What to Drink for Long Life and Health

A number of years ago when I was working in house construction, one of the carpenters that I was working with told me that over the weekend he had talked with a man in his 90’s. The elderly man told him the key to his long life was drinking six tall glasses of latex paint thinner a day. I did not fully understand the value of what the man had said, until in the last several years after studying the teachings of Carey Reams on human health.

The base ingredient in our blood and in latex paint thinner is the same. And what latex paint thinner does for latex paint is similar to what it does to our blood. When you spray paint, it often needs to be thinned down in order to go through the sprayer. Thick paint will not spray properly. The paint has to go through a very small hole and if it is too thick, very little paint will come out. It is helpful to increase the pressure, but thinning the paint makes it flow much better than just increasing the pressure. The difference between paint that is too thick and paint that is just right for spraying is often not as much different as you might think. Often,it is only necessary to add a small amount of paint thinner to the paint to get it thin enough to spray properly.

The same is true for our blood. When our blood is a little too thick to flow properly through the very tiny blood vessels in our body, the body has to increase the blood pressure to try to get it through the tiny blood vessels. Some blood pressure medicine tries to help by making the tiny blood vessels expand bigger than what they are supposed to be so that the thick blood can flow through better and the pressure can be lowered. But the best solution is to thin the blood with latex paint thinner so that the blood can flow properly through the tiny blood vessels and the body can reduce the blood pressure needed to pump the blood. Painters use paint thinner to thin paint, not pills!

The average adult has approximately 1.3 gallons of blood in their body. Therefore comparing our blood to a gallon of paint helps us to understand how small an amount of thinner is needed to thin our blood. For those of you who do not paint, making cake icing with powdered sugar might be a better anology. If the icing is too thick you add a little water, you then find that the small amount of water was a little too much and made the icing runny. You then add more powdered sugar to thicken it. If your are not careful, it is easy to add too much powdered sugar. In the same way, adding a small amount of thinner to our blood can make a significant difference. Removing a little too much thinner from our blood can thicken it.

Thick paint tends to have lumps (clots) in it. Paint thinner will help the clots dissipate and become smooth flowing paint again. In the same way, thick blood can develop clots and cause strokes or heart attacks. Adding latex paint thinner to the blood, thins the blood and keeps blood clots from forming and causing problems.

It is difficult to filter thick paint. It clogs up the filter in the spray gun and causes filter failure. In the same way, thick blood is difficult to filter properly and can cause filter (kidney) problems. Properly thinned blood is important for our kidneys to be able to work properly and to do their filtering work properly. The kidneys also remove excess fluid along with the wastes that need to be removed from the blood. If the blood is thick, very little fluid can be removed because it will make the blood thicker and cause more problems. At the same time, if very little fluid is removed, not all the waste products in the blood can be removed and wastes have to continue on in the blood and cause problems elsewhere in the body. It is important that sufficient quantities of latex paint thinner is added to the blood on a daily basis so that the filtering process of the kidneys can remove the wastes from the blood stream. A person who does not urinate much, is not removing as much of the wastes from their body as they should. Drinking six tall glasses of latex paint thinner a day will make you pee. That is important. Peeing is a good thing! That is what you need to do if you want to live a long healthy life.

If you haven’t guessed by now, latex paint thinner is water. Drinking a sufficient quantity of pure water each day is an important part of good health and living a long life. One of the best waters to drink is pure steam distilled water. Purifying the water before you drink it is like running a kidney dialysis on your water and it reduces the workload on the kidneys. Some say that distilled water leaches minerals out of the body. It depends on their definition of "leach". Distilled water does help remove salts, sugars, dead cells, etc. from our bodies. That is what you want your water to do

Drinking city water, well water, coffee, sodas, etc. will not thin the blood as much, nor remove as much from the blood as pure water. Plus, they add total dissolved solids into our blood stream that don’t need to be there. Imagine thinning a gallon of paint with muddy water from a mud puddle. It will thin the paint, but now you have added "minerals" (dirt) to the paint that shouldn’t be there and will create other problems.

The other day I was at a gas station and looked at the selection of drinks available. There was an incredible selection, 30 or 40 feet of cooler space seven feet high. One of the modern "luxuries" is drinking flavored beverages instead of water. As I analyzed it according to its health aspects, I realized that almost all of the drinks would contribute to a person’s poor health, not their longevity. There were all kinds of waters available, some with various things added to them. But there was no distilled latex paint thinner (water). So I want back to the van without buying anything and drank my own distilled latex paint thinner that I had brought along.

Now this article is not intended to be a complete description of what water does in our blood or in our body. The comparison of latex paint thinner in paint and in our blood breaks down in points. But for me, the analogy of thinning paint has helped me to understand the importance of drinking pure water and some of what it does inside my body in my blood.

The advice of that elderly man in his 90’s is good advice. If you want to live a long life, drink six tall glasses of distilled latex paint thinner each day (and even more water when it is hot). The next time you go out to eat, ask the waitress for a glass of distilled latex paint thinner and then watch the expression on her face as it turns to one of horror! Then ask her, "What do you thin latex paint with?"

Extending the Growing Season

As we continue our quest to grown as much of our own nutrient dense food as possible, we decided it was time to build our own greenhouse this year. It is placed in Cathy’s kitchen garden so that she can grown greens through out the winter. We based the design of the greenhouse on the design of our chick brooder buildings where we start the baby chicks. The brooders held up well the last several years with all the big snows. The roof is steep enough that much of the snow slides off. The greenhouse is designed so that we can take it down in the summertime if we want to. Or we might just remove the plastic covering and cover part of the frame with greenhouse shade cloth so that we can grow lettuce and other greens in the shade during the heat of summer.


All of the bows are up and it is almost ready for the plastic covering.


We made the bows of the green house out of 2X4’s. Where the 2X4’s were joined together, pieces of plywood were glued and nailed on either side of the joint. The rafters are 8′ long and the side walls are 5′ high on the upper side and 6′ on the down hill side. The bows are spaced 4′ apart. The ridge pole that connects the top of the bows together was not yet installed in this picture.


The finished greenhouse – 12′ X 32’  The cost of materials was less than $300. If you build it yourself, a greenhouse is very affordable. The plastic on the sides can be rolled up to provide ventilation when it gets too hot inside.


Melody gathering spinach in the greenhouse with one of her cats. The spinach was overwintered in two cold frames before the greenhouse was built.

The Dismantling of America

For a long time I could not figure out why our federal, state, and local governments did not care about  farms and manufacturing closing down and more and more food and other basics needing to be imported. This week, here in Frederick County, there are two more dairy farms closing down for good. Everything is being sold at auction, including the milking equipment. The last several years have been very difficult times for dairy farmers.

The construction industry is also being dismantled. Even if the building industry were to revive tomorrow, I’m not sure how much infrastructure is left to support it. The last several years there have been many sawmills sold at auction—probably most of them sold for scrap metal. The boys and I attended the auction of Monumental Millwork last year. It was a large supplier of doors, windows, and mouldings for the Baltimore and Washington areas. It had been there for years. Everything went dirt cheap, even though there was national online bidding. Most of the big door machines were purchased by a beekeeper who was going to take them apart for parts to put together machines to build bee hives – never to make doors again.

I have been studying the economy and reading many articles glossed over by the main news media. Gradually, I have been able to understand why the government is encouraging the dismantling of America. Normally, when massive amounts of money are "printed" like the government has been doing for the last 20+ years, it causes hyperinflation. But we have not had very much inflation. Why?

When newly "printed" money is kept within a country, it causes inflation. But if the new money goes out of the country it does not cause inflation. The government discovered a way to print their way out of their financial troubles without the problem of hyperinflation – at least for now. As a result, the trade deficit with other countries has become huge. Farms and manufacturing through government policies and regulations have been encouraged to close so that more and more money can flow out of the country, so that more money can be printed to cover government over spending. Currently, close to half of our food is imported and almost all of our clothes. It is a short-sighted philosophy, but it has worked very well so far. The questions are: how long will it work? What will the ultimate consequences be? Where will we get food and clothes if other countries decide they do not want our "funny money"?

There is always the possibility that the government has found a monetary policy that will work in the long run. But there is also the very real possibility that it will fail big time. Here at Jehovah-Jireh Farm, we are hedging our bets by trying to learn as much as we can about growing our own food. If something were to happen that would stop the availability of imported food, at that point it would be too late to begin to learn how to produce all our own food. Every gardener knows how hard it is to grow enough food to live on for a year. You have all these dreams about putting seeds in the ground and harvesting all this wonderful food. Then as the summer progresses, reality sets in as plants don’t grow right, bugs devour plants and vegetables, and the weeds take over the garden. The learning curve is steep, but in the end it is very rewarding as you learn to conquer those problems and are able to produce high brix, nutrient dense food that tastes much better than the grocery store food.

Now, more than ever, it is important to learn how to produce our own food and to support local farms. The Fukushima disaster also raises questions about the future safety of the winter fruits and vegetables that come from California and Mexico. Much of the organic salad greens come from these areas during the winter months.

A Stink Bug Trap that Really Works

We discovered an easy, non-toxic way to get rid of stink bugs. Place a light above a pan with soapy water and leave the light on all night. The stink bugs are attracted to the light. Once they get in the water, they quickly drown. For the soap we used liquid dish detergent. In 24 hours we have caught as many as 400 or 500 stink bugs. This works well in the winter and early spring when the stink bugs are coming out of their winter hiding spots and want to go outside. It may not work in the summer or fall. A friend of ours tried it last fall and all he caught was moths.


A stink bug trap we put in the attic. The light is a twisty fluorescent bulb. We also tried it without the reflector on the clamp lamp and that worked well too.

Trying to Stay Healthy Wrapped in Plastic and Living in a Sealed Insulated Box, Starving Ourselves From a Food We Can’t See – Update

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One thing I forgot to mention in the original article about living in a sealed box is the chemicals and toxins that are trapped inside the sealed box and that we breathe into our lungs. About 20 years ago, I helped build two non-toxic homes. The houses were built with real wood. There was no plywood, particle board, foam insulation, construction adhesives, or carpet. At the time I thought it was a little ridiculous unless someone was very allergic to chemicals. Now that I realize the importance of fresh clean air, I realize the wisdom in a non-toxic place to live. In a sealed house, chemicals and toxins are in the air from: carpet, carpet padding, upholstered furniture, paint, particle board kitchen cabinets, particle board tables, particle board bedroom furniture, drywall (especially Chinese drywall), plywood, flake board, construction adhesives, etc.

A friend of ours, Ken Matich, mentioned in response to this article that cancer grows in the absence of oxygen. I did a little further research and this is what I found. In 1931, Dr. Otto Warburg, was awarded a Nobel Prize for his discovery that cancer was caused by the cell’s normal oxygen respiration with oxygen-deficient respiration. Dr. Warburg stated "Cancer, above all other diseases, has countless secondary causes. But, even for cancer, there is only one prime cause. Summarized in a few words, the prime cause of cancer is the replacement of the respiration of oxygen in normal body cells by a fermentation of sugar."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Heinrich_Warburg)

Several other quotes by Dr. Warburg:
"All normal cells have an absolute requirement for oxygen, but cancer cells can live without oxygen – a rule without exception."
"Deprive a cell 35% of its oxygen for 48 hours and it may become cancerous."
(http://www.healingdaily.com/conditions/cancer-and-oxygen.htm)
See also http://www.mnwelldir.org/docs/nutrition/sugar.htm

These findings highlight the importance of us getting plenty of fresh air and oxygen for our health. Dr. Alexander Beddoe, one of Carey Reams’s students said that one of the best ways to increase our body’s intake of oxygen is to sing or play the harmonica several times a day. He said that it is not the inhaling that is important, but the controlled release of the air that helps the lungs take the oxygen out of the air. The last several months our family has been singing at breakfast and lunch whenever it works out. The children have learned to sing parts and it is fun singing in four part harmony standing in a tight circle in the kitchen, or sitting around the table, blending our voices together. We joke that the hymnals (songbooks) are our eating utensils for getting our food from the air.

On the healingdaily.com web site, one of the ways that they mentioned that a person can increase the amount of oxygen in their body is to put a pint to one quart of 5% hydrogen peroxide in the bath water and soak in it. When I mentioned this to our son Joel, he said that yesterday when he was at Lancaster Ag, he saw containers with 35% hydrogen peroxide and asked them what it was used for. One of the uses is to use it instead of chlorine in swimming pools. I have been wanting something different for our pool than chlorine. This may be an ideal solution. The pool would then be an oxygen therapy in addition to its other benefits, without the harmful effects of the chlorine. The use of oxygen in bath water to increase oxygen levels is an indication that our skin does absorb oxygen. To see more about the use of hydrogen peroxide in swimming pools, go to:
http://purehealthsystems.com/hydrogen-peroxide-pool-spa.html

One of our customers, Becky Berez, highly recommended the book Health and Light by John Ott. This book was also highly recommended by Dr. Beddoe. I ordered the book and look forward to reading it this winter.

Another friend our ours, Esther Smith, mentioned the dangers of cancer causing chemicals that are released from plastic food containers. She had the students in her chemistry class do a project on food and plastics. She said this:

"Plastics and food are a scary combination. Plastics tend to leach chemicals … particularly old, heated, and/or scratched plastics. Using plastic containers to hold food with liquids cannot be good for health. Older people have old Tupperware they are still using. Too many people do not recognize the seriousness of heating plastics in a microwave or reusing scratched plastic containers for food."

Trying to Stay Healthy Wrapped in Plastic and Living in a Sealed Insulated Box, Starving Ourselves From a Food We Can’t See

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Note: I have learned much about all areas of life from things here on the farm the last five or six years. Things that I probably would never have learned if we did not have a pasture based farm. This article shares some things that I have observed, learned, and that have been rolling around in my mind.

In spite of the technological advancements in modern medicine and a renewed focus on eating organic and eating healthy, Americans are still having a serious problem with major illnesses – cancer, heart disease, diabetes, etc. Health care costs keep rising, indicating a growing health problem. We are looking at all areas of our lives to see what might be contributing to these problems. To continue doing the same things that everyone else is doing but hoping for different results for ourselves, is foolish.

When we first started our pasture based farm, I tried to find all the information that I could about raising chickens on pasture. Years ago, it was common practice for chickens to be true free-range. But when the poultry industry converted to confinement raising of chickens, there was much information lost about raising chickens on pasture. I went to the Library of Congress on several occasions and researched in old books about how to raise free range chickens. One of the things that I found in an old book was that the author had observed that chickens do best in the winter if at least part of the south side of the chicken shelter is left open all winter. He stated that chickens need plenty of fresh air and that totally closing the building to keep them warm was more detrimental to their health than the cold. I decided to try it and found that he was right. For the last eight winters, except for one year, we have left the south end of the chicken shelter open day and night all winter. I have been amazed how healthy the chickens have been through the winter months. On average, we have had few chickens die during the winter. When we have young hens that have started laying in the fall months we have had flocks that have laid 80 to 90% all winter without using artificial lighting (80-90% is the number of eggs per day that are laid per 100 hens).


This was during one of the big snows this past winter. Note how the end of the hoop shelter is wide open. The small building on the right is the nest house where the hens lay the eggs.

There were several winters that I felt sorry for the hens, with the end of their shelter open all night and temperatures below freezing. I closed up most of the south end of the shelter. One year we closed up the entire south end at night. But the hens did not do as well. In trying to help them be comfortable, a number of them got sick and died. When we had the same results the second time, I realized that my compassion was misguided. But I still did not recognize the significance of what we had observed.

Earlier this year, one of the things that stood out to me in a seminar that I listened to of Carey Reams, is that for both people and animals, 80% of our food energy comes from the air and sunlight. Only 20% comes from the food we eat. He further stated that of that 80% of energy from the air, 60% is taken in through our lungs and 40% through our skin. While I have not been able to validate that claim, it has made me do some thinking and researching about how our body uses air. We don’t see the air and the nutrients for our bodies that is in it, and so it is easy for us to overlook its importance. Air is a very important part of health and life. We can live for weeks without food, but only minutes without air. Air contains not only oxygen, but also many trace mineral elements. These trace minerals are put into the air through the action of the waves breaking in the ocean. One of the things that helped bring about Dr. Jordan Rubin’s amazing recovery from Crohn’s Disease was that he went to the ocean and lived on the beaches for a number of months. His lungs and skin absorbed minerals from the ocean air and from the sunshine.

One of the things that my mother taught me when I was a boy, was to NEVER get into an empty freezer or refrigerator. She told me that if I did, I could suffocate and die. Here recently, after finding out that the nutrients in the air are more important for our health than what I had realized, I got to thinking about how similar the modern house is to a super size refrigerator in being air tight. Is the modern house a dangerous place to live? In the interest of energy efficiency, houses have been built so that air from outside doesn’t get inside the house, and the heated or cooled air from inside does get wasted by going outside the house. When a house is built, there are multiple layers that seal the air from being exchanged. Outside is the siding. Under the siding, the house is wrapped in Tyvek. Next there is a layer of sheathing, either plywood or an insulation board, both of which seal out air. When I worked in construction, the insulation company even caulked the 2×4 walls where they met the floor and anywhere there were pieces of framing nailed together, to prevent air from getting through the cracks in the stud walls. Inside the house, the walls of each room are sealed with drywall. The only place fresh air can get inside the house is through the windows and doors. Windows and doors are being engineered to seal as effectively as possible to keep air from passing through them and we are being encouraged to replace older windows and doors with these more air tight windows and doors. What is energy efficient is not necessary in our best interest health wise.

Most people today run their air conditioner all summer and the heat all winter. The windows are seldom opened. The average person spends a significant amount of time in a sealed insulated "refrigerator" box of one form or another, living and breathing their stale exhaust with its depleted oxygen and minerals. They spend part of their day in their sealed insulated-box home. They drive to work in their comfortable "sealed box" car. Then they spend eight or more hours in the sealed insulated-box office.

We breathe a huge volume of air each day. The quality of the air we breathe is important. It is an important part of our health.

But there is more about air – the air needs of our skin. Our skin is the largest organ of our body, and yet it is easy to overlook its needs. I was listening to a recording from the 1970’s of a man talking about Iridology—the study of the iris of the eye. The different spots and coloring in the iris of the eye have been found to point to trouble spots and its location in the body. He explained how they could tell when women started to wear nylon stockings and then pantyhose because they could see trouble in those areas in the eye. What really got his attention was when women started wearing wigs as part of the fashion years ago, and it too showed up in the iris of the eye. He said that underwear used to be made with polyester or other synthetic fibers and it caused vaginal infections in women. The manufacturers quietly changed the crotch in pantyhose to cotton instead of nylon. Most underwear was also changed to cotton. I had thought that the reason that almost all underwear and t-shirts were now made out of cotton was because it did not last as long and it provided job security for the clothing manufacturers. I had several polyester t-shirts that had lasted 15 or 20 years.

All this has made us do some thinking and reevaluating of what our family wears. If a woman wears a very thin nylon screen (nylons) – which would appear to breathe – on her legs, and that shows up as a problem spot in her eyes, what about all the other synthetic fibers that we wear? Many clothes have a high amount of polyester in them so that they can be taken wrinkle free from the dryer. Almost all jackets and coats have polyester in the shell, lining, and/or insulation. Many leather shoes have synthetic materials for the insole and inside lining. Many sofas and chairs are made with synthetic fabrics and foam, so when we sit down, the back part of our body is covered with plastic which blocks out air. Our beds are made of synthetic fibers or foam, and we cover ourselves all night with polyester, either in the sheets, blankets, or comforter lining. Has breast cancer has become more prevalent in part, because most bras are made with synthetic fibers that don’t breathe properly? Are we preventing our skin from receiving the nutrients from the air by wrapping our bodies in plastic?

Some of my uncles and aunts and their families are part of a very conservative Mennonite group. They live clean lives. They don’t smoke or drink. They grow a lot of their own food. Many of them live on farms and breathe lots of fresh air, but many of the older people in their group are getting cancer and other serious diseases. One of the things they do, is dress from head to toe in polyester. They make their own clothes, and polyester lasts much longer than cotton. Is the fabric of their clothes contributing to their cancer and other diseases? I don’t know, but it makes me wonder.

Seeing what plenty of fresh air has done for our chickens and realizing the importance of plenty of fresh air for our own health has made our family do a lot of evaluating of what we wear. We do not feel like we have all the answers and we feel like we are merely looking through a keyhole into the next room. We are on a quest to find all the pieces that are needed to have true health and vitality. Eating right is very important, but it is not the whole answer. We would appreciate hearing any of the puzzles pieces that you have.

A One Room, Home School, School House

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We do not do everything just like everyone else does, as many of you have observed by now. That is true not only with our farming methods but other areas of our life as well. About a year ago I felt God directing us to build a small studio for each of our children where they could go to study, learn and write. True education is not merely having information memorized and doing your required time in a school building, but it is knowing where and how to get the information that you need when you need it. Young people need to learn to study and research for themselves and enjoy it, not expecting others to do the study and research for them and provide the answers. In my own research, I have found that many highly educated individuals today are not true scholars. They are merely repeating things that others have said. A verse in the Bible that stood out was: "And all thy children shall be taught of the LORD; and great shall be the peace of thy children." (Isaiah 54:13)

The concept was to build six small rustic cabin type studios. Each of our children would have a mini school house of their own where they could go to for times of studying alone and to be alone with God. The bulk of their school time would still be in our school room in our farm house. The little school houses would be built on wheels so that it could easily be moved to any place on the farm. Each child has input into the design of their mini school house. We started by building two school houses for the two oldest, Joel and Nathan. We have four more to build.

As the name of our farm means: "The Lord will provide". In the weeks that followed, God provided the materials at incredibly cheap prices.

  • At an auction we bought 5200 linear feet of new rough sawed oak lumber for the incredibly cheap price of $50 which we used for the siding.
  • At another auction we bought 17 five gallon buckets of Sikkens log cabin stain for only $75.
  • We bought the metal roofing at half price.
  • The 2×4’s and other framing material we bought at Lowes as "cull" lumber for 75% off. Most of the lumber did not have anything wrong with it!
  • Our neighbor, without knowing what we were doing, dropped off enough windows for all of the school houses from a remodel job that he was doing.
  • We bought new doors at an auction for several dollars a piece.
  • The trailer axles were free. One was from the rear axle of a minivan that the children tore apart several years ago before we junked it.
  • We were given two small wood stoves for the two school houses that are finished, from a friend that we helped put up his greenhouse.

The total cost for each school house – about $200.


This is Nathan’s school house. The main part is 8’x8′ with a 4’x8′ porch. The porch will have a drop leaf desk attached to the railing for studying outdoors.


Nathan practicing fiddle in his school house. It is a great place to practice an instrument where others are not disturbed.


Joel, Kara, and Myron working on Joel’s school house. The building of the school houses is part of the children’s practical hands on training.


Joel’s school house is a little larger than Nathan’s. The main part is 8’x12′ with a 4’x8′ porch. Joel, age 21, is not going to college, but he is still learning and is studying college level human health and agriculture.


Joel is also using his mini school house as a recording and mixing studio.

Living Hand to Mouth?

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One day Cathy and I walked into our local Giant grocery store, and as I walked in, the thought that struck me was: we could not stock up on food for the winter at that store. It is a HUGE grocery store but every thing is sold in small quantities. The selection of food is incredible. Apples are sold by the piece, but you can’t buy a bushel of apples. You can buy one sweet potato, but not a 50lb. bag.

Bulk food
We like to purchase as much as we can in 50lb bags. We buy the whole wheat grain and grind our own flour. Wheat, when it is made into flour, loses almost all of its vitamins in 72 hours.

Even cereal can be purchased in single serving bowls for $1 each. I realized that the HUGE grocery stores give the impression that there is an abundance of food to eat, but they have forced Americans to live hand to mouth by only being able to purchase small quantities at a time. They have also forced people to buy food the most expensive way possible – in small quantities. People find themselves running to the grocery store multiple times a week.

The grocery stores also function on a hand to mouth mentality. Most fruits and vegetables are not purchased locally and stored to be sold during the winter. Instead, there is a global dependence. Much of the fruits and vegetables that are produced locally are consumed in the summer months. For the rest of the year, we depend on other countries supplying much of our fruits and vegetables. We as a country are living hand to mouth, more dependent than we would like to admit, on other people all around the world supplying our food for us when we want it.

But the good news is that all is not doom and gloom. It is possible to eat local, eat healthy, and significantly cut your food costs. The key is to buy in season, in a large quantity, and store it for the winter. It is usually much cheaper buying a 50lb bag of potatoes or a bushel of apples than buying them by the individual potato or apple in the grocery store. When you buy it locally, you can find out how it was raised. When you buy those fresh fruits and vegetables one at a time in the grocery store in the middle of winter, you have no idea what unregulated pesticide might have been sprayed on it in that distant country on the other side of the world, even if it is called organic.

There is a real satisfaction in having food stored up for the winter. I enjoy opening the freezer and seeing it full of good food for us to eat this winter, or looking at the pantry shelves full of food that we raised ourselves and canned for the winter months. Our family has opted out of the hand to mouth mentality of purchasing our food in small quantities. We do not want to go back!


One of our freezers full of sweet corn, apple cider we made at our neighbor’s house, cucumber juice, peaches, and meat.


One of Cathy’s pantry shelves with peaches, tomato sauce, pickles, apple sauce, apple butter, apple pie filling, and beets.


Yukon Gold potatoes from our garden stored for the winter in our cellar.

If you want true pasture raised chickens to eat this winter, this fall is the time to stock up. Over a year ago, we upgraded to a heavier 2mil plastic bag for packaging the chickens and turkeys. That has improved the amount of time that the poultry can be held in the freezer without freezer burn. Cathy recently got some turkey soup bones out of the freezer from almost a year ago (last Thanksgiving). She did not find any freezer burn. Our biggest chicken customer likes to eat local all winter. They plan to have 100 chickens in the freezer to last until May. While that sounds like a lot of chickens, it is only about 4-5 chickens a week until the May 2011 chicken processing. That "customer" is our family. Yes, we eat a lot more than just chicken. When you set four hard working, growing boys down at the dinner table, it had better be more than just a salad!


Another one of our freezers full of home grown food – Chicken, green beans, and raspberry jam.

School of Hard Knocks

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Our farm is more than just a farm. It is a school where each member of our family is learning important lessons in life. The phrase “school of hard knocks” is an old saying used to describe lessons learned from life’s experiences as opposed to academic or college education. It is the hard knocks or difficult times in life that teach a person important lessons if the person is willing to learn.

We encourage each of our children to develop their own farming enterprise as they get old enough to do so. Our second oldest son, Nathan, is a true shepherd at heart and at 17 years old owns about 70 sheep. He also owns most of our breeding rams.

Several years ago he bought a purebred Texel ram for $400. The Texel breed is an old breed that does very well at finishing on grass, unlike many of the popular breeds that have been selected for their finishing on grain. The ram was an impressive, muscular animal. We divided the sheep into two flocks and separated them so that they could not see each other. The one flock had Nathan’s big Dorset breed ram. I once saw him ram one of our 700 lb steers and make him go on his knees! The other flock had the new Texel ram. The rams were with the ewes and bred the ewes for several weeks.

Then one day while we were away, a totally unexpected thing happened. Both flocks broke out of their fences and got together. The two rams battled it out, as male rams do, to see who would be the head animal. When we arrived home, the new Texel ram lay dead. Four hundred dollars gone! What a loss for a 15 year old. It was not only the loss of money, but the loss of valuable genetics for improving his flock. It was a lesson in the school of hard knocks. A hard knock from another ram can kill another ram. My grandfather used to say that it seemed like if something out of the ordinary happened, it often happened to one of his best cows.

To recover his losses, Nathan purchased some Texel ewes and another Texel ram who was the son of the one who was killed. However, the new ram was not as good a ram as the first one was. This spring Nathan’s Texel ewes gave him several nice ram lambs. The nicest ram lamb was Big Burr. His mother was nicknamed Mrs. Burr because she had found a burr patch and went into it, getting herself covered with burrs. Big Burr was the biggest ram lamb and he showed promise of taking the place of his grandfather who was killed.

At the beginning of July, Nathan noticed that Big Burr was missing. He had seen him two days before, but we couldn’t find him anywhere. There was no trace. We suspected that he had been stolen and reported him to the police and animal control. We also found out that a month before a 1200 lb cow and a calf had been stolen on Park Mills Road, several miles from our farm. Another place had 35 chickens stolen, and another two pigs stolen.

About a month later, one of the boys found a two pound sledge hammer in the front pasture where Big Burr was when he disappeared. The sledge hammer was a confirmation that he had been stolen. Another hard knock and another ram gone. Another hard knock in the School of Hard Knocks for a 17 year old. Not just the loss of a ram, but the loss of the genetics as well.

When Cathy heard about the hammer being found, she stated confidently that she was praying that Big Burr would return. I was surprised. We had found the murder weapon and she was still praying for his return. Nathan had also been praying for his return.

Several days later we got a call from Animal Control and they said that they had found a ram lamb with an ear tag that said Nathan Horst on it. They had picked him up on Bill Moxley Road near Mount Airy, about a half hour from our farm. The neighbors said he had been wandering around there for about a month. We picked Big Burr up from Animal Control that evening. He was in good health, although considerably thinner and very dirty. It was amazing that he was still alive. We wish he could talk and tell us his story. Did he escape from his captors? Did they dump him alongside the road? How did he escape from being killed by a dog or coyote in the month that he was wandering around? Where did he get water?


Nathan and Big Burr the night we brought him home. Note how dirty he was.

This was the second theft we had this year where the item was amazingly returned. The other time, Cathy left her purse in a shopping cart one evening and did not realize it until she got home. She immediately went back, but the purse was gone. It had not been turned in to anyone at the store. We prayed that it would be returned. It did not have much money in it.

About a week later, a man called one evening and said that he had her purse! His daughter’s friend had picked it up and given it to his daughter, and she had given it to him. Cathy met the man and got her purse back. Everything of importance was there except for a few items that a young girl might take: the pens, TicTacs, change, finger nail clippers, and an almost expired TracFone with only a few minutes left on it.

The lesson for us in these events in our School of Hard Knocks is that we have correctly named our farm. The literal meaning of the Hebrew words Jehovah-Jireh is “the God Who sees”. God saw what happened and returned the items. What a wonderful way to live. The School of Hard Knocks helps keep life interesting.

If I Had a Million Bucks

By Nathan Horst, age 11

If I’d have a million bucks,
I’d spend it all on sheep.
You wouldn’t catch me spending it
To buy a silly Jeep.

Of course I’d have to buy some land
And put in water tanks,
And then my sheep would smile at me
And baa their humble thanks.

My ewes would then have woolly lambs
That bounce and run all day,
While their mothers ate green grass nearby
And I would watch them play.

There is no other animal
That I like more than sheep.
That’s why I’d spend a million bucks
To get some sheep to keep.

Food, Inc.

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We recently watched "Food, Inc." Many of you have already seen Food, Inc., and if you haven’t seen it yet we highly recommend it. They take you inside the chicken houses, feed lots, and poultry and beef processing plants and give a behind the scenes view of where food comes from and how it is processed. They give you an inside view of how some of the large multinational companies are bullying farmers into submission to their program. You will see why I said "I’ll NEVER raise chickens" after working on a farm when I was in college where I took care of 75,000 broiler chickens in the big factory farm "jail" chicken house.

We saw Food, Inc. the week before the latest egg salmonella scare occurred with the 500,000,000 egg recall. When I saw the processing plants with the conveyors, shackle lines, pipes, etc. that move raw meat and other food ingredients from one place to another, I was amazed that there has not been a lot more food poisoning. For example: it would be difficult, on a daily basis, to completely clean a big long belt conveyor that carries raw hamburger. There are rollers and other contact points under the conveyor that carry the conveyor belt back to the starting end of the conveyor that would be difficult to completely clean. It is a totally different situation than a small butcher shop where it is relatively easy to clean down the tables and small machines at the end of the day. Because of the difficulty of totally cleaning up the big processing plants, they have to use irradiation, ammonia, and other chemicals with names that we can hardly pronounce to control bacteria from growing in the final food product.

The chicken houses are very similar to the ones I worked in when I was in college. The chickens walk a short distance to the feeder, or a short distance to the waterer and then they plop down. There are so many birds packed together. Every day I walked through the chicken houses and picked up the dead chickens just like the lady does. What you can’t experience in the movie is the strong ammonia smell inside the chicken house from the manure nor do you experience all the manure dust that is continually in the air. My one uncle developed a bad cough from breathing all that dust in his chicken house. He finally had to sell his farm because of his health.

One of the newer changes in most chicken houses today is the windows have been closed up and the chickens never see sunlight. They are dark tunnel houses with controlled lighting so that the chickens can be stimulated to eat more. The chickens never know when it is day or night.

Chickens can be controlled very easily with light. When I worked in the factory farm chicken house, it was fun to play with the dimmer switch. When I turned the lights up the chickens got up and started eating, then when I turned the lights down the chickens sat down. I could make the whole sea of chickens move up and down at will with the lights. The poor chickens never see sunlight!

Another characteristic of confinement raised chickens, and this includes chickens raised in confinement in small chicken tractor pens on pasture is that their legs have difficulty holding them up. They plop down rather than gently sit down. This is mentioned in the movie. When I saw a chicken plop down in Food Inc. I suddenly realized it is not as much a characteristic of our chickens any more, even though we have the same breed of chicken. It is not a breed problem, it is how they are raised. Our chickens get lots of exercise and have strong healthy leg muscles that can support their body. They are not the flabby, weak muscled, couch potato, lazy chickens that people buy in the grocery stores and restaurants. We are what we eat and I wonder how much the way the meat is raised affects the person who eats it to be flabby, weak muscled, lazy, etc.


Our broiler chickens getting plenty of exercise and sunshine and a fresh "salad bar" pasture.


The laying hens eagerly going out to the pasture in the morning.

One point in Food, Inc. that was misunderstood by at least one person is that they said that there are 13 main slaughter houses in the US that process the majority of the beef. That does not mean that there are only 13 slaughter houses in the US. There are still many small butcher shops left. We get our lamb processed at Horst Meats, a small family owned USDA butcher shop that is located on their farm near Hagerstown, Maryland. Our butcher is a relative and we feel confident that we get back the same lambs that we take in. When you purchase pasture finished lamb from us you are supporting not only our farm but also a local small butcher shop that is not part of the factory food industry.

What Food, Inc. does not have time to address is where the other half of the food that the US consumes comes from. Almost half of the food consumed in the US comes from other countries. What are their processing plants like? How do they control food borne bacteria? Are the methods USDA approved? What are the working conditions of the employees like? When we eat at a restaurant, or buy food in the grocery store (organic or conventional), what practices and growing methods are we actually supporting overseas with our food dollars? Is the food really fit to eat? What is the environmental impact in those countries?

When you buy local from us at Jehovah-Jireh Farm, you can meet the farmers, you can see where your food comes from and how it was raised, and you can taste the difference.