Tag: Brix

Plant a Garden This Year

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We encourage you to consider raising some of your own vegetables this year. You cannot eat more local than out of your own back yard or patio.The food you eat is important to your health. When we buy food in the grocery store, even organic food, we do not know the health of the soil was that it was raised in. It is difficult to be healthier than the health of the soil that our food was grown in. Supplements can help, but eating "garbage" and then taking some vitamin and supplement pills is not a good recipe for health. 

We have been learning a lot the last six months about raising nutrient dense food. Nutrient dense food is being encouraged by the Weston A. Price Foundation and others. The key is to have the proper amount of trace minerals and biological activity in the soil. You can test the plant, fruit, or vegetable with a refractometer to find the brix (sugar and mineral content) reading. The refractometer can be purchased for $35 – $50 and is very simple to use. We are realizing that what we had in the past considered to be good food, is not as good as it can be.  An example of excellent nutrient dense produce is the following excerpt from an email that was on the BrixTalk Yahoo Group recently. Imagine having tomatoes that you could keep all winter without canning them, and they wouldn’t rot! It would save a lot of time preserving them and the nutrient dense food would be much better for us.

"Last year, we decided to use lime, rock phosphate, gypsum and iron sulfate (for pH modification to 6.4) in our tubs in addition to the fertilizers we had been using in the past. We could grow tomatoes where we could get good brix levels and about 50-60 large sized tomatoes per plant in the past. The additional nutrients we added last year on ten tomato plants produced an average brix of 10 for the large sized tomatoes, but the yields per plant went to about 400 tomatoes per plant in three pickings. We found that the tomatoes in the final picking that were green, ripened at room temperature in two to three weeks. We also found that we have been able to store these tomatoes at room temperature for 5 months and the vast majority of them didn’t spoil. They do shrivel up a bit as water comes out of the tomatoes. Most of the stored tomatoes are not shriveled and have remained quite sweet. For quantities of fertilizers, I followed a book written by Dr A.F. Beddoe, one of Dr. Ream’s students.

"A couple of years ago we were able to get Yukon Gold potatoes up as high as 2 lbs. in weight with many at 1.5 lbs. The normal number of tubers per plant is about 7. We were able to get 19 per plant. We averaged about 11 lbs. of Yukon Gold potatoes from two plants in a tub. That year we were harvesting tomatoes, green peppers, cucumbers, and yellow crook nick squash a little under 30 days after transplanting the plants. Best Regards, Thomas Giannou"

Thomas has further information on his website:
http://www.tandjenterprises.com/tandj_container_gardening.htm 
Some other good websites are http://www.highbrixgardens.com/ and http://www.crossroads.ws/brixbook/BBook.htm
The book referenced, written by Dr. A.F. Beddoe, is titled Nourishment Home Grown, the 2004 edition. The 2004 edition is only available from Dr. Beddoe at http://www.advancedideals.org/016_book_ordering.html

OK, here is one more reason to consider planting a garden this year. Yesterday, March 9, 2008 the New York Times ran the article: A Global Need For Grain That Farms Can’t Fill. It tells how the global demand for food is greater than the supply. We have been used to an abundant supply of cheap food in the grocery stores, but it may not always be that way. This is one of several articles we have seen about a global food shortage. Some are predicting that the next big crisis will be a food shortage. No one knows what will happen. We can’t grow our own gasoline, but we can grow our own food. There is a learning curve in learning how to grow vegetables successfully. By raising vegetables now, we can learn how to do it successfully and productively rather than waiting until things get more serious. And if nothing serious develops, we still have that satisfied feeling as we eat the delicious, nutritious produce that we grew ourselves. Here is the link to the NY Times article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/business/worldbusiness/09crop.html?_r=1&em&ex=1205380800&en=edc992e29863088d&ei=5087%0A

Happy gardening!

Farming and Health—There is Much More To Learn

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Several months ago we realized that we need to learn more about farming and health. Yes, pasture raised meats are important, and organic is important, but they are only two pieces of the pie, not the whole pie or the whole picture. We asked God again to teach us how to farm and from then to now has been an intense learning time. I feel like I am being catapulted along faster than my little brain can absorb everything.

One of the things we learned was at a seminar in Lancaster Pa. where Dr. Arden Anderson was one of the speakers. Dr. Anderson is a medical doctor as well as an agronomist — an unusual combination of training but one which all doctors should have. One of the things that he said was that insects are the garbage crew. If insects are eating a plant or fruit or vegetable, it means it is garbage and is not nutritious enough to eat. He has found that by increasing the mineral and nutrient content of the plant, fruit, or vegetable, insects will leave it alone. Their digestive system cannot handle the increased nutrients in the plants. They get diarrhea and die. Modern science and farming has taken a different approach. They kill the garbage crew (insects) and feed us the "garbage"! The majority of the food we eat today is "garbage".

After we were home again a Bible verse came to our minds "Who satisfieth thy mouth with good things so that thy youth is renewed like the eagles" (Psalms 103:5) How does an eagle renew its youth? How can we become young again? The answer is fascinating. An eagle can live to be as much as 50 years old. Periodically, after a certain number of years, an eagle will go somewhere by itself. It will shed all of its old feathers and grow new feathers. Its claws will grow until new claws have appeared. When the eagle returns to its natural habitat it looks like a young eagle even though it is many years old.

We too, just like the eagle, are continually shedding old cells and new cells are taking their place. Regardless of how old you are, you are not more than about 16 years old!! You will be 16 until the day you die! About the only cells that are with us from birth are our brain cells and perhaps our nerve cells.

  • Gut lining cells are about 5 days old.

  • Skin cells are 14 days old

  • Red blood cells are 120 old or less

  • The entire human skeleton is replaced every 10 years or so.

  • The cells in the liver have a turnover time of 300 to 500 days.

  • Muscle cells are about 15 years old.

  • Gut cells other than the lining are about 16 years old.

Suddenly I realized how people before the flood could have lived to be 900+ years old. The fountain of youth is within us and our youth is continually being renewed. At least that is how the body was originally designed to work. There is a prophecy in Isaiah that when the Messiah comes for the 1000 year reign, people will again live very long lives. "There shall be no more thence an infant of days, nor an old man that hath not filled his days: for the child shall die a hundred years old; but the sinner being a hundred years old shall be accursed." (Isaiah 65:20)

So why are we not living longer now? Part of the answer is found in Psalms 103:5 where it explains how our youth is renewed. It states that our mouth is filled with good things and then our youth is renewed like the eagles. The problem is that we have been eating garbage (food) that is grown in mineral and nutrient depleted soils. This is not a new problem. Farmers and rain have been depleting the soils since the flood. The soil is not nearly as rich, healthy, and productive as it has the potential of being. Our cells are built from the garbage. When our new cells replace the old cells, the new ones are made from mineral and nutrient deficient food, just like the ones they replaced. The new cells don’t have the energy to be youthful. However, if we fill our mouths with good things and eat nutrient dense foods, then our new cells will be stronger and more healthy than our old cells – the renewing of our youth.

Understanding that the cells in our body are renewed on a regular basis sheds some light on our health. One is that it is possible to change the makeup of our bodies over time by changing what we eat. We are not necessarily doomed because of where our body is now health wise. Another is that our body is what it is because of what we have eaten over the last 16 years and what we eat now will affect the quality of some of our cells for the next 16 years. We like instant results in health, but in reality, some of the health renewal will take years of eating right until all the cells are rebuilt with healthy components. This concept of our youth being renewed like the eagles has shed a whole new light on the importance of us producing nutrient dense nutritional food. Again, let me emphasize that this is not the full picture of what constitutes health, it is only one piece of the full picture.

The Importance of Organic – Rebuilding the Soil and Cleaning the Environment

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Several weeks ago, our family visited the Rodale Institute Research Farm for their Field Day. Rodale Institute publishes Organic Gardening magazine and many organic gardening and farming books. That Field Day began a learning process for that has continued for the last two weeks. We are excited about what we have been learning about how to build up the health of the soil and how that specifically relates to human health.

The Rodale Institute Research Farm for the last 27 years has been conducting research comparing conventionally raised corn and soybeans with organically raised corn and soybeans in two different plots. The organic plot produced similar or greater yields than the conventionally raised plot in a good rain fall year. In a drought year the organic plot produced 30 – 80% higher yields than the conventional plot. The higher yields were due to the higher carbon in the soil and the greater water holding capacity in the organic plot. They have found that the organic plot puts about 1000 lbs. of carbon into the soil per acre per year. Each pound of carbon in the soil has the potential of increasing the water holding capacity by 40 lbs. of water! If the US would convert all of its conventional chemical farmland to regenerative organic production, it would remove a huge amount of carbon dioxide from the air and place it in the soil where it would hold moisture and build the health of the soil, the health of the plants grown in the soil, and the health of every living being. When the Creator designed the earth, it was designed so that the environment could heal itself, just like our body heals itself after a cut, broken bone, or sickness. Our planet is not doomed to self destruction as some would lead us to believe. However, we do need to change some things so that the health of the environment can improve. We hold in our hands the potential through regenerative, sustainable, organic farming to be able to increase overall food production, and to bring health to the soil, the air, the water, and every living creature.

What we learned that Friday at the Rodale Institute Field Day was very important. However, as we left that day, there was a comment that was made that I realized that what they had discovered was only one piece of the whole "pie". They did not have the whole answer yet. Organic is an important piece of the "pie", but to have true health and nutrient dense foods there is more to the equation. We need to be organic plus pasture raised plus (?). I called out to God and asked Him to show us the rest of the pieces of the "pie". It was amazing how fast the next step in our learning process came.

    On Monday we received an announcement for another field day that Wednesday at an Amish farm in Lancaster, PA. Reuben Stoltzfus, the owner of the farm, also has a business called Lancaster Ag Products. Lancaster Ag has been achieving amazing results in helping farmers build up the soil and producing nutrient dense products. One farm they helped was able to grow organic peaches this year that were so healthy that the bugs left the peaches alone. By increasing the nutrient density of pasture, they have found that cows only need to eat half as much of the grass and will produce more milk. For the field day, Reuben Stoltzfus brought in a number of leading researchers and experts in soil and animal health. What we learned that day was an incredible learning experience and was another piece of the "pie".

    In the Lancaster Ag catalog, Reuben acknowledges the source of his information. "We are blessed by our Father, who cares for us and loves us wherever we are. He is blessing us with so much knowledge about where we are with the soils and the environment. If we only just take a moment to stop and think about what we are doing and listen to Him, He will help us find the answers. If we don’t listen when the Father wants to give us the answers, he will get our attention somehow. From a health perspective we may face a health problem or maybe God will show us through a loved one or a friend. For me, 5 years ago, I was faced with some health conditions that needed immediate attention. That same year my father also faced some deadly health problems, which gave us all the determination to find answers to the reasons for these conditions. Through the research and studies, many doctors, friends and researchers were able to come up with some methods to look at to improve life in general."

     I am not sure how many more pieces of "pie" there are. What I do know is that there is more to be learned. The universities have not discovered it all, nor do they in many cases have the real answers for farming or the environment. I feel like I am being catapulted along faster than my little brain can absorb everything. Farming is much more interesting and rewarding than when I was helping build mansions for people who didn’t need them. We will be sharing more of what we are learning in the coming months.