Free to Eat Healthy

I have been reading quite a bit lately and it has struck me that Wall Street does not have any desire to see us eating healthy. Their goal is to make money at all costs. Sad to think some people care so little about others. So waiting for our government to legislate healthy food will never happen. They are slaves to corporate money and greed. But we can make a difference one choice at a time. If we do not take interest and control of what we eat our lives will only get shorter as the food in the supermarkets becomes more corrupt. How can we do this? One step at a time. The following is a summation of a list from Holy Cows and Hog Heaven - Salatin
1. Find out what can be grown locally, so as to know what can be available.
2. Visit the local farmer's market and if you do not see something you are looking for ask, they may know someone who sells it.
3. Put our the word you are looking for something locally, or grow it yourself.
4. Ask the local coop if they know who sells direct to the consumers and can you get this information.
5. Search the internet, put in the food you are looking for and see what comes up.
6. Contact your state representative of the North American Farmers Direct Marketing Association.
7. Join a Weston Price Foundation Chapter (http://www.westonaprice.org/ ) , or start one, the same with Slow Food (http://www.slowfoodusa.org/?gclid=CJTGnp3d0LECFW1j7Aod6zMArg). Log onto www.eatwild.com

Greed will slowly corrupt all areas of life if we let it and companies will shortcut in their goal to profit. If you honestly look at the corporate food industry and find just where your food came from, you will make changes in your life that will result in better health and more freedom. If everyone put in a backyard garden or containers you can begin to eat healthier. Cut meat down to twice a week, changes won't all come at once then, but once you eat healthier choices, you will be amazed at the difference, and will make more changes. Also, in our techno world society is becoming more unconnected personally, so, get connected, to your neighbors, to like minded gardeners, to beyond organic farmers, search, research, ask, relate and you will find that changing for your health will be easier. Research laws and definitions of labels. For example 'Organic' does not mean it is 100% organic, it may have anywhere from 5-30% inorganic substances in it, thanks to the VP from General Mills (sarcasm intended) who made sure he was on the USDA team who created the definition. Read labels, if you see long names you cannot pronounce, look for something else with real ingredients. Look for 100% grassfed beef, pastured poultry and then check to make sure they really are. Go to the local farm, look around. If they don't let you, leave and find an open grower to buy from. Yes, this takes time. My question is: Are you and your family worth it? How much does your health and freedom mean to you. And buy freedom, I mean the freedom to know where your food comes from, how it lives its life, the goals of the producer and the benefits of eating the way God created food, not how man has destroyed it, so he may control it, and put your money there. Take it one step at a time. Such as: This week I will buy 100% organic heirloom tomatoes. One thing to note: be prepared to eat these foods quickly as they are live and will deteriorate, unlike corporate food that does not break down ever. You are free to invest in quality and eat to be healthy.

Getting Real

So just how do we eat better for better health? Michael Pollan give's us some tips in his book I will sum them up, but again read Omnivore's Dilemma, to understand ...

Outline from the Book, credit to Pollan:
  "Eat Real Food: 1. Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food.
                             2. Don't eat anything with more than five ingredients, or with
                                 ingredients you don't recognize or can't pronounce.
                             3. Don't eat anything containing high-fructose corn syrup.
   Buy Real Food: 1. Get your food from the outside perimeter of the supermarket and try to
                                  avoid the middle aisles.
                             2. Don't buy or eat anything that doesn't eventually rot.                                 
                             3. Shop the farmer's market, through a CSA, a farmstand whenever you
                                 can.
                             4. Be your own food detective.
  Eats Real Meals 1. Cook
                             2. Garden
                             3. Try not to eat alone
                             4. Eat slowly and stop when you're full
                             5. Eat at the table. "

If I could have said it better I would have, but Michael Pollan said it best :) And this is enough 'Real Food' for thought today!

You Don't Always Get What You Pay For

I have done some intense research of late after reading the Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan. I have inherently known that 'Fast Food' was not good for you and thereby pass by but not through their industrialized food processing distribution center. As research is coming out on the ingredients and synthetics in fast food it amazes me what we have been eating and why we are not any sicker than we are. First, let's put this into perspective, you shop for quality in every other area of your life, but we bargain for food. This isn't how our eating used to be. Food is filled with intense labor...growing, harvesting, preparing, or hunting and gathering, and even down to shopping to find beyond organic food...it takes time. We can do this ourselves or we can pay someone what they deserve for this intense labor. They do not farm to get rich they farm because they enjoy it. However,  car shopping, shoe shopping, or house shopping, also take time and labor in the research before purchase process. Though we do not do this three times a day, buying quality still takes time. Knowing this, the food industry and our government have joined forces to give the illusion of convenient cheap food, when we shop. But in essence it is the most costly meal you can eat. That cheap carton of eggs has come through the industrailized food process that uses more energy to fuel it than all of our cars do. 80% of the corporate food chain cost is in energy. Fuel to plant, harvest, move to slaughterhouses, ship around the world...and the saddest part of that, is of the 20% actually spent for the food very little ever gets back to the farmer. Not to mention the tax subsidies given that come from a multibillion dollar food subsidy program.
     In order to save money/make money, same difference here, the industry has narrowed our diverse food palate down to two main ingredients and they have altered those scientifically and chemically so they no longer have the benefits the originals had. Those two foods are Corn and Soybeans. The percentages of foods that have these products in them are astounding. Soda for instance has 100% corn in it in the form of High Fructose Corn Syrup and other corn products creations. All industry meat has been altered to consume corn. It is sickening to hear how horrible this diet is on cows and how most when slaughtered have liver disease among other illnesses from this very unhealthy diet. We as humans were not meant to eat high corn diets either, and yet the corporations have hidden it in every processed food they can in hundreds of different forms and laced it with corporately created taste. Forms they have scientifically and chemically altered to sell and make money for them, with little care to our health. So if you believe you get what you pay for with food, think again. Those 'save money' deals with loss leaders or coupons are the industry's way of selling to you so they make money and they in truth put you and your children's health in jeopardy. So how do we feed ourselves to get healthy or even just healthier...First get a copy of the book and read it. No matter how hard some of the reading is to your sensitive palate read it all the way through, it has a very hope filled ending. Next start to experience your food and what it takes from its beginning to its end. I will give some of the tips for changing our habits in future posts, but for now just start to look at your food from its incepetion. Was your corn, soy or tomato seed altered to add herbicides to it genetically? Was your dairy cow forced to eat corn 24/7 for rapid growth and faster movement to the slaughterhouse, something their bodies are not created to do so they get bloat and liver disease and live out their days in cramped crowded squallor? Were your chickens fed so much grain and antibiotics for rapid growth that just before their demise they have no leg strength to even stand and have not eaten their proper diet? Did your tomatoes come from GMO seed that was hung upside down in a greenhouse and fed fertilizer 24/7? Once we start to believe we deserve quality food, our choices will begin to change and so will our health. Our palates will no longer be satified with synthetic food by products, but will enjoy the true taste of food. Your project... read the above book :) or at least take one food product and research back to find out what is in it or how it lived its life, before it hit the shelves. One food item I will never eat ever again is chicken nuggets, something about plastic food with lab created taste just does not appeal to my tastebuds any longer. You will read this and either be frustrated and decide not to pursue this because ignorance is better in your busy, financially challenged life or you decide "Ignorance is not bliss, at least not if you're a person who cares about the health of your body and your world." -Pollan Which do you deserve?

Assurances of purpose :)

Two friends in two days have reminded me of their desire to get some more info from the life skills I have learned through out many trials and errors. I have been slack with my posts but will update on our course of events. We planted our garden and have now harvested most of it. We are readying it to replant, as we have time for a second harvest. To ready it we have tilled in the leaves we mulched our plants with, to save water and have added chicken manure compost from our little flock of birds :). We will till this in soon and replant and remulch our seedlings when they first appear. We harvested 4 varieties of heirloom corn, three varieties of bush string beans, zucchini, yellow squash, golden zucchini, butternut, and an acorn squash. We also have had five watermelons and 6 pumpkins finish up, though there are still more on the vines. We also harvested black beans and dried them the rest of the way to store. To dry them we just laid them out on our dehydrator trays and let them sit for several days to a week. We cut up gallons of string beans and cut and froze them for later eating and shelled and froze some of our butter beans as well as dried some. Tomatoes are now coming in and the weeks we had zucchini, butter beans, onions, and carrots we had harvested, we cut up tomatoes and put them all together with the veggies in a soup mix, to which I added oregano, basil and garlic to my tastes and pressure canned them in pint jars for 40 minutes. As local produce has come in I have gone to the farmer's market and bought locally grown peaches which I put up in the freezer for smoothies or swirls (Swirls is frozen fruit run through my champion juicer to make an ice cream consistency). Remember the trick to shopping the farmer's market is knowing the prices and what you are willing to pay. If you are not willing to pay 35 bucks for chilean grapes, check out the $13.00 pineapples available, until california grapes come in and the price goes down, then buy several cases and freeze some for snacking and dry some for raisins. Loss leaders in supermarket ads give you the best idea of what is in season and what is plentiful. It is better to buy quality than cheap, so find out where things are grown, if it is local their costs for transporting are much less. Do not get a bargain unless you can prepare your food right away. I bought 40 lbs of bananas for $5, because they were ripe. I came right home and ran them in the blender and froze them for smoothies and some I placed on dryer sheets for fruit roll ups. If you have too many of something preserve it naturally. First choice for me is freeze or dry. I can last as canning kills the enzymes in food that help and aid in proper digestion of foods. Watermelons are cheap now so I will cut them up and dehydrate them, which gives me a treat that tastes like candy :) for the winter months. I dehydrate all veggies at 105 degrees to keep the enzymes alive. Well we are remodeling our kitchen and I need to go supervise my wonderful workers :) Have a blessed day!

How do these items fit into your gardening plan?

These items Include some interesting things in their category; so just how do they fit into my gardening days? My son looked at them and said, "Well you have a prety good start on a boiler maker." These items however are my garden medicine cabinet. They are all natural and they are pretty easy to come by and not very expensive. They all come out of Jerry Baker's, Giant Book of Garden Solutions. I highly recommend this book, as we have found through the years some wonderfully innovative solutions to our garden needs. I will give you the one I use in garden prep, for the rest please go get the book, it will become one of your most basic necessities for success. We start with what Jerry calls the Super Soil Sandwich Dressing and it makes a huge difference in the outcome of our harvest.

     Simply take 1 can of beer, 1 can of regular cola, 1/2 cup of ammonia, and a 1/2 c. instant tea granules. Mix in a large bucket and then put in a 20 gallon hose end sprayer, then spray your garden until it is saturated. It is simple easy and most of all safe. I love the ingenuity to use such things as Cayenne and Hot Sauce to rid my garden of pests, but not injure them. This is a must have for those who wish to keep pesticides out of their food supply, yet protect all of your hard work. I am heading out to spray a rose tonic on my newly planted roses. They should feel great with such items as whiskey, vitamin B1, warm tea, liquid dish soap and peroxide. Wonderful, safe and very smart for the garden.

Shopping the Farmer's Market

It amazes me what I learn or see everytime I go to the Farmer's Market. It takes a certain time investment to make your time profitable there and to be willing to look for the proverbial needle in a haystack. I like to buy fresh local produce for the most part, sometimes I have to go international if I need something not grown in the USA, but by and large I can find it grown local or in the USA. I also have to ask questions about the handling of the produce. Such as gassing processes of most vegetables, not sold by organic distributors. It has been a practice to gas fruits and veggies to preserve them longer, but what then are we ingesting? Asking questions and demanding non GMO foods is important to your health and well being. I am not covering the grocery stores because they buy their produce from the same places and treat their foods the same. In a supposedly health concious country, it is amazing that major distributors of food also deal in the pesticides and pharmaceutical drugs we have used on our food or need when our bodies start to deteriorate from ingesting poisons. It may seem radical or come to some people as what can I do about it? You can speak up with the other little voices and then vote smartly. Make sure you are not voting for people supported by these mega corporations, such as Monsanto and Con Agra. It is so important that we not allow greedy corporations to sacrifice our health for their wallets. Ask before you buy, Grow your own, or buy from local organic small farmers. After all it is your health and your families! 

Coming out of Hibernation :) into the garden...

Well, it is time to arise and begin. We began the process of tilling the leaf cover into the soil and prepping it for the garden we will begin to plant. We sat down with our seeds, list of produce we plan to raise this year, and graphing paper. We laid out the garden for the upcoming year. We covered what goes in the square food garden frames and what will go in wide raised bed rows. Our soil is being tested to see if we need to add anything to it for the upcoming growing season. The remains of the fall garden are being harvested. We picked and shelled the peas and threw the pea vines to the chickens. I have started to dehydrate the cabbage that we don't use fresh. We have one plant of broccoli we are waiting to finish going to seed so we can collect the seeds. We have been cleaning the isles of chickweed and are getting ready to clean out the chicken house to mulch the paths with and cover over with leaves to begin to compost the refuse for when we till next fall. We have also checked the sprinkler system and cleaned it up for set up in April. We have begun to clean up the grapes and see if we need to replace any. I am excited to get out of doors and into the garden again. We have begun to stir the compost heap and overlayer it with the chickweed and leaves so it will begin to heat up again and break down the garden refuse into good compost for later usage.
     The tomato bed is getting ready to get a good fence around it after last years revelation, when the rabbit ate my first tomato planting. The trellis' are cleaned off and ready to be put back up and we have some work to do on the blackberries, they need to be cleaned, mulched and cuttings taken for new bushes. Within the next two weeks we will put out sugar peas and get the cold frame ready to cover them if we have frost. We will feed the carrots fertilizer and clip back the asparagus. We will also plant potatoes on the dark nights of February. I also will begin my greenhouse seeding for later transplant, Kale and some broccoli, maybe a few cabbage too. All of this will be journaled and recorded, especially the new types of veggies I bought to try. Everything planted will be heirlooms.
     The key for a good start to the season is the soil testing and the leaf mulch that we put in the garden in the fall, being turned in. You can plant all the seeds you want, but if the soil has no nutrients to support them it is pointless. Gardens are a lot of backbreaking work and at times a good deal of heartbreak. It is better to be prepared. Last year we never mulched our plants after we planted them and they were choked out, or deprived of water in the drought months, because the sun dried out the ground and the weeds stole the moisture. Your preparations are the most impostant thing you do. So now is the most important time of your garden. Get your soil tested; turn in mulch and whatever recommendations the  Agriculture extension recommends on your soil test and make sure you have a good watering system.
     If this is your first year to garden 'START SMALL' I cannot emphasize this enough. Our first garden was hit by a huge drought and we lost almost everything we planted, the soil was poor and the plants fought with the weeds. I worked my behind off to fight the weeds and lost. The next year I did similar with the prep in place and ended up with too much produce for me to put up properly. We had over 20 bushels of zucchini that year and we would give some to people everytime they came over, soon they stopped visiting. So pick 8-10 things you are sure your family will eat and look and read about recommendations for your family size. Our garden is now 1/4 acre for the four of us.
    We do plant 150 plus tomato plants because I make 100 jars of spaghetti/pizza sauce, 52 quarts of stewed tomatoes, 50 quarts of soup mix and 25 quarts of tomatoe juice, I also dehydrated 2-6gallons of 'sun-dried' tomatoes for sandwiches and pizza topping. I plant a 75 foot row of a variety of squash, 3-4 rows of corn, 1 row of pole string and lima beans, 3 rows of bush string and lima beans, 1 row of sweet peppers, etc. We have figured out what we need and we try to not waste any of it. This is the key of start small and work on your plans. It cost us a lot of money in the early years because of failure to plan and prep. A garden is hard work, probably the hardest work you will do outside and being smart by preparing will help make the harvest that much tastier. Happy prepping!