Author: Myron Horst

The Lazy Days of Summer??

The August 2011 edition of Country magazine has on the cover: "Easy Season, Relax and enjoy the dog days". Summer might be the lazy days for air conditioned city folks, but they are not lazy days here on the farm. We have been trying to apply the wisdom of the old proverb: "Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise:  Which having no guide, overseer, or ruler,  provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest. How long wilt thou sleep, O sluggard? When wilt thou arise out of thy sleep? Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep: So shall thy poverty come as one that travelleth, and thy want as an armed man." (Proverbs 6:6-11)

In addition to all our other work, we have been busy canning and freezing as much of our nutrient dense food from the garden that we can so that we have nutritious food to feed our family this winter when all the colds, flu bugs and other sicknesses are going around.

Sweet Corn 2011
This is a bucket of high brix sweet corn (25 brix) from our garden. Our family loves corn and we grow a large patch of sweet corn. Last year the stink bugs destroyed our last planting of sweet corn. This year Cathy was determined that we would get all our sweet corn. Unlike other bugs that are deterred by high brix plants, stink bugs love sugar. We found a repellent that really works. We used a mixture of liquid laundry soap that we got from a health food store and mixed it with water and sprayed it on the ears as the corn was nearing maturity. We had to spray it twice. It turned some of the outer husks brown, but it didn’t affect the corn. Watering with a sprinkler seems to help reactivate the soap also.You can find more at this link: http://www.ehow.com/info_8607847_stink-bug-repellent-home.html

Cutting Corn
Cathy and some of the children cutting the corn off the cob. The corn is first husked, then the silk is removed. Then about 100 ears are blanched at a time in a large outdoor cooker/canner. The corn is then cooled in water, cut off the cob and put into freezer boxes. This year we put 98 quarts of corn in the freezer.

Canning Veggie Soup
Cathy and Kara in the process of canning 41 quarts of beef vegetable stew. In the lower left corner is canned beets. Cathy learned an easy way to wash a large quantity of beets and potatoes. You put them in the washing machine with an old towel and set it on the gentle setting. It works well and takes the work out of washing all those vegetables.

Cooking Under Pressure
There are also times to sit and relax and learn how to cook under pressure! Here Cathy is reading a new cook book about how to use her new 10 quart pressure cooker. She is waiting while salsa is being canned in the the outdoor canner. She and the girls made and canned 76 pints of delicious salsa that day. Salsa is great on eggs – fried, scrambled, and omelets.

Daniel with Spinning Wheel
Recently, our son Daniel made an electric spinning wheel using a sewing machine motor and foot control. It is amazingly simple and works well.

Oh the non-lazy days of summer, when we go to bed feeling like we accomplished something and we feel more prepared for winter. This winter we will sit by the wood stove in the evening and enjoy a good book or use that new electric spinning wheel.

The Difference Between our Pasture Raised Chicken and Conventional or Organic Grocery Store Chicken

That organic "free-range" chicken you see in the health food store has probably never seen a blade of grass. The term "free-range" means that it has "access" to the out of doors. It could mean that there is merely a fenced in dirt lot next to the large chicken house where some of the chickens can go, if they are close enough to the door. The typical health food store organic "free range" chickens are raised in concentration, dust and ammonia (from the chicken manure) filled chicken houses very similar to any other grocery store chicken.

Taste

Our chickens are raised in the fresh air on grass pasture and have a much better taste than a conventional grocery store chicken. You might compare it to the difference between a garden fresh tomato and a hot house tomato. Pasture raised chicken has a slightly firmer meat texture (not tough) as opposed to mushy. Even the smell of the uncooked chicken is so different. In addition to pasture, our chickens are also fed a certified organic feed.

Humanely raised

The chicks spend the first three weeks in a sunny brooder where they are kept warm. Then they are moved to a large airy shelter in the pasture. Each morning the doors are opened on the shelter and the chickens go outside to enjoy the fresh green grass, insects, and sunshine. During the middle of the day they usually go into the shade of the shelter to rest and eat a lunch of organic chicken feed. Towards evening as it gets cooler, they again range out in the pasture looking for a tasty "salad". At dusk they again return to their shelter and the doors are closed to protect them from foxes, owls, and other night predators.

Health benefits of eating our organically fed, pasture raised chickens

You receive the health benefits of a chicken that was nutritionally fed organically raised grains as opposed to grains raised by chemical nitrogen stimulation in mineral depleted soils. In addition, the chickens’ feed includes an organic mineral supplement containing 60 trace minerals. From a visual perspective, the processed chickens have a more yellow fat from the grass that was consumed, similar to the darker yolk color of pasture raised eggs. The fat in cooked chicken broth is also noticeably more yellow.

What you don’t get: A chicken that was raised breathing manure dust and ammonia in a conventional chicken house 24/7 its entire life. The chicken will not have received any antibiotics, vaccinations, growth simulators, genetically modified grains, pesticide laden and chemically produced feed, synthetic vitamins or feed ingredients, or arsenic to be passed on to you. Because the chickens have not received any of these things, the chicken livers are not loaded with toxins and are good to eat.

Our Summer in Pictures


The kittens are at a very cute stage. Here is Fluffy posing in the flowers on the front porch. Fluffy’s mom is Midnight, the grandma and head matriarch of the other cats. She is a peacemaker. Whenever the male cats get into a fight, Midnight streaks across the yard and breaks up the fight. It is always interesting to watch.


Farm boys don’t need to work out at the gym. They do their weightlifting with slightly larger weights! What you don’t see is that the tractor is hooked up to a trailer with several ton of gravel on it which made the front of the tractor lighter.


We made hay stacks again this summer. In spite of modern technology, hay stacks are one of the best ways of preserving hay and makes a fun family project. Most hay today is crushed when it is cut to speed the drying process. Unfortunately, the crushing process also releases the vitamins in the grass, similar to what happens when grain is cracked or ground into flour or feed. If built properly around a pole, the hay stack sheds rain with only the outer 4 inches or so being affected by the weather. This year we used the conveyor to make the hay stacks which made the work much easier. We were also encouraged with the significant improvement in the soil and the amount of hay. Two years ago, this same pasture made only half as much hay.


Last week our sons Nathan, Daniel, and Joel purchased some more Texel sheep from a farm in Michigan for breeding stock. We left Thursday evening about 7:00 pm, drove through the night and arrived at the farm in Michigan at 8:00 am. With three drivers and beds in our conversion van, we were able to take turns sleeping. We returned home again Friday night about 11:00 pm.


Nathan purchased this Texel ram in Michigan to improve the genetics of his flock of sheep. Note how exceptionally wide the ram’s chest and front legs are. He is wide the whole way back. From the rear he resembles a pig with wool. The Texel breed is a heavily muscled breed that does very well on grass alone. They are also known for their superior meat quality and naturally lean meat. Two years ago in England, a Texel ram lamb set the world record for the highest priced sheep at £231,000 ($324,647). Nathan, 18, owns most of the sheep on our farm. You know a guy likes sheep when he puts all his money into buying sheep rather than buying a car!


Flowers of summer – a Stargazer Lily

Is Your Food Giving Your Body the Complete Nourishment You Need For Health and Longevity?

In thinking back on what you ate today and yesterday, was the food nutrient dense, produced on fertile mineral rich soil? Did the farmer that raised the food care about your health, or did he/she mass produce it with little regard for what it would do for your health? Were the meat, eggs, or dairy products raised in a healthy environment and fed a nutrient dense, non-GMO diet on pasture? How much variety of different vegetables and fruits did you have? In evaluating your food and beverages for the last two days, on a scale of 0 to 10, how valuable do you think they were in contributed to your ultimate health and longevity? Or did they have a negative impact on your health?

I used to think that eating food was basically like putting gas in a car. I needed a certain amount of calories each day (just like a car needs a certain number of gallons of gas). If I ate too many calories I would get fat, and if I didn’t eat enough calories I would lose weight. The number of calories I ate was the main thing to be concerned about. How naive I was! What I didn’t realize is that unlike a car, our bodies need a wide variety of fuels because there is a wide variety of systems operating at the same time that each has special fuel needs. Because of the wide variety of fuel needs that the organs in our bodies need, it is important to eat a wide variety of foods, fruits and vegetables. An athlete that focuses on building his muscles will consume a large amount of protein and protein powders, but in the process he neglects the fuel that his brain needs and many of the other organs in his body.

Years ago, I had a great-aunt who went on a carrot diet to try to cure a health problem that she had. She juiced carrots and consumed a large quantity of carrots. I don’t know how long she was on the carrot diet, but it was long enough that her skin turned yellow. She decided she had eaten too many carrots! Carrots are an excellent source of certain "fuels" that our bodies need, but they are not a complete food source. The same is true of each variety of grain, fruit or vegetable.

The following is an interesting email that I received about a year ago from a lady in Australia about how certain foods look like the body parts that they supply specific "fuel" for. I have not validated everything that she shares about the different foods, but it gives an excellent illustration of the importance of eating a wide variety of foods.

"Hello, While reading my Bible, I asked God about sheep. I believe that God doesn’t just put things in the Bible for no reason & that everything has meaning that only He can reveal to a person who asks. I forgot about the sheep for awhile & about a week later I was looking something up on the internet (not sheep)& your website popped up and "sheep" caught my eye. I smiled because I knew it was God!!! I loved your articles. So thankyou!!! God has been showing me things too on health, food, environment etc. very similar to what you are finding. I just wondered if you knew about foods looking like body parts?

It’s been said that God first separated the salt water from the fresh, made dry land, planted a garden, made animals & fish…all before making a human. He made & provided what we’d need before we were born.

A sliced carrot looks like the human eye. The pupil, iris & radiating lines look just like the human eye…& YES, science now shows carrots greatly enhance blood flow to & function of the eyes. Carrots get their orange colour from a plant chemical called beta-carotene, which reduces the risk of developing cataracts.

A tomato has 4 chambers & is red. The heart has 4 chambers & is red also. All of the research shows that tomatoes have fibre & are loaded with lycopene (a powerful antioxidant) which is indeed pure heart & blood food. They also have Vitamin K which regulates blood flow.

A walnut looks like a little brain, a left & right hemisphere, upper cerebrums & lower cerebellums. Even the wrinkles or folds on the nut are just like the neo-cortex. We now know walnuts help develop more than (3) dozen neuron-transmitters for brain function.

Kidney beans actually heal & help maintain kidney function & yes, they look exactly like the human kidneys.

Celery, bok choy, rhubarb & many more look just like bones. These foods specifically target bone strength. Bones are 23% sodium & these foods are 23% sodium. If you don’t have enough sodium in your diet, the body pulls it from the bones, thus making them weak. These foods replenish the skeletal needs of the body.

Avocados, eggplant & pears target the health and function of the womb & cervix of the female – they look just like these organs. Today’s research shows that when a woman eats one avocado a week, it balances hormones, sheds unwanted birth weight, & prevents cervical cancers. And how profound is this? It takes exactly (9) months to grow an avocado from blossom to ripened fruit. The name avocado comes from an Aztec word meaning "testicle tree" because the rounded fruits grow in pairs. Avocados have vitamins & minerals that are necessary for reproduction such as Vitamin E. Diets lacking in vitamin E do not support the reproductive function. Vitamin E may also help the sperm penetrate the egg. Deficiency leads to a degeneration of testicular tissues.

Unfortunately I don’t have time to write too much more on this but I must say that what I discovered here is endless. Other examples that you can research yourself are as follows:

Grapes hang in a cluster & look like the shape of the heart. Individual grapes look like a blood cell.

Lungs are made up of branches – bunches of grapes (vine).

Eyes are fish shape (Vitamin A)

Sweet potato looks like the pancreas.

Grapefruits, oranges & other citrus fruits look like mammary glands of the female when the fruit is sliced.

Onions when sliced look like body cells.

Broccoli – green tips on the head look like hundreds of cancer cells.

Pumpkin and squash seeds look just like the prostate gland.

Ginger looks like the stomach.

Raw cheese looks like internal structure of bones.

Figs correspond to male reproductive organs and they hang in twos when they grow.

Olives look like ovaries.

Beetroot are good for blood production and look like blood.

Going away from food I’ll tell you something about elephants that are interesting too. There are Indian elephants and there are African elephants. Indian elephants have ears in the shape of the continent of India and African elephants have ears in the shape of the continent Africa.

God’s insights are endless and amazing. What an amazing Creator we have!!!

Karen

After reading Karen’s email, I had to think of this verse in the Bible that mentioned several foods that resemble body parts: "Butter of kine, and milk of sheep, with fat of lambs, and rams of the breed of Bashan, and goats, with the fat of kidneys of wheat; and thou didst drink the pure blood of the grape. "(Deuteronomy 32:14) I am not sure how the oil in wheat germ affects the kidneys, but I did find that to clear the kidneys of kidney stones, one method is to take olive oil or coconut oil along with lemon juice. It appears that oil is important to keep the kidney functioning properly. Most wheat consumed in America today has the oil and the wheat germ removed, even in so-called "whole wheat" products. People do not get the "fat of the kidneys" of the wheat to help their own kidneys.

The correlation between blood and grape juice in the above verse is more than just looks. The Mayo Clinic has an interesting article on the value of grape juice for our blood in which they say:

"Recent studies have suggested that red and purple grape juices may provide some of the same heart benefits of red wine, including:

  • Reducing the risk of blood clots
  • Reducing low-density lipoprotein (LDL, or "bad") cholesterol
  • Preventing damage to blood vessels in your heart
  • Helping maintain a healthy blood pressure

Both red wine and grape juice also contain antioxidants called flavonoids, which have been shown to increase your high-density lipoprotein (HDL, or "good") cholesterol and lower your risk of clogged arteries (atherosclerosis), and may help lower blood pressure."
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/food-and-nutrition/AN00576

The take home message for each of us for health and longevity, is to eat foods that are as nutrient dense as we can find and to eat as wide a variety of foods as we can.

Meat Glue

It is incredible the bad inventions that the food industry comes up with and puts in our food. It is becoming more and more difficult to eat out or to buy food in the store that will give us true health and longevity. It is becoming more important to buy locally and to know where our food is coming from and how it was raised. One of the latest things is a meat glue that is used to glue pieces of meat together so that pieces of meat can be sold as a "whole" piece of meat. One of my questions is, if it glues meat together, what does it do inside our body? We are made of meat.

The statement that Joseph Gonzales makes in the article below "There’s a 50 percent chance you’re eating it every day, and it could be dangerous", makes me wonder what all they are using it in that is not listed in the articles: Roast beef sandwiches? Turkey breast sandwiches? Lunch meat? Those nicely prepared, ready-to-heat meats and meals in the grocery stores? Etc.

The following is a snippet from the April 24, 2011 WTOP news article titled "Meat Glue – You’ve probably had it, and it could be dangerous"
http://www.wtop.com/?nid=267&sid=2357468

"WASHINGTON – There’s a meat industry secret they probably don’t want you to know. It’s called transglutaminase, more commonly known as ‘meat glue.’

"It’s made from a blood-clotting enzyme from beef and pork plasma that helps turn leftover scraps of meat into whole fillets that can be sold at market price.

"Joseph Gonzales, dietitian for the Cancer Project, says there’s a 50 percent chance you’re eating it every day, and it could be dangerous.

"’All the bacteria is still on the outside of the meat and as you gather them together, they start to fold inward. Now you can’t cook off that bad bacteria because it’s stuck inside,’ Gonzales says.

"The FDA categorizes transglutaminase as Generally Recognized as Safe, but the study was funded by Ajinomoto, the same company that produces it and other products like MSG."

Another article that explains more about meat glue and has some excellent pictures is "Industry-Wide Use of Meat Glue Sticks Together Scraps of Meat to Sell You Prime Cuts"
http://healthfreedoms.org/2011/03/29/industry-wide-use-of-meat-glue-sticks-together-scraps-of-meat-to-sell-you-prime-cuts/

The following is a quote from that article:

"Meat Glue: It sounds utterly repellent; like some pre-industrial, rustic adhesive, but it’s actually a fine, tasteless powder that looks like icing sugar and it makes meat and other proteins stick together like super glue. If you are eating meat, chances are you’re eating or have eaten the glue at some point.

"This sort of thing has been a boon to the food industry, which can now treat all sorts of proteins like meat or fish as just another material to be processed, but in the hands of molecular gastronomists it’s become a way to manipulate food in a way that would have been previously impossible. It’s possible, for example, to make tenderloin rolls wrapped in bacon that hold together perfectly without the need for twine or toothpicks."

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."