Author: Myron Horst

Producing High Brix Food

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A number of people have requested information on how to produce high brix food and how to increase the brix of the pastures.

Producing high brix food is not achieved overnight. It takes three to eight years to get the nutrients balanced in the soil so that high brix food can be produced. When you first get your refractometer and start testing your vegetables it is discouraging discovering how poor they are. However, it becomes exciting as you see the improvements in the brix reading, taste how much better high brix food is, and you know you can’t buy this quality of food in the stores.

The best way to know what minerals should be added to your soil is to do a soil test. It needs to be a weak acid LaMotte soil test such as is done by International Ag labs, not the usual strong acid soil tests performed by most labs.

The first year, in the fall of the year, plow the soil and apply soft rock phosphate at the rate of 100 pounds per thousand square feet or 10 pounds per 100 square feet. After applying the soft rock phosphate, apply high calcium lime at the same rate. Do not use dolomite or limestone with more than 5% magnesium. Magnesium releases nitrogen into the air and messes up the soil balance. We get lime from Frederick Farmers Coop in Frederick. It is called Thomasville lime (Old Castle) for $3.05 for 50lbs. Soft rock phosphate is available from Lancaster Ag for $11 for a 50lb bag. They will ship UPS. Lancaster Ag also has garden blends to help gardeners produce high brix food.

Producing nutrient dense, high brix food is more involved than just putting down soft rock phosphate and limestone.

There are also foliar sprays that you can apply to increase the brix. Our tomatoes, potatoes, squash, and cucumbers were low brix and I could not find a foliar spray that raised the brix. I remembered that in the Bible it referred to the land of Canaan as a land flowing with milk and honey.  I tried two cups of raw milk and a little honey per gallon of water. It raised the brix of the leaves of the plants from 7 brix to 10 brix. It raised the brix of the clover in the pasture about 5 brix.

A foliar spray that we used on the green beans and the sweet corn that raised the brix and produced 28 brix sweet corn was:
Per Gallon
6tbsp     molasses – we used feed grade
8oz.       cola soda – a source of phosphoric acid
1tsp       Hydrated lime
3tbsp     liquid fish
1tbsp     seaweed powder
14tbsp  apple cider vinegar

If you want more information, I encourage you to check out the websites listed below.  I also recommend reading the book Nourishment Home Grown by Dr. A.F. Beddoe. Refractometers that test the brix reading are available inexpensively on eBay. Get one that reads in the 0 to 32% range.

Weston A Price Foundation – High Brix farming and gardening
http://www.westonaprice.org/The-Quest-for-Nutrient-Dense-Food-High-Brix-Farming-and-Gardening.html

Soil tests and articles – International Ag Labs
http://www.aglabs.com/soilTesting.html

Supplier – Lancaster Ag, Lancaster, PA
http://www.lancasterag.com/catalog/garden/intro.html

High Brix Gardens
http://www.highbrixgardens.com/

Brix Book and articles
http://crossroads.ws/

Test equipment and articles
http://www.pikeagri.com/
Check out their user guides – plant sap analysis and compost guides

If you are a farmer, we highly recommend the Carey Reams seminars that Pike Agri has. They are well worth the cost. They take you to levels of agriculture that you did not think possible, such as how to produce alfalfa that is 28% protein, grows 12 to 17 feet tall and produces 20 to 30 tons per acre! Carey Reams was hired by the nation of Israel, when they first became a nation, to show them how to turn the desert into highly productive farmland.

Eating Local All Year

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Over the past number of years we have changed the type of foods that we eat as a family. We used to try to buy the cheapest food, thinking that nutritionally, all food was basically the same. That is probably more true than what most realize if you are talking about grocery store food. However, as we have learned about nutritious, nutrient dense foods, we realized that if we want to eat nutrient dense food, we have to grow it ourselves. It also means preserving the harvest so that we have it to eat all year, not just in the summer months.

It is hardly worth gardening if you are just trying to save money at the grocery store. For all the time, equipment, and work involved, it is probably cheaper and definitely easier to just buy it at the grocery store. However, like most things, the cost of grocery store food is much greater than what you pay at the register. The fact that health care is the number one industry in America is proof of the poor quality of foods in the grocery stores. I find it interesting watching the people purchasing cheap food at Walmart – observing what they are buying and looking at the people to see if they look healthy. A large percentage of the people do not have the picture of health.  The government’s idea of fixing health care does not address the real problem. True health care reform needs to start with the soil and adding in the nutrients and minerals that are necessary for human health (not just what is necessary to make a plant grow). The food that we eat is a big contributor to our health or lack thereof. We are what we eat.

There is something satisfying about improving the quality of the soil, producing nutrient dense vegetables for our family, and storing up all that good food for the months ahead. It puts gardening in a totally different perspective. For us it is no longer about saving money. It is not about keeping a weed free garden – a few weeds won’t change the nutrient density of the food. It is about giving my family the health care they need from the ground up.

I looked at our calendar and saw what Cathy had written down over the past month of what she and the girls had harvested and stored away for us to eat until the garden produce comes in again next summer. I thought you might be interested in peeking over my shoulder at what she had written there. This, of course, does not include the other varieties of vegetables that are yet to be harvested as they ripen over the next several months.

Everything, except for the peaches, was raised here on our farm.

July  1   Made 6 pints of butter
        4   Picked and froze 42 1/2 quarts of green beans
        6   Froze 30 quarts of green beans and 5 pints of sugar peas
        8   Made 45 pints of wineberry jam(wild red raspberry) plus 12 pints
             frozen raspberries
        10 Froze 20 quarts of green beans
        13 Froze 12 quarts of green beans
        14 Canned 92 quarts of dill pickles
        15 Made 13 1/2 pints of butter (Put in the freezer)
        18 Froze 18 quarts of green beans
        21 Made 6 gallons of cucumber juice and froze to later make into V8
            juice when the tomatoes are ripe
        22 Processed and froze 21 quarts of corn. The corn was husked, silked,
            blanched, and cut off the cob.
        23 Made 9 pints of butter and froze
        25 Froze 11 quarts of green beans
        27 Froze 17 quarts of corn.
        28 Froze 14 1/2 quarts of beans
        29 Made 2 gallons of cucumber juice
             Canned 20 pints of zucchini relish
             Canned 36 pints of dill pickle slices
Aug  1  Froze 10 quarts of peaches and 18 quarts of corn
         3  Froze 17 quarts of beans
         4  Canned 70 quarts of  peaches, 5 quarts of peach nectar, and 22
             pints of zucchini relish
         6  Canned 40 pints of cucumber relish

Pictures of Processing Corn For Freezing

Cutting Corn
Cathy and Joel trimming the corn after it was husked.

Silking Corn
Daniel and Nathan taking the silk off of the corn. The spinning brush on the motor takes the silk off.

Creaming Corn
Cathy, Kara, and Daniel cutting the corn off the cob to get it ready for the freezer.
The corn was 28 brix, and the best corn we have ever eaten!

Greasy Pastures

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As I looked at the old agriculture book, I found a comment about greasy pastures being the ideal. I had never heard of greasy pastures before. Why would anyone want greasy or oily pastures? Why would the best agricultural book, the Bible, say that greasy pastures were ideal? I had never heard of greasy pastures in all that I had ever read or heard about grass based farming. Does grass have oil in it? Yes, it does. As I researched into the oil in grass, it helped me to put a number of important pieces together of how we can improve the nutritional quality of our eggs and meats.

Over and over I have asked God to teach us how to farm. It has been amazing what He has taught me in unexpected places. Most people view the Bible as strictly a religious book and any references to agriculture are quickly spiritualized into a religious application or ignored as irrelevant. However, as I started looking at the Bible as a source for how to produce health giving food, I have been able to discover some important agricultural advice. I am discovering that God, as Creator, has given us in the Bible the secrets of how to have a long healthy life. There are many things there that we have never seen before.

One day I was reading in Exekiel 34:14 where it calls the pasture “FAT” pasture! In looking up the Hebrew word "fat" I found that it means "greasy". The question that came to my mind was "why would we want a greasy pasture?" Evidently most translators of modern translations of the Bible couldn’t figure out why "greasy pastures" could be a correct translation, so they translated the word figuratively (rich pasture, lush pasture, green pasture, etc.) which totally hides the agricultural information that we need to know.

Here is what it says: Ezekiel 34:14  "I will feed them in a good pasture, and upon the high mountains of Israel shall their fold be: there shall they lie in a good fold, and in a fat pasture shall they feed upon the mountains of Israel."
Some more verses on greasy pastures: 1 Chronicles 4:40  "And they found fat pasture and good, and the land was wide, and quiet, and peaceable; for they of Ham had dwelt there of old."

Nehemiah 9:25  "And they took strong cities, and a fat land, and possessed houses full of all goods, wells digged, vineyards, and oliveyards, and fruit trees in abundance: so they did eat, and were filled, and became fat, and delighted themselves in thy great goodness."

Nehemiah 9:35  "For they have not served thee in their kingdom, and in thy great goodness that thou gavest them, and in the large and fat land which thou gavest before them, neither turned they from their wicked works."

The oil content of our pasture is not an insignificant issue. It has much greater importance than I ever imagined. The oil content of pasture contains fatty acids and in particular, the Omega-3 fatty acid. By increasing the oil content of the pasture, it is possible to increase the Omega-3 in eggs, milk and grassfed meat. Not all grassfed eggs, milk, and meat have the same Omega-3 content. The Omega-3 in eggs, milk, and grassfed meat raised on pasture that had low oil content would be low. The more we can raise the oil content of the grass, the higher the omega-3, the healthier the chicken or animal, and the better the nutrient and health value of our food. Up to this point, I have not heard anyone make the connection between the oil level in grass and the Omega-3 level. Nor have I heard of anyone trying to increase the Omega-3 content of eggs, meat or milk by making improvements in the grass. This bit of information in Ezekiel 34 was an important puzzle piece in seeing the bigger picture. Improving the level of oil/Omega-3 is an important next step.

There has been a lot of research done on Omega-3 and Omega-6 fatty acids. Omega-3 fatty acid is very important in the health of both animals and people. When the Omega-3 consumption is decreased and Omega-6 increased health problems such as cancer significantly increase. Omega-3 has been found to decrease cancer tumors in laboratory animals. Grain fed meat tends to be low in Omega-3 fatty acids and high in Omega-6 fatty acids. Grass fed meat, on the other hand, has a much higher level of Omega-3 fatty acid, and a lower level of Omega-6 fatty acid. The high cancer rate in America is, in part, a result of the high consumption of grain fed meat, and a low consumption of Omega-3 fatty acids. Omega-3 is important for proper cell development. Therefore, greasy pastures are important for the health of the chickens or animals eating them, as well as for our health in eating the food products raised on the greasy pastures.

In further research, I found that we can increase the oil content of grass by increasing the brix (percent of sugar and mineral content) of the plants. As the sugar and mineral content of the plant sap is increased the oil and fatty acid content is also increased. Dan Skow, in the book Mainline Farming for Century 21 said, “When enough sugars are produced, the plant in turn produces more oils. When the oil content of a crop is increased, shelf life has been enhanced.” This correlation between high brix and high oil content can also be found there in the passages in Ezekiel 34:14 and 1 Chronicles 4:40. It is interesting to note that the word "good" can also be translated "sweet". Here again the translators, ignorant of the concept of brix in plants, hid that agricultural understanding from us with their translation.

We found out about the concept of improving the brix in plants about two years ago. We have been trying to learn all that we can since then. Higher brix plants, fruits, and vegetables taste a lot better and are loaded with nutrients and trace minerals. The additional benefit is that high brix plants are highly productive. This year we have been pleased to see the brix level of our pastures come up from last year. Last year the clover brix was in the 4%-7% range. This year it has been in the 8% – 17% range. The improvement of the brix of the pasture showed up in our cows’ milk production. We noticed this when we moved the cows from an unimproved pasture to one of the chicken pastures. The milk production for one of our cows went from one gallon a day to two and a half gallons a day!

Increasing the brix of the plants is important. However, because of the value of oil in the pasture, it is important that we not only try to increase the rix of the pasture, but to also increase the oil content of the pasture as well. We need to find a simple, economical way to test the oil content of plants because the oil content of plants varies from species to species and possibly from day to day as well.

We have much more to learn about having "greasy" pastures. We would appreciate any information that any of you might have. Our goal is to provide you with the best tasting, life-giving, health-giving, and strength-providing food that we can, for an affordable price.

Terra Preta Soils

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In recent years archaeologists in South America discovered plots of ground, called Terra Preta soils, that are amazingly fertile and productive. What is more amazing is that these plots of ground were manmade by the Inca Indians before Columbus discovered the Americas. Despite being in the rainforest where soils are depleted rapidly, these plots of ground are still very fertile hundreds of years later. What is the secret? Charcoal. Charcoal will remain in the soil for hundreds or thousands of years and not degrade away. It also provides a habitat for microbes in the soil. We have been fascinated by what we have read about Terra Preta soils and decided to do some experimenting with charcoal in our garden and also in the chicken bedding. So far we have made six batches of charcoal. For more information about Terra Preta soils, this is a link to a good article:
www.acresusa.com/toolbox/reprints/Feb07_TerraPreta.pdf


This is our charcoal retort/kiln. Inside are five 55 gallon metal barrels  filled with split wood to be made into charcoal. Lids are put on the barrels and each barrel has a one inch hole in the bottom. The barrels are placed on a metal rack with wood put under and around them. As the fire burns under and around the barrels, it causes the wood inside the barrels to char. The gases released from the charring process escape through the hole in the bottom, fueling the fire and reducing the amount of wood needed to fuel the fire. By burning the escaping gases from the charring process, it significantly reduces the amount of black smoke that is typical in charcoal making. After the first half hour, there is little smoke as the fire burns with intense heat. After two hours the charring process is complete. We let the charcoal cool down overnight and open the barrels the next day.

Our oldest son, Joel, showing a barrel of finished charcoal.

Improvements in How We Raise Our Meats and Eggs

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We are continually striving to provide you with the most nourishing food that we can. One of the things that we have learned from Carey Reams and RBTI (Reams Biological Theory of Ionization) is the importance of colloidal minerals and calcium for plants, humans and animals. Last year we changed our mineral supplement that we give to our sheep and we have been very impressed with the results. We used to use a mixture of kelp, salt, and an herbal mix to prevent parasites. The new mineral mix has the addition of colloidal minerals and calcium. We have had the highest rate of twins and triplet lambs of any year so far and the sheep and lambs have been doing very well.

This year we started adding the colloidal minerals in the form of soft rock phosphate, to our chicken feed. This will cost us about $1000 a year, however, we believe that based on the results that we saw with the sheep it will pay for itself in the long run. In addition, it should improve the nutrient/mineral density of your chicken meat and eggs.

Jehovah Jireh Farm – "The Lord Will Provide"

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Many of you know the story of how God provided this farm for us, but the story and God’s provision doesn’t end there.

This spring God provided this 2000 Chevy Astro van for our egg delivery van for free! Our old delivery van had 275,000 miles on it and the transmission went out. It was not worth fixing. We are very grateful for this provision.

Our neighbor, who is a contractor, tore down a deck and brought the wood to us rather than taking it to the dump. We recycled some of the wood by making it into a picket fence for around Cathy’s kitchen garden. Our only cost was for nails and paint. 

Some of the wood we recycled to make a grape trellis and quiet spot around our camp fire ring. Here again our only costs were: one post, a 2×12 for stairs (which has not been made yet) and nails. We plan to weather it by using a special homemade weathering stain. You can make it by taking equal parts of white vinegar and regular iced tea. Add a steel wool pad or some rusty nails and let sit for a week or so. Then apply to the wood. It will look like dirty water, but within a short period of time it will chemically weather the wood with an authentic weathered look. You can then apply a clear wood preservative if you desire. 

At the end of last year God provided these three bikes in excellent condition for only $15 dollars each! The two on the right sold for around $500 new. We use bikes a lot here on the farm. You can travel 3 to 4 times faster with a bike than by walking and it is much easier. Bikes don’t require any fossil fuels, nor do they emit pollution. They also provide the benefit of exercise over a four wheeler. I (Myron) have put 100 miles on the middle bike in the last four months here on the farm as I went about my work. That would have been a lot of additional walking.

What is Expensive?

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It is interesting how easy it is for us to get our perspectives mixed up about what is expensive. Recently Cathy met a lady at Wal-Mart who was purchasing her groceries. By her appearance she was obviously not well. She was riding in one of the electric shopping carts that Wal-Mart provides for customers who have difficulty walking. This lady had met Cathy before and inquired about our eggs, but when she found out that they cost $3.75 a dozen, she said "Oh, I can’t afford that. It is too expensive." This lady was also drinking a Coke while she was shopping. The irony of that lady’s priorities and perspective made Cathy think. That Coke was flavored sugar water, devoid of nutrition and was contributing to the lady’s poor health. The acid in the Coke tends to leach calcium out of the body and bones and destroys the enamel on one’s teeth. It cost at least a dollar. Our pasture raised, organically fed eggs, on the other hand, are full of nourishment, protein, and readily absorbed nutrients and vitamins. A dozen eggs weighs at least one and a half pounds. At $3.75 a dozen, that is only $2.50/lb for a high protein food. That dozen eggs would provide that lady six meals of easy to prepare protein (two eggs per meal) at a cost of only 63 cents per meal. Now compare that to the Coke which cost more than a dollar per "meal". If the lady only has a limited amount of money to spend for food, which should she "too expensive" – the Coke, or our pasture raised eggs?

Scenario  #2
    A person we know of, has poor health and is concerned that they might die. At the same time they have plenty of money. Someone shared with this person about an alternative health care method which has had good success with this person’s type of illness. The person’s response of what is expensive helped me see things from a different perspective. This person said that they were open as long as there is not a product sale push along with the results of the testing. They said, "I am sorry, but I am very skeptical of testing programs of this nature that require you buy their products to fix your deficiency." The person, instead, has chosen to go with the medical doctor’s testing and product sale push which requires the person to use the medical doctor’s products to "fix" the problem at a cost of tens of thousand of dollars. Unfortunately, the medical doctor’s product "fix" also has a high failure rate along with major side effects.

What I learned from this situation is how easy it is for us to view things as too expensive to even check out because it would cost several hundred dollars a month, and other things such as the medical doctor’s "fix" with no greater success rate and which cost tens of thousands of dollars more, as a reasonable route to take.

We have bought into society’s warped view of what is expensive and what is not. The point of this scenario is not to discredit the medical profession. They play an important role in our lives such as when I was in an accident several years ago and broke my ankle. However, the $15,000 cost was way too excessive.

We are what we eat. There is a cause and effect sequence that occurs from the food that we eat. When we eat food that had to be raised with herbicides and pesticides, and meat that had to be fed antibiotics, is it any wonder that so many Americans have to also feed at the Pharmacy? If the food that we eat couldn’t survive without chemicals and antibiotics, we shouldn’t expect our bodies to be able to make it without chemical and antibiotic "fixes" too. When you take into account the medical costs, the lost time running to the doctor’s offices, the poor health in later years, etc., "cheap" grocery store and restaurant food is not cheap. It is expensive.

One of our customers, a young mother, commented that since she has started buying real food, her total food costs have gone down. Yes, the ingredients cost more, but she needs less. Plus you cut out expensive, negative nutrition foods such as Coke and boxed cereals. Your food dollars are spent on real nourishing food.

Is real, organically raised, nourishing food expensive? No, not when you count in all the costs of "cheap" grocery store food.

Our Farm Is For the Birds – Update

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Last spring we gave our children a challenge – for every bird house that they put up that had a nest in it we would give them $1.  The project was a success. We put up a total of 34 bird houses around the farm, and 21 had at least one nest built in them. Almost all of the bird houses that were put on a fiberglass or metal fence post had nests in them. Few of the bird houses that were attached to trees or buildings had nests in them. The birds apparently felt less safe in a bird house attached to a tree.

Wild birds are an important part of our farm. The tree swallows and barn swallows keep the hawks away during the spring and summer months. The chickens feel much safer ranging out in the pastures. We can tell when the swallows migrate south in the fall. Within a week the hawks are back terrorizing the chickens. The hawks usually aren’t very successful in getting a hen, but their circling overhead makes the hens run for cover. It is amazing how a vulture can circle overhead and the chickens don’t mind or run for cover, but if a hawk comes around they run for safety before the hawk flies very close.

The tree swallows, barn swallows, and bluebirds did a wonderful job last summer eating flies and mosquitoes. We also get a lot of enjoyment out of watching the tree swallows put on flying shows. Two swallows will fly in close formation making sharp turns and dives similar to an Air Force Flying Show. They are incredible!

Preparing for Winter – Local Energy

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For the last 17 years our family has used wood as our primary heating source. Not only is firewood a local, renewable energy source, it is also a relatively clean fuel. That seems surprising when you see the smoke going out of the chimney. However, there is something that has to be taken into consideration. If wood is left to rot or is ground up into mulch and left to decompose, gases are released into the atmosphere. If the amount of greenhouse gases that are released from decomposing is subtracted from the emissions from burning the wood, wood turns out to be a relatively clean fuel as compared to fuel oil. Unlike wood, oil that is left in the ground does not pollute the environment. It is when oil is burned that it creates pollution.

I found a good resource on the internet on how to make improvements to a wood burning stove to make it more efficient and produce less smoke. It is http://www.aprovecho.org/  On the right side of their website are the links to several free publications that they have. Using the principles in those publications, I designed a heat exchanger that replaced our existing stove pipe. The heat exchanger is about four feet high and 11 inches in diameter. The lower 15 inches is an insulated section where escaping unburned gases are ignited and burned. Just above that section, an 8 inch pipe draws in room air from the back. The 8 inch pipe goes up the center of the heat exchanger and is open at the top into the room, allowing heated air to flow into the room. The smoke from the wood stove travels in the space between the 8 inch pipe and the 11 inch pipe. The smoke exits out the back of the heat exchanger into the chimney.

The heat exchanger works better than what I had hoped. It has reduced the amount of smoke produced, but even better, it has almost doubled the heat output of the wood stove. It is free heat that we have been losing up the chimney! What is important to me too is that Cathy likes the design which is not as overbearing as the ones on the Aprovecho.org website which use big 55 gallon drums for the heat exchanger. Attached is a picture of the heat exchanger.

One of the things that is important in heating with wood is to make handling the firewood as easy as possible. In the picture you will see the wood box that we built last year and is working well for us. It is essentially a hand truck style wood box that has large casters on the front which allow the wood box to be rolled back against the wall with the opening to the front. The wood box can be tipped back like a hand truck to make it easy to take out to the wood pile, load it up, and bring back to the house. We have two wood boxes so that we can have plenty of wood and don’t have to go out in the rain or snow and get wood.

Woodstove Heat Exchanger

Shipping Crisis

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There is another crisis that I feel I should let you know about so that you can prepare if it should become a bigger problem. All around the world, goods are sitting on docks waiting to be shipped by boat, but the companies buying the products are not able to get financing to pay for the goods because of the credit crisis. As a result of the big drop off in shipping in the last several months, the cost for rental of a large cargo ship has dropped over 90% as ship owners try to attract business so that they can survive. Ships that were getting over $200,000 a day to haul cargo are now only able to get $5,000 – $9,000 a day. This shipping crisis is an indicator of a much bigger problem. If things don’t change soon, imported items will start disappearing from store shelves when current inventories are depleted. This has the potential of becoming a serious problem because around 50% of the food in America and much of everything we use on a daily basis is imported. To read more on the shipping crisis, search www.news.google.com for "shipping crisis".