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The Hen Who Laid Invisible Eggs
The spring sun smiled brightly on the farmyard, where about a dozen hens and one strutting rooster scratched at the ground, pecking up bits of grain, small stones, tender young weeds, and juicy worms and bugs. They especially loved the worms and bugs.
One especially fine looking hen would periodically stop and turn in the sunlight so the sun could catch the gold lacing design on her feathers. She knew her feathers glowed golden in the sunlight and she was very proud of them. She posed a great deal when the farmer’s wife came to feed the chickens and collect the eggs, and she particularly enjoyed the compliments that the farmer’s wife gave her each day.
“Aren’t you a fine one, then?” the farmer’s wife would say. “So fluffy and shiny looking!” She called her Goldie for the gleaming gold in her feathers.
The farmer’s wife had a soft spot for another hen also. This hen was a middle aged hen, who was anything but fluffy and gleaming. She was rather thin looking, with an unimpressive gray and white feathering. She stood very upright, with a neck that went straight up on one end, and a tail that went straight up on the other end. Her breed was known for outstanding egg production though, and over the last few seasons she had proven her worth by being the soonest in the spring to lay, the last in the fall to stop laying, and the most consistent layer in between. She also normally sat at least one clutch of eggs each year, bringing new chicks into the barnyard to replace the aging hens.
When the farmer’s wife noticed this hen start to get broody, she would leave her alone and let her hatch the clutch of eggs. A good farmer’s wife knows that chicks from a good egg layer are worth more than the eggs, and lets her sit a clutch now and again if she gets broody.
The farmer’s wife named the skinny hen “Fayoumi”, and talked to her each day as she passed by to feed the hens and gather the eggs. Sometimes she’d pick her up and smooth her feathers, and Fayoumi always let her.
If a farm has good egg layers, then they’ll get an egg from every hen at least part of the time. This is how they know that all the hens are laying. This year, the farmer’s wife kept waiting in the spring for all the hens to be laying. But she never gathered more than 11 eggs. One of the hens was not laying this year.
The farmer’s wife told her husband that she knew that Fayoumi was getting past her prime, and maybe she was not laying this year. She felt a little sad about it, because Fayoumi was one of her favorite hens, and she had been such a good layer. A successful farm just does not have room to feed a hen that does not lay eggs, and Fayoumi was just not attractive enough to sell as a pet. The farmer’s wife decided to wait and watch, and see if she could see for certain whether Fayoumi was still laying or not.
Every morning, Fayoumi woke with the sun. She quietly climbed into the nest box and laid her egg, then she covered it with straw before hopping down and leaving the henhouse. She’d go off to hunt and scratch for a few hours, then she’d find a shady spot for an afternoon nap during the heat of the day. After her nap, she’d busily scratch until dusk, when she’d skitter into the henhouse with the other hens to roost for the night.
Goldie followed a different schedule. Goldie liked to wake up later in the day. She’d stay on the night roost until noon, and then she’d hop down and wander sleepily out into the yard. She would scratch around for a few hours, always appearing at the feeder when the farmer’s wife fed the chickens in the evening.
Sometime during the afternoon, most of the hens would head, one by one, for the nest boxes to lay their eggs. There were five nest boxes, and they liked the middle ones best. Fayoumi laid her egg in a corner nest box, and the other hens did not like the corner. The hens would deposit an egg, and then cackle loudly to announce their accomplishment. The rooster would cluck proudly to claim his part in the job.
Goldie never went first. She always waited until the other hens had all been in. She’d climb into the nest box, sit there for a while, and cackle loudly. She’d climb out as the rooster cheered her on.
But Goldie never laid an egg. She did not know how, and she couldn’t do it. She would always pick a nest box with eggs already in it, so no one would ever know she did not lay an egg.
One day, Goldie went into the henhouse too early, and all of the nest boxes were full except the one in the corner. Goldie decided she’d hide there until the other hens left, and then she’d pretend to lay an egg. To her surprise, she found an egg, at the back of the nest box, under the straw! She waited a few minutes, then cackled happily, and she uncovered the egg and hopped down.
The next day, she checked the corner box again, and sure enough, there was an egg under the straw again. From that day on, she used the corner nest box, and simply uncovered Fayoumi’s egg, and claimed it as her own. Of course, she had no idea whose egg she was claiming.
Fayoumi knew though. She noticed Goldie’s fraud. Fayoumi now knew that Goldie could not lay an egg. She also knew that Goldie was claiming Fayoumi’s egg, and she was not happy about it. She knew it would not last though – fraud has a way of exposing itself.
Goldie was not happy either. She lived in fear that someone would notice that she was not able to lay an egg. This made her feel like she had to make herself look more important, and like unhappy people often do, she decided to make someone else look bad, so she could try to make herself look better. Fayoumi looked like an easy target – she was skinny and not so young anymore, and she was quiet. So Goldie started to insult Fayoumi.
“Look at that lazy chicken,” she would cluck in the afternoon. “What is she doing taking a nap in the middle of the day? She should be laying an egg! I’ll bet she can’t even lay an egg anymore!” Goldie insulted and criticized and meanmouthed Fayoumi worse every day.
Then one day, Fayoumi skipped her afternoon nap. Instead, she found a bush in the corner of the farmyard, and began scratching out a nest. It took a few days to get it just right, and Goldie started criticizing her about sneaking off to take a nap where no one could see.
On the fourth day after Fayoumi had started making her nest, she was nowhere to be found in the farmyard! She was not in the henhouse at night, and she was not scratching in the yard when Goldie was up! Goldie thought Fayoumi had just run away. Goldie smiled at that, because this was proof that she was right about Fayoumi all along!
That afternoon, Goldie sauntered proudly into the henhouse, ready to begin her daily ruse. She hopped up into the corner nest box, but there was no egg! Goldie shrugged and moved over to a middle nest with several eggs already in it and faked laying an egg there. When there was no egg in the corner the next day either, Goldie knew that Fayoumi had laid the eggs that she had claimed for so long.
The farmer’s wife wasn’t worried about Fayoumi, because she got up earlier in the morning than Goldie did! She saw what Goldie missed – she saw Fayoumi come out from under the bush each morning, and scratch for food, and then go back under the bush. The farmer’s wife smiled… she knew that Fayoumi had not stopped laying after all. But she still did not know who was not laying.
The fair was coming, and the Farmer’s wife decided to enter Goldie in the fair. She was such a fine hen, she was sure to win a prize. Goldie was in the farmyard though, getting dusty and dirty as she scratched around each day. To win a prize, she’d need to be clean, so the farmer’s wife caught Goldie and put her in a small pen by herself. The pen was much cleaner than the dusty farmyard, and had a nest box in the corner. The farmer’s wife started her on special feed to make her look as pretty as possible. Goldie grew cleaner and sleeker every day. But the nest box in the pen never had an egg. The nest boxes in the henhouse had 10 eggs every day, and Goldie had none.
Goldie went to the fair, and won a blue ribbon. And then she went to the sale barn, where she was sold to a family who wanted a pet chicken, for $5 – they did not want to pay more for a chicken who could not lay eggs, even if she was so pretty. Goldie lived out her life in a back yard, with a bossy chicken who laid an egg every day except on the coldest days of winter, and who never let Goldie forget that she could not lay. The neighbor’s cat never attacked the chickens, but Goldie was always afraid that he just might.
A week after Goldie was sold, Fayoumi emerged from under the bush in the farmyard, with a clutch of eight fluffy chicks peeping loudly around her legs.
And the farmer’s wife smiled.
Moral: Fraud has a way of exposing itself, and faithfulness has its own reward.
THIS STORY and many more can be found on Amazon, for Kindle, in Laura’s storybook: A Little Romp Through Laura’s Storyland
So Many Things to Not Write About
I just hate that feeling… That feeling of excitement like you have something important to say, but can’t for the life of you think what it might be!
I feel like that a lot when I’ve been busy learning something that I’ve not had a chance to test out yet. Also feel that way when personal things are happening in my life. But personal means they are not suitable for worldwide broadcast.
On the non-personal side, strawberries have taken up residence next to the pots of herbs and greens on the porch. They are, admittedly, small pots. But you do what you can.
The tomato plant is probably not coming back to life. The leaves have continued to blacken, and the tomatoes on it are ripening, but no new ones are appearing. Not a good sign. I think it was too far gone when I got it, cheap, on sale. But it came in a triple pot with basil and lemon thyme in the other sections. The basil and thyme are thriving, and the basil has an absolutely heavenly flavor and aroma. It was a terrific addition to last night’s soup. I’m gonna use some of that lemon thyme with some chicken – the thyme tastes like thyme with a lemony overtone. Smells wonderful too. So the pot was worth getting even if the tomato doesn’t make it.
I planted ginger too. This is a first. Summers here are warm enough for tropical plants. I put it in a 1 1/2 gallon pot. Mint is next on the list for potted plants – it is too aggressive to plant with abandon anyway.
Funny thing about farming. You set out to do it, get set back, and find that the desire and compulsion just won’t go away. We do what we can – we grow and raise what we are able in the circumstances we can’t change. If a thing is important, you keep trying as best you can, in spite of set-backs.
It makes me view things differently. Try different things, look at options I’d not be trying otherwise. I decided NOT to try raising snails, even though they can be quite lucrative. They are a regulatory nightmare. I avoid regulatory nightmares as much as possible, especially when accompanied by slimy things that I really don’t want to touch anyway! Someday, if we end up having an abundance of edible snails as a natural occurrence, I would seriously consider encouraging them and selling them. But otherwise, they are off my list.
The list does contain things now though which I had not considered before. No, I’m not going to give anything away at this point, you’ll just have to be eaten up by curiosity. We are testing out some options though, and preparing to test some more. There are more cheap options out there that take very little space than I thought there were!
So today I have nothing to say. I think I’m done saying it.
How to Afford Food Storage
Many people have the perception that a food storage has to be expensive, or that you have to do it all at once. They let themselves be overwhelmed by the prospect, and end up doing nothing. Achieving a functional food storage is an attainable goal by any family.
There is no “right way” to do it. There are a few wrong ways (like going into debt for it, or stocking up on ten year’s supply of Little Debbies), but there are enough right ways that one of them is bound to fit your situation.
1. Monthly budget. You can assign a certain amount per month to food storage. It need not be a huge amount. Even $10 a month will get you there in the long term, if you stock up on sale items. $25 to $50 per month will generally allow you to participate in a monthly plan through a food storage supply company.
2. Spend the same, buy more. Any time an item on your grocery list is on sale, add an extra if you can do so and still stay within the amount you intended to spend.
3. Shop less often. There is real magic in this! You’ll plan better, eat better, and spend less. If you spend the same, or split the savings (half in savings, half to food storage), and you’ll still be amazed at how quickly you accumulate a usable supply. The key to this one is that every time you go in the store, you usually lose a certain amount on impulse buys. If you reduce those impulse buys, you have that money for more important things.
4. The Two-Can Plan. Buy two extra cans of food every time you go shopping.
5. One Plus One. If you are purchasing dry packed food, grains or beans, or bucketed food storage, aim for ordering one item each time you go to the grocery store, or one item per month.
6. Food Storage On the Hoof. Get chickens, ducks, rabbits, or other animals that can eat your kitchen produce scraps and leftovers. You’ll still need some feed for them, but they’ll benefit from kitchen waste, and reduce your expenses, while providing a food source that replenishes itself, reducing the need for other kinds of food storage.
7. Grow a Garden, and Save Seed. You can grow a garden any time of the year, even if it is just sprouts in the kitchen – usually though, you can do way more than that! A garden reduces food costs if you do it smart, and gives you food reserves that keep producing. It can provide surplus to can, freeze, dry, or brine. It can provide seeds this year to grow next year. A good garden can be started for $100 or less (often WAY less), and can produce hundreds or even thousands of dollars worth of produce from that investment. Keep it simple, and make sure each expense really IS an investment.
8. Look for sales on produce, and preserve it. A $30 food dryer from Wal-Mart is sufficient to dry large volumes of food, one to two batches a day (as long as it has a fan, it will dry food quickly and efficiently). You can often find canning supplies at yard sales or being given away, and canning isn’t nearly as hard or as expensive as you think – Don’t Bother Buying a Waterbath Canner. Many foods freeze easily, and all you need are zip bags (some vegetables need to be blanched before freezing, but most fruits do not, and a large number of veggies don’t require it either). Dried or frozen foods may be stored in repurposed containers – peanut butter jars are a great storage container, as are other reusable containers.
9. Stock up on cheap storage items. Tuna, dried beans, rice, split peas, pork and beans, canned soup, and other items that cost less than $1 per item. It is easier to start with these items – either one or two at a time, or by the case. Easier to think of getting case goods when you know they’ll only cost you $12 for a case.
10. If you buy bulk grains in bags instead of in pre-packed buckets, you can significantly reduce the cost of acquiring bulk grains or beans. If you have 5 gallon buckets shipped, they’ll usually cost more than if you acquire them locally (feed stores usually carry them). Buckets can sometimes be obtained used, either free, or for a low cost, from fast food restaurants or bakeries.
You can’t do a food storage with no sacrifice. You have to give something. But if you think about what you can do, and what you are good at, you can find a way that works for you. It IS achievable.
Good Thing There’s No Inflation
In the last six months, the cost of groceries has increased so much that it costs 1 and 1/2 to 2 times the amount to get the same groceries today that it did six months ago.
But there is no inflation. We know this because our government tells us this regularly. So… we know that something is wrong with HOW we are shopping. It is my responsibility to balance the grocery budget, and keep it from increasing.
I can reduce the amount of vegetables that I buy. At the rate that prices are increasing, this means in six weeks I will have no more money for vegetables at all. This is ok though – if our family has problems with muscle weakness, poor concentration, and persistent obesity, it won’t matter. This is expected from the average American, and conforming to the norm is better than being a radical non-conformist.
After I’ve eliminated vegetables, fruit is the next thing to be decreased. We will then develop problems with our bones, immune system, and eyesight, and our ability to heal will decline pretty rapidly. But that is ok too. If we are unemployable because of health problems we’ll no longer be listed on the lists of unemployed people, and that will help the nation, so we’ll be doing our part.
The next thing to go would be eggs and dairy. Of course, this will mean severe problems with our bones (we really don’t need calcium, we’ve been deluding ourselves all this time), and it won’t matter that eggs are one of the only foods from which I absorb certain nutrients. But dairy is expensive and prices are increasing very quickly, so obviously it is not essential to our wellbeing. The painful and persistent symptoms this causes can be mis-diagnosed by any competent physician, and they can prescribe a pill for us – the FDA has approved “safe and effective” medications for everything after all.
We’ll then have to eliminate meat. Protein is overrated anyway, and weak muscles, infertility, low energy, are GOOD things! There are too many healthy people having babies in the world anyway, and the human race is merely a blight on an otherwise perfect world, it is better that nobody reproduces. We can do without meat, the government already said so, and we know they are always right (even when they are wrong), so we should just shut up and trust them! If the symptoms become too difficult to deal with, we can get an anti-depressant easily from any doctor.
We’re down to grains now. Of course, without vegetables, fruits, dairy, and meats, our bodies will have NO ability to heal itself, and we’ll undoubtedly have plenty of digestive problems, further inhibiting our ability to absorb the incomplete nutrient complement from grains. We won’t be able to afford whole grains for long, so we’ll have to switch to white pasta and white flour, and white rice. Rapidly increasing prices mean that we’ll have to decrease the amounts over time, but that’s ok too, since America is full of obese people and everybody needs to eat less (the fact that a nutrient deficient diet from processed foods causes the body to go into crisis mode and creates persistent obesity is just a myth so don’t worry about that!). It doesn’t matter how healthy you think you are eating, it is still too much, too high in fat, and too high in red meat, sugar, and junk food. So eat the enriched white flour products that the government has said are just as healthy as whole wheat and shut up.
If we collapse from nutritional deficiency, Obamacare is there for us. They can prescribe medications to mask the symptoms and we can suffer from chronic illness until we die a painful death. If we die young, so much the better, there won’t be enough money to pay for our Social Security when we are older anyway, and it will save on medical costs in the long run. We’ll be doing our part to better the general welfare of the nation by kicking off sooner anyway.
So cheer up, America! There is no inflation! The rising prices are just a means of encouraging you to do your part to effect necessary change! And change must be good, after all, the President promised change, and we got it.
Good food, in a healthy variety, isn’t really needed, and malnutrition and the subsequent illness are positive influences on the nation!
Aren’t we blessed to live in a country with no inflation?
Why There Will Never Be a “Cure” For Cancer
Wow… that sounds like a supremely negative statement. In a way it is, but in another way, it isn’t. Promises of a cure for cancer are invariably misleading, and manipulative. The average person does not have a sufficient understanding of the concepts involved with cancer to realize that the promises of a cure are merely a tactic used by certain segments of the medical industries to persuade you to donate money to their cause. Money that is NOT used to “help” cancer patients. Money that does not reduce the cost of cancer care. Money that simply allows pharma companies to continue to pursue their own goals, which are NOT the goals they want you to think they are.
When our son had leukemia, I researched cancer extensively, both conventional and natural treatments. Later, when treating myself for Crohn’s Disease, I researched many of the same issues, since auto-immune disease treatments and chemotherapy overlap a good deal, and since Crohn’s has a higher risk for many types of cancers. My son made a full recovery, and has been in remission for 8 years. I no longer have Crohn’s… and never took any of the toxic medications recommended for it. Anyway, my background for this article comes from the months and years of research during that time and the knowledge gathered from it.
The “Cure for Cancer” issue has two facets that individuals need to understand. The first is the motives and goals of the pharma and medical industry (and the supplement industry, as well as the “natural health” industry, “cure cancer naturally” writer’s arena, etc). The second is the science and reality behind the disease itself.
Currently there is no such thing as a “cure” for cancer. Because no matter how much you believe you got it all, you never know for sure – a single cell in the human body can be the source of a new outbreak, and you can never be sure you got it all. Current treatments have a high risk of CAUSING secondary cancers, so the treatment for the initial cancer may cause another cancer.
It is not like Strep, where you diagnose the illness, administer an antibiotic, and know that you’ll be feeling much better in 24 hours, with manageable side effects. No, it is not like that at all, and no treatment currently available for cancer can be characterized as a “Cure”.
So… the goal of the pharma and medical industry is NOT to find a “cure”. The goal is to create “treatments” which profit the industry. There is a vast difference between the two. How much could you really charge for a cure for cancer? Far less than you can charge for ongoing treatment. We see this in many illnesses – heart disease, diabetes, Crohn’s, etc. Even when a “Cure” is possible, the pharma companies really aren’t even looking. That is not their goal at all.
(It isn’t the goal of many in the natural health arena either – they simply prey upon hope. So far NO natural solution to cancer has a track record that is documented well enough to be persuasive as a real choice for most people, they are not available for all cancer types, and the natural solutions that do work require VERY careful monitoring because they have the same side effects and risks as chemotherapy.)
Even if they were looking, it is just not that simple. Periodically a news release will promise some new miracle thing that showed great promise “in the laboratory”. It killed cancer cells in a petri dish. Big deal. I could kill cancer cells in a petri dish – just pour gasoline over them and light them on fire.
Killing them inside the human body is equally simple. If you drink gasoline and set yourself on fire, it WILL kill the cancer cells!
Killing cancer cells inside the human body, without harming normal cells (which is the implied goal of a “cure”), is vastly more problematic. There are layers and layers of complexity which make it very difficult to kill cancer cells without killing healthy cells.
Cancer cells are normal cells which have mutated in such a way that they grow uncontrollably. The majority of the genetic material in them is identical to the genetic material in your normal cells. Only a small amount is different. This is why your immune system typically has a fairly weak response in fighting cancer cells. This is also why you cannot just boost the immune system to kill them – doing so will trigger auto-immune disease, where the body attacks healthy cells, mistaking them for the damaged ones.
Hence, we have chemotherapy (including “natural” supplements), radiation, and surgery. All of which do NOT set out to “kill cancer cells without killing healthy cells” (because that is impossible), but rather, have the goal of “killing the cancer cells FASTER than you kill the healthy cells, OR, kill the cancer cells without killing TOO MANY healthy cells”. “Too many” is a relative term…
First of all, chemicals and radiation cannot think. A lab tech can look at a slide of normal and cancer cells, and usually distinguish between the two based on known characteristics of specific cancer cell types. A radiologist can look at an image (X-Ray, MRI, CT, PET, etc), and see evidence characteristic of cancerous tumors. Cancers may be suspected based on the levels of some elements in the blood – which may be used diagnostically to suggest cancer, but which is not definitive of cancer in many cases, and which is not useful in a treatment that needs to target specific cancer cells.
So, we have the problem of getting a chemical or biological substance to recognize a cancer cell, as separate from a healthy cell. It is not like getting a chemical to recognize a dog from a cat. Rather, getting it to recognize an English Collie as being different than a Border Collie (two similar breeds).
The means by which this is typically done, is to target fast growing cells. Cancer cells typically grow faster than the majority of normal cells. Chemo drugs and radiation both have a stronger effect on fast growing cells. Unfortunately, the body has many fast growing normal cells – in the bone marrow (affecting blood cells and the immune system), surface cells within the digestive tract (starting with the mouth, and ending with the rectum), hair growth cells, and some skin cells. This is why people receiving those treatments typically lose their hair, experience digestive upset and pain, have a compromised immune system and possible anemia, and why they may have mouth or skin sores.
Some newer drugs block the uptake of certain nutrients, critical for growth of cancer cells. Some cancer cells use abnormally high amounts of certain substances. But normal cells use these substances too. Block it too much, and you won’t just kill cancer cells, you’ll create wholesale slaughter of healthy cells.
Natural supplements, cancer fighting foods, etc, work the SAME WAY as chemotherapy. There is no single distinguishing factor which flags a cancer cell with a chemical marker – in fact all types of cancer cells do not even respond the same to various substances, natural or manmade. Cancer cells typically just do things in a more extreme manner than healthy cells, which means natural or manmade substances can use that behavior as a means of killing them faster than they kill the healthy cells. It is important to understand, that there simply IS NO miracle substance which “cures cancer with no side effects”. This is a lie. It cannot happen. The human body simply does not function in that manner. The myth that cancer cells can survive without oxygen is also just that. A myth. The majority of cancer cells require MORE oxygen than normal cells, because they grow and replicate faster. Only a few slower growing ones can survive longer than healthy cells without oxygen, and they are extremely difficult to kill, because they cannot be targeted by higher needs. They are not killed by PH level in the body either, unless YOU are dead too.
The nasty backlash is that with chemo (or natural substances) or radiation, either one, it may not just KILL healthy cells. It may merely MUTATE them – damage them instead of kill them, but the cell survives, with genetic damage. Remember, cancer is simply a mutation of healthy cells? There is a very high chance that some cells will be damaged by the radiation or chemo in such a way that those damaged cells become cancerous, or that they are damaged in a way that makes it highly likely that any further insult (perhaps from chemicals in food, perhaps from other illness) will cause an additional mutation that then becomes cancerous years later. A tiny time bomb waiting for the switch to be flipped.
In general, the risks of a secondary cancer occurring from chemotherapy REDUCE over time. In general, the risks of a secondary cancer occurring from radiation therapy INCREASE over time at a very slow rate.
Surgery is problematic as well, and often a biopsy can cause a cancer to metastasize (spread to other parts of the body), and surgery to remove cancerous tumors may also liberate cancerous cells into the blood stream, and increase the risks of metastasizing. This seems to be especially a risk with bone cancers, but has also been reported with other cancers.
Surgery cannot always remove all of the cancer without causing too much damage to healthy tissues. When it can be, it takes a portion of healthy tissue with it – and results in significant side effects which may impair function long term. Amputations are common with bone cancers, colostomies are common with colon cancers, and seizure disorders are common with brain tumor removals.
So… “cutting edge” experimental therapies…
Better chemo. That just means chemo that is less toxic, or which works on more types of cancer. It still dances the dance of trying to kill more cancer cells than healthy cells.
More closely targeted radiation. Significant progress in delivering radiation in more targeted methods, which affects fewer cells in the body, and produces fewer side effects. But it still affects non-cancerous cells, and still has a significant rate of secondary cancer, which slowly increases over time.
Microsurgery techniques. Again, a refinement of current therapy, with reduced side effects, but with no less risk for metastases caused by the surgery.
Immune boosting therapies. In the research stages. The problem with it is that if you boost the immune system to target cancer cells, the risks of triggering auto-immune responses is not controllable. Cancer cells are too genetically similar to your healthy cells – if the immune system targets them, it is likely to target healthy cells as well.
Gene therapy. Again, problematic and VERY risky. The theory is that a genetic repair can be loaded into a virus that has the ability to permeate the cells, and effect the genetic change within the cells. If it is even possible, it is pretty scary stuff. The problem here is that it essentially has the potential to affect EVERY cell in the body, or any cells at random. The virus can’t tell a healthy cell from a damaged one, or even a pancreatic cell from a liver cell. Even worse, viruses tend to NOT be stable entities. If the virus is affected once it is in the body, perhaps by a reaction specific to that individual (high or low blood sugar, another virus exposure, environmental chemical reactions, an allergic reaction, etc), a minor mutation in the genetic load of the virus, or a minor mutation in the virus itself, and you can have anything from a worsening of the situation, to a deadly contained reaction within a single individual, to the creation of a new contagious disease outbreak of any intensity. And these are not potentials that you can contain simply by minimizing the risks – the risks are NOT containable. As long as the risks remain, the potentials for harm are simply so horrific that one has to question the ethics of scientists who are researching these options.
Like it or not, the scientific issues in question are the SAME for herbal and nutritional treatments! The success rates so far are lower – some remarkable successes, but more failures than healings. The same issues are pertinent – if you kill cancer cells, you kill healthy cells, boost the immune system you trigger auto-immune disease, turn off nutritional or chemical support for cancers and also turn it off for healthy cells. There are many natural treatments which are every bit as effective as chemo for specific cancer types (though they are less studied and not well documented) – but they are also every bit as risky, so practitioners won’t recommend them out of fear, people won’t try them due to lack of data or dosage, and doctors look upon them with horror because they aren’t approved by the FDA for promotion by a pharma company. The point here is, the ones that WORK have significant RISK. Most do NOT work, and the Natural Health world is rife with opportunism and predatorial companies that heartlessly prey upon the hopes of the desperate (the pharma companies do this also, and with no better ethics – but it is foolish to demonize one side, and think that the other does not have MANY individuals driven by equally shameful motives).
There have been many “miracle cures” reported in the last three decades. None of them have significantly affected the treatment protocols for cancers in any significant way. Chemo is still toxic, surgery is still dangerous, radiation is still nasty, and those are still the only options through mainstream treatments. Alternative treatments are still mostly useless and risky when they do work.
What happens is this:
Some is researching something. They need money. In order to get money, they need to make it seem like they are really on to something. So they puff it up, list all the possible benefits, and do not mention the well known obstacles which stand in the way of the actual USE of the thing they are researching. They hope the public and those deciding on funding won’t notice those significant obstacles – or the fact that the scientists themselves have NO IDEA how to overcome those obstacles. They merely hope that at some point they’ll get a flash of brilliance that defies the rules of biology. And because a “cure for cancer” is a beguiling phrase, and a popular one, funders allow hype to overcome their common sense, and they fund another round or two, until it proves futile and is abandoned. Or until another rather ordinary chemotherapy drug is the result, which is then puffed up all over again to get physicians to prescribe it and make some money from it.
The science behind cancer dictates that certain things are possible, and certain things are not. Most of those rules WILL NOT change! There are some pieces to the puzzle which will remain puzzling, and some which will stay the same awkward shape they always have been.
The human body is an imperfect thing, affected by an imperfect world. You cannot remove the interactions between the two – hence, cancer will always be a factor in life. It will always affect people. The increase in negative environmental factors simply increases the number of people whom it affects.
Cancer will never be an easy thing to treat. And it will always be impossible to offer a guaranteed “cure”. It will never be possible to be sure that one lingering cancer cell is not hiding out somewhere waiting to be triggered into explosive growth. This is just the reality of life!
I think, rather than running around with pink ribbons begging for a “cure”, we’d all be better off if we looked at the chemical causes in modern life, which are inflating the number of people who are developing cancers, and reduce those. Because while “curing” cancer is not, and never will be possible, no matter how much treatments are improved, eliminating 90% of cases IS possible. But the medical community and the pharma companies aren’t interested in that either – there is no money in avoiding cancer in the first place!
Preservatives in foods, artificial flavorings and dyes, pesticides and herbicides, and antibiotic or antibacterial washes applied to foods, and especially chlorine in our water, are ALL mutanogenic (they mutate cells), and carcinogenic (they specifically cause cancer). They are KNOWN to be – they are all designed to KILL LIVING CELLS, and any time a substance is created to do that, it also DAMAGES living cells, other than just the type you wanted it to kill. If cells are DAMAGED, they are often damaged in such a way that they become cancerous. The more exposure you have to chemicals and substances that kill and damage living cells, the greater the chances that you will develop cancer.
Stop buying the line that our only hope is a cure for cancer. Our best hope is to avoid it in the first place!
So buy organic foods or grow your own. Use well water or use a good chlorine filter on your faucet water, AND in your shower (chlorine absorbs through the skin). Avoid organic foods that have been treated with detergents (loose gala apples [get the ones in bags], sprouts, and a few others – you can smell it and taste it on them).
There are no side effects, and no long term secondary cancer risks to that!
UPDATE: Our book Medicinal Mushrooms: Traditional and Emerging Uses for More than 90 Edible Mushrooms is now available on Amazon for Kindle, and in PDF format from our Firelight Heritage Farm Books website.
“Healthy” Foods that Aren’t
Periodically, a new study will be released by some research institute or other, telling us that something else we love isn’t good for us. The medical community will gradually adopt the rhetoric, and repeat the party line about this thing being bad for us because this or that study showed it to be so. Then the manufacturers of those things we love will release a special version of it which supposedly eliminates the risk. As long as there is money in telling us things are bad for us, the trend is unlikely to continue.
There are deceptions in this at multiple levels – from the origins of the study (someone paid for it to be done – someone who wanted a specific result, so they could sell us something to “fix” it), to the supposed solutions. The “problems” they tell us about weren’t even problems to begin with, merely the way that the food industry had already messed up the foods we are eating. The solutions are the thing we are discussing today.
Any time a trend in food is started, a food manufacturer (isn’t it sad that we should call them that – you don’t “manufacture” food, you grow it, and prepare it) will produce some kind of food to capitalize on the trend. And then, pretty soon, the studies are reversed, and maybe that thing wasn’t so bad after all because now people who are doing it are in WORSE health than those who ate the bad thing to start with. And the answer to that is simple – the minute the commercial food industry enters the arena, trying to make specialty foods “convenient”, they destroy the foods that were supposed to help.
We now have a whole host of foods that we can buy, which are sold under the guise of being healthy, which in fact, are anything but. Let’s take a look at some examples.
Low Fat – At first, low fat meant they ATE LESS FAT. But that wasn’t very much fun. So food manufacturers started enhancing them – putting other things in to make them behave more like they had fat in them. Guar gum, emulsifiers, thickening agents, soy lecithin, and all sorts of things with unpronounceable chemical names. Things that aren’t even FOOD. Now, Low Fat foods are nasty concoctions that are almost all deadlier than the fat that they eliminated. Fat isn’t in fact bad. Unnatural fats, fats with chemical preservatives, fats that have chemicals in them to keep them from going rancid, or fats from plants that are not actually food in the first place. THOSE are bad fats. But good, whole, clean fat from meat and dairy, and that occurs naturally in vegetables and grains, are good food. Remember, Trans Fats are a manufacturing CAUSED problem – they only happen from trying to fry things in oil from plants we should not be extracting oils from in the first place.
Low Carb – Low carb originally meant to reduce the amount of PROCESSED carbohydrates in the diet. A good idea. Carbohydrates again, are something that is not bad at all – they are the staff of life. Refined carbs are nasty stuff – and should be replaced with true whole grains and whole fresh fruits and veggies. As soon as the trend gained ground, food manufacturers began releasing “low carb” versions of things (many of which, through slight of hand, weren’t even lower in carbohydrate), but they are SO loaded with chemicals and artificial substances, that they do far more harm than the less altered refined foods they were replacing. So again, we have a manufactured problem with a manufactured solution that causes more harm than the original problem, and both of which miss the point. Which is that carbohydrates are good for you, just eat good whole food that hasn’t been mucked about with by some company trying to “save time” for you.
SugarFree – So first off, sugar is not evil. If you over-consume it, then it is going to cause problems. But it is a fairly inert nutrient, that the body uses fairly directly, and it has no side effects in and of itself. It is not chemically altered or adulterated. A teaspoon of sugar in your herbal tea is just fine. A tablespoonful in each of five cups of coffee each day is going to cause problems! But someone decided sugar was bad when people began to lose all sight of reason in the amounts they use, and because sugar has been slipped into so many processed foods (especially those that are “low fat”). And now, you probably think it is evil, since you are told so at every turn – but remember, the people who are telling you that sugar is evil are people who are SELLING sugar substitutes – you may think they are objective doctors and health advocates. They aren’t. They are PAID to say it, by people who want to sell you something else. Artificial sweeteners are, to a one, MORE harmful than sugar, and not just a little bit worse either – exponentially worse. This includes all the “ols”, such as sorbitol, xylitol, erythorbitol, etc. And things like Stevia are not good for you in large amounts either. Agave and Honey are just natural forms of sugar, and they have the SAME effect on the body as sugar does – they just have well-paid marketing people who are publishing “sugar is bad and we are not” articles to make you think that they are somehow better (they aren’t bad – but if you overindulge, they’ll harm you too). And then we have the CHEMICALS that are added to most of the prepared foods that use artificial sweeteners or sugar substitutes. So Sugar Free foods are either: a. No different in health benefit from those containing sugar; b. More harmful because of the harm from the sugar substitute; c. WAY more harmful because of the added chemicals. Sugar isn’t GOOD for you. But it isn’t BAD for you either. If you like honey or agave or stevia, fine, enjoy them. But don’t fool yourself into thinking they are any better for you, because they aren’t.
Dairy Free – So let’s establish the health issues with real milk first. Lactose intolerance is often caused by digestive disorders, which are primarily caused by chemicals in our food and water supply (yeah, the chlorine in your tap water… that). And milk with artificial hormones and antibiotics in it is very harsh on the digestive tract. Plus, pasteurized and homogenized milk contains proteins that are much more difficult to digest than raw milk. So… again we have a series of sensitivities CAUSED by modern production methods. And then we have the food industry’s solution… Almond milk, Soy milk, Rice milk, and various other unnatural concoctions that first of all, do NOT have even CLOSE to the nutritional content of actual milk, and second, which are so full of chemicals and extracted processed substances that your body can’t even use it as well as it does processed milk! And foods that should have dairy, but do not, invariably have other substances that are much worse for us, in order to mimic the presence of milk in the food. Give me a cow. I’ll milk my own, thank you.
Gluten Free – People who have wheat sensitivities do so for a REASON. This is typically because of damage done from chemicals in food and water, and then from autoimmune disease which is a result of longstanding chemical damage, or from overexposure to specific proteins due to processing of grains. There is a close relationship between Crohn’s and Celiac – both are usually manifestations of the same problem. So the problems are caused by the same people who now want to hand us a “ready to eat” solution. Many people feel better when they begin to eliminate wheat from their diet. And then they find that their disease is progressing anyway. Now they need to eliminate corn, and then something else. They find that they go rapidly from Celiac (which they thought they could control simply by eliminating wheat) to Crohn’s (which involves an escalation of food sensitivities and intolerances and full blown auto-immune disease). Now, don’t get me wrong here. Truly gluten free homemade foods are not a problem. If you are actually eating things that are in fact good foods. But what happened is that the food manufacturers stuck their little noses into it again, and started creating convenient gluten free packaged foods. Sorry guys, but those things will make you sick! They aren’t healthier than foods with gluten in them – in fact, they are probably a primary reason why your disease is still progressing. The answer here is to get back to clean foods, and let your body heal. If you do, there is a strong chance you’ll be able to enjoy wheat products again, after you’ve healed up.
Whole Grain – Bet you thought that “whole grain” bread was good for you? It isn’t what it says it is. First off, it isn’t whole grain at all. It can be called that when it is only part of the grain. Whole grain includes the germ, which goes rancid too quickly for grocery store shelves, so all processed baked goods and packaged flours are not whole grain at all. They are better than white flour, but they will not supply the nutrients to provide the benefits from TRUE whole grain – which can help balance blood sugar, reduce cardio-vascular disease, reduce persistent obesity, slow the effects of aging, and a host of other nifty things. Not exactly UNhealthy. But not HEALTHY either. And any prepackaged baked goods, whole grain or not, typically contain a lethal cocktail of preservatives.
Salt-Free and Low Salt – Another instance where salt was unfairly blamed for a manufacturing problem. The problem with salt is not that it is bad. It is not. You NEED salt to live! In fact, if you transition to a healthy clean food diet, you’ll find you have to ADD salt, especially in warmer months, because your diet won’t have enough. The problem is that prepared foods absorb salt, and we lose the ability to taste it, so they put in more. And more. So much that it is in EVERYTHING. And they don’t just stick to sodium chloride (simple table salt), they put in all kinds of other flavor enhancers that include sodium in some form or other, all of them far more harmful than salt, but for which salt takes the blame. The only thing they use more of unnecessarily in foods, is SUGAR. So taking salt OUT of some of those canned foods would be a good thing, right? But that isn’t what they do. They take OUT the salt, and replace it with a SALT SUBSTITUTE. And those are FAR more dangerous than salt! But there is no money in taking salt out. There is only money in persuading you that you need something to replace what you didn’t need in the first place. Sad.
High Fiber – Forget the studies that say that high fiber is good for you and that oat bran helps your heart. They lied. High fiber FOODS, CAN be good for you, and so can oat bran, IF it comes with the rest of the fresh oat grain. Oat bran is just a food processing by-product that nobody had a use for, which they figured they could sell better if they could persuade people it was good for them (so they paid for a research firm to find a way to make it look like it was healthy). But it isn’t. Oat bran is as good for you as sawdust – it is inert, has no nutritional value, and your gut cannot break it down. So it WILL relieve constipation. But it won’t make you healthier. What WILL make you healthier, is fresh vegetables (not canned and fiberless), fresh fruits (with lots of natural fiber), fresh whole grains (with the germ intact), nuts, and mushrooms. REAL FOOD, that just happens to have fiber along with a high complex nutrient load. THAT is healthy food. Fiber isn’t.
Empty Organics – Organic potato chips are still potato chips – potato slices cooked in fat, and stored beyond the point of freshness. They have some simple carb in them, and little else. Organic cookies made from white flour, and treated with an “organic preservative” are still processed white flour and poison (organic poison is still poison). The organic label is meaningless if the food that it is put onto is the same old refined and processed stuff from which needed nutrients have been removed. Organic garbage is still garbage, and it is not, nor never will be, healthy.
Cage Free Eggs, Free Range Eggs, Veggie-Fed Eggs, Natural Eggs, Farm Fresh Eggs – All of these are meaningless names. First of all, eggs are very good food, IF the chickens are raised right. Chickens naturally eat greens, grains, and grubs (or bugs… yes, bugs). They do not naturally consume medications or antibiotics, they do not naturally consume soybean meal, fishmeal, cottonseed meal, or other industrial waste, and they do not eat preservatives, pesticides, or herbicides by choice. This is what is in chicken feed. They DO naturally scratch through horse manure, they gobble rabbit manure with delight (many animals do), and they think that cow patties are a wonderful place to kick up a rumpus looking for tasty edibles (the best worms are usually under them… oh, didn’t I mention that chickens like worms?). We’ll just pretend that we are ok with that, because there really isn’t anything you can do to stop chickens from doing that, at least, not when they are HEALTHY chickens, who are going to lay HEALTHY eggs for you. Cage free means that they are kept in a pen, not a cage. It doesn’t mean they are frolicking lose in the pasture. Free Range (commercially) means they have a miniscule yard to run around in beside their huge crowded poultry barn – for small farmers it means they eat on pasture during the daytime and are fed chicken feed at night (yes, the same nasty stuff that passes for chicken feed that the industrial chicken producers use). Vegi-fed is another unnatural term, with no good meaning. No chicken is 100% veggie fed unless they are raised in such tight confinement that they never see a fly or compost insect in their lives – chickens are omnivores, they eat bugs if they can find them, and most industrial layer houses are fertile ground for breeding bugs – layers of litter and chicken manure all over the floor. And “vegi-fed” chickens are usually fed with a nasty mixture of industrial vegetable waste products and processed soy. Natural eggs just means a chicken laid them. Farm Fresh Eggs means you probably got it within a week or two of it leaving the chicken if you bought it at the farm, but if you bought it at the store, it was laid months ago – and even if you buy them from your local small farm, chances are, they are still feeding them nasty chicken feed, so if you need clean eggs, make sure you ask, and find someone who feeds the chickens clean food.
Just because someone says it is healthy, doesn’t mean it is. There’s a marketing ploy for everything, and the food industry has teamed up with the medical profession in some very devious ways to persuade you that you should eat what they want to sell you, and that there is some benefit to paying the price they want to charge.
If it isn’t clean chemical free food, and if it isn’t real food, without the nutrients stripped out and chemicals put in, then it ISN’T healthy. No matter WHO says it is.
The Humble Brown Button Mushroom
It was the most commonly cultivated commercial mushroom until mid-20th century. Now, most people don’t even know that it exists.
Sometime in the early part of the 20th century, a mushroom farmer who grew brown button mushrooms for the commercial markets decided to propagate a mutant mushroom. Sometimes amidst all those brown mushrooms, there would be one that was pure white. He began to propagate them. He did it because he thought it would be a neat idea, and he thought that customers might buy them. And buy them they did. They liked the looks of those lovely white mushrooms more than the old brown ones – they didn’t TASTE any better (in fact, the browns have a better flavor to some people), but they looked so pretty that people just could not resist reaching for them when given the choice. Soon, the white mushroom completely dominated the mushroom markets, and the humble brown mushroom faded into near oblivion.
Of course, you could not raise white mushrooms in natural light – or they would get brownish on top, spoiling the whole point of their pristine glory. So mushrooms began to be grown in the dark. And after a while, people forgot that mushrooms could be grown any other way, even though virtually all other species of edible mushrooms do best with some form of natural light, be it full sunlight, or deep shade, or somewhere in between.
They also lost things they did not realize they were losing. Because the rich brown mushroom was not the same as that poor white mutant. The brown one was rich in nutrients. The white one was a poor substitute, leading to the popular myth that mushrooms are not very nutritious. If you judge all mushrooms by those nasty white things, then they are right. Other mushrooms though, those which have not been messed with, are high in protein, niacin, some are high in vitamin D, and other essential nutrients.
Some people now know nothing other than those white and gray musty tasting lumps that pass themselves off as mushrooms. They think that gray slimy things in a can of soup are the only thing that goes by the name of “mushroom”. And it is a sad thing. Because the world is full of mushrooms, and there are literally thousands of options that are better tasting, and better for you, that that empty little bubble headed ghost of a mushroom.
Even the mushrooms that are naturally white are more nutritious. And there are a lot of them.
The insubstantial mutant is responsible for more than that though. The rich brown button mushroom is loaded with nutrients and components that benefit your health. It helps with healing skin, avoiding problems such as ovarian cysts (and PCOS), or uterine fibroids. It also helps your body to alleviate damage done by chemicals to your intestines, circulatory system, pulmonary system, and skin. It supports regulation of the immune system to strengthen the immune system while also minimizing problems with auto-immune disease. That little brown button is a healthy food that promotes good health beyond the mere nutrients that it supplies. The benefits are strong enough to feel the difference if consumed twice a week.
The white button mushroom has merely a shadow of those benefits. Oh, it does help. But not enough to do more than slow down the damage to your body, and then a nearly insignificant amount. It does not have the power to reverse it, heal it, or slow it down enough to actually notice except in one minor thing – it can help to reduce damage to the intestines from chemical exposure from modern foods, and even then, it is not enough to do more than help a little. It makes a passing attempt on its way through, to slap a bandaid on one thing – while the little brown button mushroom gets busy in earnest and heals the damage instead.
So we have a lovely pretender, masquerading as food, completely replacing a smudged looking brown mushroom that held part of the key to good health in its matrix.
But this really isn’t about mushrooms. Because the brown button mushroom is only one example of trading the real for the fake.
White flour has replaced whole wheat flour – giving us a dead food devoid of the rich bounty that fresh whole wheat provides. Removing all the abundant nutrients which heal the body and give one energy.
Dead and embalmed foods have replaced fresh foods, giving the illusion of nutrition, but failing to deliver the wholesome elements that help us to age more slowly, maintain a healthy weight, and avoid deterioration in our nervous systems as we age.
Unripe and overaged produce, bred to be tough enough to withstand extended shipping distances, and coated in chemicals to make it appear fresh and appetizing, has replaced garden fresh local produce that is alive and all but bursting with nutrients. Produce is marketed as “healthy”, but it is only a shell of what it needs to be to deliver on that promise.
We’ve done it to ourselves. We know those things are not healthy, and yet we reach for the white flour because it looks prettier and feels smoother. We choose the most uniform tomato, even if it is embalmed. We select chemical laden foods because we don’t want to take the time to cook fresh foods.
And then we wonder why we are tired, overweight, mentally fatigued, moody, disease ridden and ill.
We wonder why we are suddenly told that traditionally healthy foods like bread, juice, animal fats, and mushrooms are unhealthy. They are unhealthy because they are no longer REAL bread, clean juice and lard, or nutritious mushrooms.
The solution is simple. Eat foods that are real, not just fake foods calling themselves real.
Try growing some humble brown mushrooms in shady windowsill, and see what you’ve been missing. Then maybe you might want to try growing a few sprouts in your kitchen, or milling a little fresh flour to bake a loaf of real bread.
The majority of those troublesome health problems that we take for granted in the US as part of the age we live in are optional. I don’t know about you, but if I have the choice (and I do), I’m opting OUT.
NOTE: I was diagnosed with Crohn’s prior to writing this post. This post was written when I was recovering. As of 1 year after writing this, I no longer have auto-immune disease, and no longer have Crohn’s. Mushrooms have been part of this – Paddy Straw, Shiitake, Elm Oyster, Portobello Shaggy Parasols, and Puffballs are the only mushrooms I’ve had access to during this time.
Researchers Announce Birth Control Breakthrough
Two researchers in an obscure town in the US have released a report in support of the only known 100% safe and effective method of contraception. This method is completely safe, has no uncontrollable side effects, is extremely affordable, and has been used successfully throughout every culture, society and historical period on record.
The method is known historically as “abstinence”. When used correctly, it is the only birth control method which provides 100% effectiveness. No other method, including sterilization, can make that claim, as all other methods can, and do fail, a certain percentage of the time. This method is also 100% effective in preventing STDs, and completely stops the sexual transmission of AIDS in all users – again, something that no other method of birth control can even come close to claiming.
Largely ignored by medical professionals, and pharmaceutical companies, this method has been actively ridiculed by pro-abortion factions. Their ridicule has been somewhat puzzling to researchers who have compared safety statistics, effectiveness rates, and mental stability statistics between groups who use abstinence, other forms of birth control, or who have chosen abortion. Abstinence is far safer for women, no woman has ever died due to overdose, or due to malpractice on the part of a careless professional. It cannot spread infection, is never practiced in unsanitary back alleys, and does not have risks of mechanical failure. Indeed, the use of abstinence, especially outside of marriage, has been shown to provide a wide range of health benefits. It can be understood by any person who is old enough to be able to define the parts of their body, and the vocabulary required to safely practice it is so simple even a two year old can master it. One simple word, “No” is all that is required.
This method is simple enough that any parent can teach it to their child. It can be taught in schools in a matter of a few minutes. Since there is no health risk attached to this method, training materials do not have to be cumbered down with lengthy and costly legal disclaimers. Training materials are simple, in-depth anatomical diagrams are not necessary to effective teaching. It can easily be taught without embarrassment in a co-ed teaching environment.
Abstinence is the most cost effective form of contraception. It is the only method of birth control which can be used absolutely free to the user and the public, and is able to be used effectively even among the poorest populations. Teens can use it without permission from their parents, since no prescription is required – given this easy access by every sexually mature individual, one would think that “pro-choice” advocates would be promoting this as a means for individuals to control their own reproductive health, but strangely, they prefer to press for public funding of prescriptions and abortions instead, both of which present significant risks and costs to individual users.
Abstinence is usually effective without any form of professional or mechanical assistance. For people who have difficulty properly implementing it, there are various assistive devices which may help, but which are in no way required. One can even use ordinary duct tape (a single wrap, around the knees) to help individuals who are having difficulty with proper implementation.
The single fault found by the researchers was the lack of major corporate profit potential. Because abstinence does not require a prescription, pharmaceutical companies do not stand to make money from promoting it. It does not require a medical procedure, so doctors are usually not enthusiastic about promoting abstinence either. The risk of damage from using is non-existent, as is the risk of contracting a disease or infection through the use of abstinence, so all secondary income streams which could potentially result from such “accidents” have been similarly removed as motive for pharmaceutical and medical professionals to promote abstinence. Since mental illness never results from the use of abstinence, and since individuals who practice it have higher than average self-esteem, the mental health industry has found little motive to promote abstinence as a desirable choice, and indeed, most mental health professionals are largely uneducated about abstinence, due to limited professional contact with indivuals using this method of birth control and reproductive health enhancement.
The findings of the researchers show conclusively that widespread implementation of this birth control method would increase both female and male reproductive and mental health, and eliminate all risks from dangerous drugs and surgical procedures related to unwanted pregnancies and STDs. It is the hope of the researchers that attention may be brought to this safe, healthy, effective, and affordable method of avoiding unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease.
A Nasty Bout of E Coli
I don’t get sick easily. This one hit me like a Mack truck. Lasted almost a week, and left me completely wiped out.
Since we are now raising some animals, you may raise your brows and say, “Well, what do you expect? Eating raw eggs fresh from the chicken, and raw milk without even pasteurizing it!” But I didn’t get it from the eggs, or the milk, or the home butchered duck or rabbit, or the homegrown veggies (fertilized in real manure). Nope… not one of those things gave me anything so debilitating. Even though my sometimes less than hygienic teens are now doing the washing and processing of our milk and eggs, they still didn’t make me sick.
I got it from a pasteurized, USDA scrutinized, nationally branded, and nationally distributed dairy product.
The fact is, on your average small farm, the risk just isn’t what people think it is.
And the risks on the supposedly sterile certified farms are not what people think they are either!
If you do not use unnecessary antibiotics with your animals, you do not grow superbugs. The greatest danger for foodborne illness comes from superbugs – those that have become really nasty because they are growing in animals with constant, or frequent exposure to antibiotics.
If you are exposed on a regular basis to normal foodborne bacteria, such as those normally present in healthy raw milk, and farm fresh eggs (you know, eggs that are only a few days old, not eggs that have set in warehouses, and distribution centers and trucks, and then on grocery store shelves for months before you get them – with any bacteria in them growing the whole time), the few harmful germs that are there are not plentiful enough to sicken you, and they serve only to strengthen your immune system, and they are accompanied by many healthy bacteria that do the same. The majority of bacteria in raw milk and raw eggs is healthy bacteria – on the grocery store shelves, they’d call them Probiotics and charge you a premium for them, but they are simply more effective where nature put them in the first place. (Kind of amusing that commercial yogurt consists of taking perfectly good milk, killing all the good stuff in it, putting a little bit back and letting that little bit grow – would have been best to just leave the good stuff there to start with.)
If a facility produces a small amount of fresh food, and some is contaminated, a few people get sick, and usually not very badly because the contamination does not have time to grow.
If a large facility, which produces massive quantities of food has a contamination issue, it usually affects large portions of the product. The product then goes into distribution channels and is fairly well aged by the time it reaches the customer – so the contamination is compounded by the extra time the bacteria has to incubate and multiply. Not only are more people affected, but they are affected more severely.
So while it may seem odd that daily life that is steeped in manure does not make me sick, and that a supposedly “safe” commercial dairy product did, it isn’t odd at all. In fact, that’s how it normally works.
There simply is no safer way to stay healthy than growing your own. The barnyard isn’t the real minefield, the grocery store is!
I Don’t Want a Brand New Luxury Home with a Pool
We’ve been house hunting. And hunting. And hunting. You’d think there would be a lot of old homes out there that have NOT been recently remodeled. But it seems not.
My eyes and brain are weary from reading enthusiastic descriptions of high priced properties, all describing the luxurious new features that will keep me from having to lift a finger prior to move in.
That’s fine, if that is what you want. We don’t. We NEED a fixer upper – and not just a ramshackle run down mobile home (we’ve got one of those, we don’t need another!). We need an old home – 100 years old or so. Built before things like OSB and composite materials were commonplace. One that has been neglected for a while, but not abused. One that the owner did NOT renovate by tearing out the old solid wood cabinets and replacing them with cheap (but lovely) new kitchen cabinets with particle board where you can’t see it.
We need a house that has character. That has a few cracks in the old plaster walls, that haven’t been ripped out and replaced with drywall. Wood floors that are not laminate, and which probably haven’t been sanded and refinished recently. A sink that is enamel, with a few chips in it, that got that way from a century of use, not from carelessness. Windows that are wood framed, not vinyl. Old wood siding, in need of scraping and a new coat of paint.
Realistically, this is what we can afford. Medically, this is what I require.
Homes, it seems, are now disposable. Old farmhouses are abandoned, left to rot, while a cheap mobile is pulled up on the property to live in. When the mobile gets old, it is towed off and a new one brought in. An old farmhouse left to rot for 20 years is no longer repairable – it doesn’t have enough of the good structure left, and repairing it with safe materials is prohibitively expensive.
Somewhere, in the middle, is the house we need. And it seems to not exist. Well, I can find a HOUSE, but it is usually in the middle of downtown Dallas or something. Not on the acreage we need.
And then there are “gated communities”, “ranchettes”, and “covenant communties with a great HOA”. You can have ’em. They are designed for people who want to pretend that they live in the country, while taking the city with them. Home Owners Associations are about controlling the actions of your neighbors, not about preserving property values (have you compared the prices between those neighborhoods and the unrestricted ones lately?). Horses are sometimes “allowed”, but anything practical is promptly squashed.
So all those enthusiastic claims of how wonderful this house is, and why it is worth way more than we can afford just don’t impress me. I just want a simple old house that hasn’t been messed with, on a few acres of land that allow chickens and goats, so that I can grow livestock and crops.
It shouldn’t be so hard to find.
More than a Web Developer
I’ve been deeply immersed in web design and technology, and the small business arena for the last 10 years. I’ve loved every minute of it (ok, so not so much some of the hair pulling technical puzzles, but most of it!). I’ve loved the creative side, the puzzle element, and the associations with absolutely wonderful people. But I think I’m near the end of a season in my life. I can feel it coming apart – my interest is declining, the desire to go to the next level with it is fading. Other interests are reasserting themselves into my life again. I’m ready to be more than a web developer again.
I don’t know if it is the farm stuff that is piquing this interest or whether it is partly the poor economy and the effect it has on our business right now. Whatever it is, I find that I am pulled by things I have had no time for the last 5 years. I want to crochet again. I want to bake and make things for my family. I want to be a part time web developer, and have a life around it again.
It was necessary for me to be completely immersed in it for the time that I was – we would not have been able to build a business for our family if I had not been there first. So it was good and needed at the time. It was the season for it. I don’t have any regrets about it. And I don’t want to completely abandon it. But I’m ready for it to no longer dominate my life – for it to be a rewarding part of my life, but not the whole of it.
I used to read a lot (not just novels), I cooked a lot, made craft items, built some of our own furniture, and did a lot of home do it yourself stuff. I painted, drew, and designed things. In the thick of business, every creative effort I had was channeled into that – there was no time or thought left over. I read technical books. I created site designs. I “painted” custom graphics. I designed site structures.
I find myself longing for something else now. Not absent of what I have, but balanced with what I have. I’m finding that the “simple” life as described in the bucolic ramblings of the nostalgic is not really simple at all. And it is in no way unintelligent. It is complex, difficult, and involves a lot more than just drudging hard work. There is a highly academic side to it – you learn, or it fails miserably. A good farmer is an artist, a scientist, a veterinarian, a creator. He must be. Less than that does not succeed.
But the farming is only part of it. I miss parts of me that got set aside to develop the business. Again, it was the right and necessary choice at the time. But it may just be time now to bring them back.
I’m ready to be more again.
Battle Fatigue
A long term war is different than a short one. Short battles are episodes of rallying, crises, and extraordinary moments where people rise to the occasion. It is easy to respond to an emergency when there are only a few.
A long term series of battles changes the scope of responses, and changes the person. What begins as something taking extraordinary effort becomes a wearying grind, where no resources remain to rise to the occasion. A constant state of crisis soon becomes a way of life, the highs and lows blending into a long and blurred train of apathetic responses. A crisis is no longer an urgent thing. The person feels that all resources to cope are gone, and each new crisis simply overwhelms to the point of inaction. There is not enough left to appropriately respond, no matter how responsible they feel to respond.
Dark circles appear under the eyes of the soul, and brightness of mind dulls with fatigue. The outlook on life is colored with the vision of war. A heavy weariness settles in, along with the feeling that it can never be removed. That this war will continue, and no battle is winnable. It batters the heart, and sucks life from the living, even while they go through the motions of trying to continue to fight.
Some simply give up. They refuse to rise one day, and refuse to go to do battle one more time – a kind of shock sets in which renders them completely unable to function. Others struggle on, mechanically responding to the demands of the day, unable to do more than is absolutely required, devoid of the joy and innocence they remember dimly, but cannot quite believe in anymore. Somehow, they remember there was once a different reality. But they can’t quite remember what the essence of it was, the present so overshadows it.
The thing about war, is that the individual soldier usually has very little control over the course of the battles. They find themselves in the middle of a war they did not ask for, fighting battles they could not defer or influence in any way. Caught in the grip of something bigger than life, and powerless to control the force that moves it.
The military calls this state “Battle Fatigue”. It can happen in situations other than a protracted war. Sometimes life is a battle outside of the war zones. For new or lifelong followers of Christ, it really IS a war. A war with Satan, whose desire is to crush us utterly. These times WILL come. And they will last long past the point where we feel that we have reached our limits.
Jesus Christ really has felt our pain, discouragement, and frustration. He truly does understand what it is like to be faced with problems that are bigger than we are. He, too, cried out for deliverance, when the job was bigger than He thought it would be. His example of submitting, even though He wished He did not have to, shows us the pattern for what is expected when we face things bigger than our ability to cope.
There is no way to make it easy. But we can reach a point where we can turn these problems over to the Lord. It does not mean they’ll be solved in a way we want them to be solved. But it does mean we can free the time and energy that we spend on worrying, and focus it on things that are more productive – attending to our families, meeting the day to day demands that are achievable, and wisely using the resources we do have even if they are not enough.
Peace is possible even in the middle of chaos. Solutions to the problems may not always come as we hope. But we will survive in spite of it, and come out stronger. The Lord is forging us into the people whom He wishes us to be. The process is often painful, nigh unto being unendurable. But we CAN endure, we can remain obedient, and we can come through with increased strength and spiritual power.
The prize is worth winning. The fight is worth fighting. It is worth getting up, one more time, to face what we feel completely inadequate to cope with. As we do, we’ll begin to gain something precious, and “angels cannot be restrained from being (our) companion(s)”.
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