t live in Shingle Springs and I’ll bet they didn’t have clay for soil.

A Bed in the Square Foot Garden, Shingle Springs, CA

Michael and I did it with the help of two books about square foot gardening and we made our own soil from a recipe that included compost, peat moss and vermiculite.  Things actually grew!  I surprised myself having only grown radishes and a few herbs in the prior 50 years.  We had tomatoes, zucchini, pumpkins, lettuce, basil, carrots, cucumbers, peppers, chard, kale and of course radishes.  I was absolutely amazed at how different a salad would taste when I used my own home grown produce then when it was only the produce from the store.  Even though most of what I purchased from the store was organic there was still a missing component.  I don’t really know how to describe it except to say that salads from our garden had a different energy about them.  They tasted fresher, better, and more alive.  Was it just that they were so recently picked or had it made a difference that I was out there checking on them each and every day, showering them with love and affection?

Claudia in the Square Foot Garden in Shingle Springs, CA

There is talk in some circles about things like race consciousness, universal intelligence and other entities channeling us earthlings information.  However, many in our culture do not even believe that there is life on other planets so these conversations are very difficult for many to listen to much less comprehend.  Some have told me to not talk of such things so I usually choose my words on these subjects very carefully.  But here on my blog I’ve decided to speak more freely.

Amendment Truckload #1, Garden Valley, CA

I have read a few books by Machaelle Small Wright.  It started with her book on the Medical Assistance Program (M.A.P.) where I was introduced to muscle testing that could be done on yourself using your own fingers (as compared to the 2 person process I knew using extended arms).  Then I became fascinated with her flower essences and learned that they all came from flowers that she had grown.  Next was her books on Co-Creative Gardening where she shared how she set up a partnership with Nature who then gave her the details of what and how to grow her garden.  The books were not just a biography and the development of Perelandra, Ltd., but a How To manual that any of us can use.

Amendment Truckload #2, Garden Valley, CA

Connecting with the Deva of Our Garden and using muscle testing I have been shown where on the 10 acres we inhabit is the best place for our garden.  I sent out that I wanted a garden that was only large enough to require about 2 hours of work per day and would feed approximately 10 families and was given its dimensions, how many raised beds to build and where exactly to place them.  The Deva of Soil for our garden has shown me the types and amounts of amendments to add to the clay that we have and has given me a 13 step process to follow over a 6 week period to turn what was once a small animal pasture into the garden that keeps filling my dreams.

Amendment Truckload #3, Garden Valley, CA

Nature seems to be very happy that we are building this together.  It doesn’t seem as if we humans consult them for much these days which may explain why we are encountering the problems we are with genetically modified animal feed and the problems associated with the weed killer, Round-up.  I still get nervous some days, sliding back into my old habit of feeling like I have to have all the answers before I even start a project and start questioning what in the hell do I think I am doing.  Then I will remember that I am not alone, have never been alone and never will be.

South Fork Naturals (SFN) whose motto is, “Healing ourselves and the planet, one forkful at a time,” will be set up as a small Community Sponsored Agriculture (CSA) organization.  We are looking for 9 more families who are interested in: improving their health by eating more fresh whole foods infused with Divine energy and improving the planet by buying locally from an organization employing natural growing methods.  While most organic CSA’s cost upwards of $600 for a 20 week growing season, often paid up front, we will only be charging $100 a share per production month for the 2011 growing season.   

So leave us a comment and let us know, what is your favorite vegetable?

The Big Ass Garden

I have started plans for a 1500 square foot garden this year.  I keep thinking I must be half crazy but every time I meditate and pray for guidance as to where I am supposed to be and what I should be doing, I am right there in the middle of it, all growing up around me, lush and abundant.  I keep worrying about the up front costs and what if no one wants to buy what I have grown and how I may be spending my retirement funds way too early.  But I keep reminding myself about the lessons in trusting the Universe that I was taught last October when I went to Sedona, Arizona.

I had been guided to attend Myofascial release training in Sedona but by the time I got brave enough to purchase my plane ticket I did not have enough time to find a cheap hotel room to stay in for the week.  As I was riding on the shuttle bus from the airport in Phoenix I apologized to my fellow passengers for talking on my cell phone and explained my need for a room for the next 10 days.  After a few unsuccessful calls a woman a few seats over tapped me on the shoulder and said, “I am on my way home to Sedona and I have an empty guest room that you are welcome to stay in.”  Just as I had been told, here was my “free” room and I could hardly believe it.

After reading the book, The China Study (See the Amazon reviews here) by T. Colin Campbell, PhD and Thomas M. Campbell II, I am more convinced than ever about the need to eat organic whole foods.  Colin describes his early life on a dairy farm and his diet rich in animal protein and milk.  Yet after a 50 year career as a biomedical researcher of disease he and his family are no longer eating any animal products.  He does not ask anyone to change to a vegan diet, he only lays out the facts of the many research studies which point to the American diet as the cause of most of our disease.  We are talking about things like heart disease, diabetes, and cancer, all of which are increasingly touching the lives of many more Americans than ever, even though we have spent countless hours and dollars searching for cures.  This book even has a before and after picture of a coronary artery clogged with plaque that had been returned to full functioning after the patient changed to a whole-foods, plant based diet.

My food sensitivities have driven some of my friends quite crazy as I bring my own insulated lunch box filled with my own safe foods while they dine out.  Muscle testing has taught me that my body prefers organic foods and sometimes there is even a difference between two organic brands, which says to me that where or how something is grown has its effects.  I go through all of this trouble as I continue to get to the bottom of my flatulence and my eczema, since the naturopathic doctor I was working with said that there was nothing else that she could do for me.  All I can say is that I feel better when I eat things that agree with me and I am much more pleasant to be around when a little green cloud of gas is not following behind me.

Now I am taking this whole health and eating adventure to the next level as I begin to grow food for myself and others.  At first I was just thinking about organic growing methods on a small scale but now I have found out that there is a need to protect our biodiversity and so I also want to concentrate on growing with seeds that have not been changed for the last 50 years (heirloom).  This first year may get off to a slow start with the odd weather (it is May and we are still getting rain and freezing temps) along with the 6 week process that we will be taking to get this clay soil to resemble something friable to grow with.  The first step is to add humus to the clay.  We will be rototilling three times this next week and incorporating into the soil: grass clippings, 2 bales of straw, 5 large bags of pine shavings, 12 cubic feet of shredded cedar bark, 6 cubic feet of steer manure, 50 pounds of bat guano and 60 pounds of earthworm casings.  After letting it rest for 3 days we will then cover it with newspaper and black plastic and let it cook for 30 days at which point the seeds from the grass and wildflowers that we don’t wish to have growing will have been killed off.  Then we will be adding over 300 pounds of stuff for fertilizing and conditioning before we can ever start planting.

We spent this weekend in SoCal with family where we got to witness the urban life and all of its trappings.  But I am happy to be going home to our goats and wide open spaces.  I wish I was better at verbally communicating what all of this means to me, wishing I could help my family understand why “getting a job” is not right for me.  I found myself starting to feel guilty for not having a “real job” like everyone else and then yesterday it happened.  Seeds I had planted years ago sprouted when my sister Carol said to me, “I hardly ever drink soda any more.  After you told me about how it leaches the calcium out of our bones I can almost hear it escaping on the occasions when I do drink it.”  And to think, I never thought anyone was listening to me.

Where's My Cheese?

While on vacation for three weeks in Southern California, celebrating the release of my husband Michael’s first full sized book of poetry, I got to actually sit down and spend portions of multiple days reading.  I started by reading the book “The World Peace Diet” by Will Tuttle, PhD.  Although I found it difficult at times to get my head around his major premise, that by discontinuing to eat animals or using their by-products we will reduce the violence in our world, I did start to become very unsettled about eating animals as I kept recalling our drive south on Interstate 5 from Sacramento to Los Angeles.

Just south of Sacramento the landscape changed from suburbs to agriculture.  It consisted mostly of vineyards just starting to turn green after winter’s dormancy and dairy farms.  A relaxing scene at first sight when contrasted with the city and its population and infrastructure density, but on closer inspection, even while whizzing by at 70+ mph, revealed mountains of cow manure that were up to 3 stories high and cows that were stacked together more like cord wood than living creatures.  Dr. Tuttle gives us great detail about what it is like to live the life of a dairy cow; producing 100 pounds of milk per day, being artificially inseminated (repeatedly), and immediately being separated from her calves at birth as compared to; living in the wild, nursing her calf and generating the maximum needed of only 25 pounds of milk per day.  His descriptions of these cows and what I have always thought was their bucolic life on the farm, reveals a tortured lifespan of 4 years before they are shipped off to the slaughterhouse.

Dr. Tuttle goes on to talk about the human health side of ingesting cow’s milk.  He says about milk, “Besides the naturally occurring human toxins in cows’ milk, like IGF-1 growth factor, casein, estrogen, soporific hormones, lactase, pus, bacteria, parasites, and the apparently addictive casomorphins, … there are artificially introduced growth hormones, milk increasing hormones, antibiotics, tranquilizers, and feeds high in pesticide residues.  So-called organic milk may contain smaller quantities of the artificial toxins, but not of the natural ones, whose presence in cow’s milk reminds us that this is a food that is designed for calves, not for humans.”  So even though I insist that my husband purchase organic milk and pay the extra price tag, I learn that it may all be for naught as science is starting to show us that it is the naturally occurring substances in milk that may actually be promoting cancer and a host of other human ills such as: allergies, asthma, eczema, diabetes, obesity and heart disease.  It is starting to look like I need to stay away from cheese on a permanent basis so I can clear up my allergies and eczema.

I have had a love – hate relationship with dairy products for years.  As a kid I was always told to drink all of my milk to grow strong teeth and bones and as an adult that by eating cheese I could increase my calcium intake and avoid osteoporosis.  I always loved ice cream and extra cheese on my nachos and pizza, after all what else in life was there to live for except to eat the things you love?  Then came issues of lactose intolerance so I started taking supplemental enzymes to help my digestion but that just got to be too inconvenient so I just quit drinking milk altogether and switched to diet soda.  Milk hadn’t helped protect my teeth anyway as my mouth was riddled with fillings which started when I was 7.  Even with my cheese consumption and mega calcium supplementation a recent bone density scan revealed that I have osteopenia so I guess my years of drinking carbonated beverages has caught up to me after all.  I tried to rid cheese from my diet recently when I found the dairy-free, gluten-free, sugar-free diet plan set out by Dr. Mark Hyman, which I followed pretty religiously for 6 weeks.  I don’t miss fluid milk, but I do miss my cheese.  In fact that was one of my indiscretions while on vacation, most notably the nachos at Wahoo’s with extra cheese.  I noticed that I felt bloated afterwards and developed a stuffy nose.  Hmmm.  Perhaps my taste buds don’t always lead me in the best direction, I surmised.

But it was Dr. Tuttle’s chapter on “The Metaphysics of Food” that really threw me into a tailspin.   Here he says, “ If we take another look at the egg, bacon, or cheese we are purchasing and eating, we see clearly that it is a living vibratory embodiment of cruelty, enslavement, terror, and despair… blended to create a “food” that is toxic at the deepest levels.”  I have been studying metaphysical healing in different forms since 1997, working with Chinese Medicine, the body’s meridians and acupuncture sites, energy healing modalities (Reiki, Polarity, Touch for Health, Reflexology, Diksha), flower essences, essential oils and recently the Medical Assistance Program (MAP) as set out by Machaelle Small Wright and Myofascial Release as taught by John F. Barnes.  I know from personal experience that subtle energy healing works and I wonder, why have I not thought before about the energy of the foods I have been eating all of these years?

To make matters worse; I thoroughly enjoyed the apple wood smoked, medium rare, 6 ounce, sirloin steak that I ate while overlooking the Santa Monica bay while dining at Kincaid’s where we spent most of Michael’s book profits at once on a dinner for two.  After all, I am a second-generation American diet eater on my mother’s side of the family where my grandmother was unable to remember the first nine years of her life before emigrating from Poland, which she attributed to dealing with a lack of food and hunger.  In fact I have been trying to eat as much protein as I could get my hands on in an effort to stabilize my blood sugar after being diagnosed with hypoglycemia when I was in my twenties and told to eat a high protein, low-carbohydrate diet.  So between my family’s diet and my doctors prescribed diabetic diet plan I have been pretty well entrenched into trying to get three squares per day to include at least 33% of the meal comprised of protein from animal sources and we haven’t even touched upon the effects of advertising or what this country holds in its consciousness about eating animals.

And so I spent my vacation weighing every one of my meal choices.

What do you think? Take a peek at my CMT Bio flyer. PLEASE!

I Remember Fried Eggs Or How I Demonstrated the Mind-Body Connection

I can’t say that the last few days of being down with a sprained ankle and a head cold have been exactly unproductive, though it often felt that way.  In my skewed way of looking at the world I had to work really hard at letting my body rest and be happy about it.  You see I am one of those people whose Things To Do List is yards long.  Most of what is on the list are things I want to do as compared to the things I have to do like sleep and eat, but sitting on the couch with my leg elevated has never been one of those listed items.  There was one thing that helped me get through this inactivity besides my new laptop and that was the weather. It has been cold, dark and rainy and for a few days I got to enjoy watching the snow falling.

 This forced inactivity has given me the time to sit and pull a description of my massage therapy practice together and to learn the hard way that Facebook Pages is not operating correctly.  It seems like FB could disable that part of the program if it isn’t going to work as I have now created 2 pages for my massage practice, one that I cannot find or edit and another that I cannot invite anyone to look at.  Yesterday it seemed like all of this was a giant waste of time, which is something I detest, until I remembered that it did enable me to help my husband promote his new book and poetry readings from “Dog Whistle Politics” which is for sale at www.lummoxpress.com  (Shameless Plug!).

Now that I am past the Facebook frustration I am actually glad that it happened.  I really like the Facebook Event I ended up with much better than the first one that was lost in cyber-space.  It’s just one more time I get to learn the lesson of patience and giving up control.  Living as a Recovering Control Freak can be so exhausting at times.  If you have ever watched the sitcom “Friends” and have laughed at the character of Monica then you could be laughing at me as well.  I didn’t end up in Fat Camp as a child, like Monica, but I was only 5lbs away from being the skinniest girl in my class, even though I ate like a horse and I would wear a t-shirt with a couple of fried eggs printed on the front so we could all laugh about my flat chest. 

Yesterday my leg really felt good, in fact it felt so good that I was glad that some bruising showed up as I was afraid that my husband might think I had been faking the whole thing.  But by taking fast action and following RICE (Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation) and Reiki (a life-force energy process) I turned what could have been a 2-week recovery process into just a matter of days.  And by using Arnica sublingually in a homeopathic form and topically as a cream I was able to further reduce the swelling and bruising that normally happens with an ankle sprain. 

In fact it felt so good that I was willing to do some light grocery shopping with my husband as driver.  But this is where the story changes.  After the third time of circumventing a large grocery store I started thinking and feeling like I didn’t want to do this anymore.  My ankle was starting to hurt and I was frustrated at how I had to go back to the Jelly aisle.  I was looking for the Organic Peanut butter which was on sale and not to be found in the Natural Foods aisle, only to discover after going to the Jelly aisle that the Organic Peanut butter that was advertised as being on sale was actually Peanut Butter SPREAD and contained sugar and palm oil as well as some nuts.  So now we had to go back to the Natural Food aisle, as we needed the nut butter to make the snack we were taking to our celebratory final Mind-Body class on Tuesday.

So I am starting to grumble, fuss and fume about all of this when I remember the newest acronym I’ve learned, SBRC (Stop, Breathe, Reflect, Choose) and I put a halt to my negative thinking.  “Good,” I thought, “my ankle hardly hurts now!” and we continued on with the Peanut Butter mission.  A great example of mind over matter and pushing through the pain, I reflected yesterday.  And then today comes and I find that by not really listening to my body which was telling me that it had just about had enough and concentrating only on my ego control freakiness, my ankle once again hurts and all I want to do now is sit with my leg up!

So in closing I say to any that will listen, the Mind-Body Connection is not a one-way, top-down conversation, but an active listening dialog.  And whether there is empirical data or not many of us out here know that it is a two-way street that takes us towards wellness and not what the pill-pusher doctors or the cut-it-out surgeons purport to be for our own good.  I say, let My body decide!

Ultra-Mind Solution Week #4

We have now completed the fourth week of the Ultra-Mind Solution. The diet portion is working really well. Michael and I are satisfied most days and he has lost 10 pounds. He is living proof what I have thought many times, that if we were to give up eating white things (bread, sugar, potatoes, rice) many of us could eat what we wanted without being overweight. I know that is an over-simplification but it is a good way to start at least looking at what you eat if for no other reason than to be able to decrease the size of your wardrobe by not needing multiple sizes.

One of the keys I have found over the last two weeks in particular is to have sufficient portable foods. I worked outside of our home for twenty hours for each of the last two weeks for the first time in over a year. In fact it was a year ago February that Michael had his colon removal surgery. Additionally it takes at least thirty minutes to drive to the nearest big city, if you can call Placerville or Auburn a big city, so grocery shopping can turn into a three hour excursion which means that at least one of us is going to get hungry and it’s usually me.

Although I fudged on the ‘mindful’ eating aspects of the program by drinking a home-made protein shake on the drive to work it did keep me away from my once familiar daily fast-food drive thru’s (can you say high fat and refined carbs). I now have this canvas bag that I carry with me whenever I leave the house. I check it before I leave and make sure that it has sufficient snacks and water. Lately I take things like: roasted nuts, raw seed and nut mixes, dried fruit, kale chips, apples, pears, and Michaels new favorite: Ultra-Mind Nut Bars or energy squares. You can make a meal out of this stuff and even though we make our own kale chips and Nut Bars you can buy them at the natural food stores. If you are really pressed for time and always need to grab something as you run out the door, try keeping a box of nut bars on your shelf. Not granola bars which are mostly sugar and carbs, think nuts and seeds for protein. I like Kind Bars and Trio Bars the best but because we are sugar free right now, even those won’t work for us.

Here are a couple of pictures of what we have been eating.

Coconut Curried Yellow Dal.

Raw Cashew Garlic Pesto Cheez on Flax Crackers. 

Now this recipe is not from the Ultra-Mind Solution but came to me by way of Joy Houston.  If you have ever been curious about a raw foods diet she has an awesome way to get you started.  She has a 14-day diet plan including shopping lists and full directions. Check it out at www.RockingBodyRawFood.com.

Tofu marinated with herbs and balsamic, sautéed chard with shallots, with

 butternut squash and pomegranate risotto.  

The risotto isn't from the Ultra-Mind Program either but a recipe I found and used at Thanksgiving and it is one of my new favorites.

I am so thankful for all the new recipes I have found this last year.  I love to eat and learning to eat gluten-free, sugar-free, dairy-free, and food-sensitivity-free has been a real challenge.  The search was worth it as I can now say I no longer cringe when thinking about what I am going to eat at my next meal.  Now it is like, "Oh Boy! Is it time for lunch yet?"

Help! My kitchen looks like a freaking pharmacy.

Help My kitchen looks like a freaking pharmacy.

This entry is more of a picture essay on the current state of affairs with Michael and I and our third week of the Ultra Mind Solution program from Mark Hyman, M.D.  Michael keeps saying how this program is not for the poor or those that are busy. I continue to say that it is not for the faint of heart. Some may ask “Why are you going to all of this trouble and posting it all on a blog?” My thoughts have always been that we should share what we know with others, freely. I see no reason why others must always learn everything the “hard” way. If I can help someone out from what I have already learned, I think I have a moral imperative to pass on that information. There are others that don’t share this viewpoint and keep most things close to their vest, but honestly, I don’t understand them at all. This is not some sort of contest, living here on earth, and only the winners move on. I believe that we are here to learn from each other and uplift each new generation with the knowledge we have gathered so that they can build upon that and reach even higher.

For those of you that have seen my latest kitchen you can attest to the fact that my counters never look to be in this much disarray. But the shear volume of supplements is amazing.  Add to that the 6 times a day when they are taken and you can see the complexity of this undertaking. Needless to say the coffee pot is just sitting idle these days. I wonder what else it can be used for?

Here is a shot of just three days of supplementation that my husband Michael is currently taking. And this does not count the bottles and jars that are in the refrigerator or the three types of fiber that he adds to juice or the B-12 injections. We have only started him on 3 of the 7 protocols that his body appears to need help with for the time being. After all there is just so much you can swallow and purchase at one time. I actually built an excel spreadsheet so we could keep track of all of this. Every third day I use muscle testing along with Angelic guidance to determine what Michael and I should be taking. The first two times were pretty exhausting.

And to think I was the kid who wouldn't eat vegetables! This is our first ever Ratatoullie and it was absolutely delicious. I am not real fond of leftovers in general but I think I ate 4 of the 6 servings this recipe made. I never knew that you could cook vegis in a way that actually made them taste sweet. Amazing, is all I can say.

Besides being a moral imperative to share with others, why am I doing all of this?

1.  Looks like I am going to live a long time so I want to be healthy and happy along the way.
2.  My depression has improved with making these changes and I have been off of prescription drugs for over a year now.
3. I can't stand seeing anyone, much less my family members, suffering from ailments that I know can be cured just by changing our diets.
4. When people are concerned about the cost of eating organic I want to be able to document how prevention is still cheaper than trying to fix the mess you make of your body later.