Tag: Health

Blinded By Amazing Medical Technology

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By Myron Horst

The incredible and amazing advancements in medical technology have blinded our eyes to what is really going on — the “health” care industry does not know how to slow the increasing prevalence of disease and major illnesses. They confidently tell us what to eat and what to do, based on peer reviewed research, to prevent certain cancers or diseases. But, as we look at the bigger picture, we see that sickness and disease are rapidly increasing and healthcare costs are skyrocketing to unsustainable levels in spite of the prevention advice of the medical community. They do not know how to slow the increasing prevalence of disease and major illnesses. If you and I continue to eat the same foods that are available in the grocery stores and restaurants, we will likely get cancer, heart disease, or one of the other diseases and illnesses that those around us are getting.

The focus of the “health” care industry is on treating sickness and disease once they occur. That is where the big money is. They have become very high tech in keeping sick people alive a year or more longer while they drain the person’s bank account. My uncle told me about a week ago that nursing homes cost almost $100,000 a year. He is in his 80’s, is living alone and is resisting going into a retirement community as long as he can. He had put his wife in a nursing home a number of years ago because he was no longer able to take care of her. Her medical care, before she passed away, cost him half of everything he had and he does not want to give the rest of what he has to the healthcare industry.

The cost of healthcare will soon become unaffordable for many people, even with the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA or Obama Care) in 2010. The PPACA did slow down the projected increase in health care cost some at this point. A recent report in the Annals of Family Medicine shows that the annual cost of heath insurance for a family will equal median household income in only 20 years (2033). Those costs are totally unsustainable in the long run. http://www.annfammed.org/content/10/2/156.full.pdf+html

Self Defense

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By Myron Horst

We live in a time that has different challenges and problems than what our grandparents ever had to face. The following situation is something that each of us is more likely to face than ever before.

A person comes into your house and is going to kill your wife. What would you do?

  1. Shoot them
  2. Tell them to leave.
  3. Quick take pictures or video with your phone.
  4. Not know what to do, so you do nothing.
  5. Pray.
  6. Sit beside your wife while she dies and hold her hand.

Most people would do number 6, just sit there and hold her hand while she dies. Even the macho men with their closets full of guns and ammo! As much as they believe in self defense, they would not defend her because they do not recognize what is happening. It is not the type of self defense situation that they were expecting or prepared for.

It is best not to answer a hypothetical question like I asked (“what would you do?”) because you do not know all the facts. In this case, the scenario that I am thinking about is not a person with a gun, but a situation that we are more likely to face with hospice or healthcare. It is important that we are alert to what is happening and not get deceived with the code language – “making them comfortable”.

We have been observing older people under hospice care being sedated with morphine and other medications to the point where they can no longer eat or drink. The end comes quickly. When a person is heavily sedated, it is difficult to really know if they are really that close to death or if it is the medication that is preventing them from living. The following are two cases where medication would have killed the patient if the medication had not been stopped.

My sister is currently in Florida helping a friend of hers, who we will call Mary, who is terminally ill. This lady is a heavy smoker and has continued to smoke even though she is on oxygen. Because of that, Hospice dropped her and refused to care for her even though she desperately needed help.

The following are several excerpts from emails that my sister sent:
“I pointed out how we wondered what was going on with Hospice dismissing her and why God would allow that to happen to her, and that I had prayed that they would take her back. But we now know that if she had continued with Hospice, Mary would most likely no longer be here because of their overdosing of morphine, and then her own accidental overdosing of meds on top of that. When I stopped in to see her on what I thought was my way out of town a week ago, and saw what we all thought then was a major decline in her condition, I estimated she would not last a week. Her nurse said today she had thought the same thing.”

Four days later:
“Today we had a major answer to prayer when a doctor signed on to oversee Mary’s care and prescribe her meds, including morphine, when she needs it. However, in the last two weeks Mary has weaned herself down to very low dosages of morphine, only taking it as needed when she gets really short of breath. As she has come off the major dosages of morphine that hospice had prescribed and urged her to take, and the other meds she had accidentally overdosed on while on morphine have worked their way out of her system, Mary has become much more herself again: alert most of the time and clear minded.

“The really good news is that the new doc doesn’t think her death is very imminent, and she is going to work at reducing Mary’s use of morphine to as small a dose as possible so that she can be as clear-minded as possible for as long as possible. She is also going to prescribe physical therapy to help Mary regain use of her legs and be able to bear her own weight again, since it was just two weeks ago that she was able to walk to the bathroom and back again. It’s a whole different perspective now in Mary’s condo, as this doc has brought a focus on life rather than on death. Mary’s illness is still a terminal one, but I remember six years ago her doctor telling her she only had six months to live. But he was wrong, and she has done a lot of living in the six years since.”

A similar potentially fatal medication situation happened to my uncle under Hospice care. He was given a medication that prevented him from swallowing. My aunt, who is a nurse, realized what was happening and stopped giving him that medication. My uncle made her promise not to ever let them do that again. It was awful. “Making them comfortable” can be a horrible way to die.

We live in a day and age which is different than any other time in recent history. We need to be alert to what is happening so that we can protect our loved ones from those who would harm them. I am sure that Hospice is not all bad and that they are a help to many. However, for me, the term “Self Defense” has taken on a new meaning. Guns and bombs are not the only things that kill.

The best self defense in this case is to live right and to eat right so that you do not need the “health care” system at all! That is our mission here at Jehovah-Jireh Farm: to help you be as healthy as we can. We are “More than a farm — A living laboratory researching the secrets of food, health and life.” If we eat the same foods that everyone else is eating we will have the same sicknesses and diseases and need the same healthcare and hospice. If we want different results, we have to eat differently and eat better quality foods than what “everyone” else is eating. Healthier foods cost more, but the costs are small in comparison to the results of cheap GMO, low brix, low calcium, factory farm, and processed foods.

Cathy’s Cooking Corner: The Well Equipped Kitchen Workshop

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I, Myron, am writing Cathy’s Cooking Corner this month for the husband or wife that is not doing the cooking, or that does not do most of the cooking.

You have kicked the cheap food and prepared foods mentality of our American culture and are eating real foods. In the cheap food culture, all that is needed is a coffeemaker, a microwave, a stove and oven and a few pots and pans. The kitchen is not a very important workshop. Most of the cooking is done in a big factory somewhere.

In changing to a real foods diet, your kitchen needs to be properly equipped to quickly and efficiently prepare real foods and health giving meals. View the kitchen as a very important workshop that needs to be properly equipped with quality tools and equipment. The tools and equipment do not need to be expensive, just good quality.

I have tried to make it a priority to make sure that Cathy’s kitchen is properly equipped with the tools that she needs. We keep adding things as we can afford them and when we can find them. Unfortunately, most kitchen stores such as Bed, Bath, and Beyond are filled with electronic gadgets and cheaply made small appliances that are not designed for real cooking with real foods. You can find quality made items, but it takes some looking around.

The take home message this month is: If you want to be healthy and eat right, equip your kitchen workshop so that you can eat right and be healthy.


After burning up several expensive homeowner type mixers, we bought this used 20 quart commercial mixer at an auction. It takes a lot of work out of making bread or large batches of cookies. Cathy can now make seven loaves of bread at a time. She puts some of the bread in the freezer to keep it fresh.

For more on this subject, read the article from last year: Selecting Pots and Pans.

Major Changes in Hospitals

By Myron Horst

The news media has kept our focus on “ObamaCare” in recent years, and while our attention was diverted, some major changes have occurred in hospitals that are not related to “ObamaCare” or the pharmaceutical industry. Healthcare is the #1 industry in America. As such, it has attracted the attention of investors and others whose primary focus is on the money that can be made in healthcare.

I have been wanting to, and not wanting to, write an article on this subject ever since my mother’s hospital experience and passing this spring. My sisters and I noticed a significant change in how the doctors related to the patients than what it had been in previous stays that our mother had in the hospital. Some of the doctors were rude and had very poor bedside manners. We received a lot of pressure from multiple doctors to make a specific decision that seemed to be motivated more for the hospital’s benefit than for my mother’s health. It was obviously a coordinated effort and not just the decision of one doctor. We were so annoyed by the one doctor that we actually asked for him to be removed from my mother’s care. We also noticed that all the doctors seemed to be employees of the hospital.

About a month later, I read an article written by Virginia Hopkins about her mother going to the hospital with a slight stroke. She described her mother going through similar things that we had experienced. I realized that some major changes were taking place in hospitals. I strongly encourage you to read Virgina Hopkins’ article:
When a Parent Goes to the Emergency Room
http://www.virginiahopkinshealthwatch.com/2012/04/when-a-parent-goes-to-the-emergency-room/

A little over a week ago, the New York Times had a large article on our hospitals and how, in the last number of years, hospitals, private equity firms, and insurance companies have been buying up doctors’ practices, and the doctors have become employees of the hospital or the investment group. The parent company then puts pressure on doctors to admit people into the hospital, to request unnecessary tests, and to refer patients to doctors within the company system. The focus is on making money. Because of the monopoly that some of the hospitals have, they are able to charge excessive prices for their services. The hospitals are able to charge higher prices when doctors work for them than when the docters were in private practice.

This article, I believe, is very important for you to read. It explains why our family and Virginia Hopkins had the hospital experiences that we did. Times have changed. Doctors and hospitals are not operating the same as they did only five years ago. It is important that you know what is going on so that you can protect yourself and your loved ones from the healthcare system.

New York Times – A Hospital War Reflects a Tightening Bind for Doctors Nationwide
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/01/business/a-hospital-war-reflects-a-tightening-bind-for-doctors-nationwide.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&nl=afternoonupdate&emc=edit_au_20121130

False Breast Cancer in 1.3 million Cases!
Cancer is big business for doctors and hospitals. We are hearing of more and more women are being diagnosed with breast cancer.  In November 2012, the New England Journal of Medicine released a shocking report stating that in 2008, 31% of the diagnosed breast cancer cases were not cancer at all. They state “We estimated that breast cancer was overdiagnosed (i.e., tumors were detected on screening that would never have led to clinical symptoms) in 1.3 million U.S. women in the past 30 years. We estimated that in 2008, breast cancer was overdiagnosed in more than 70,000 women; this accounted for 31% of all breast cancers diagnosed.”
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1206809?query=featured_home&

Natural News has an article going into more detail: Shock Study: Mammograms a medical hoax, over one million American women maimed by unnecessary ‘treatment’ for cancer they never had. http://www.naturalnews.com/038099_mammograms_false_positives_overdiagnosis.html

After finding out the information in the New York Times article and the report on breast cancer in the New England Journal of Medicine, I reflected back on my mother’s case. I was with my mother when the oncologist diagnosed her with stage four cancer. We had read the lab report before we met with him. The lab report on the MRI and biopsy showed pneumonia and a very small speck of potential cancer. He was very quick to state confidently that it was stage four cancer and that she should start chemo immediately. We questioned him about his diagnosis and his response was basically that because of his expertise he could tell that it was cancer.

When my mother went to the hospital six months later because she was having difficulty breathing, they were quick to say that it was definitely the cancer in its advanced stages, and they basically gave up on her. The X-ray showed something in the lungs that could have been cancer or pneumonia. The oncologist, a different doctor and in a different hospital, was again quick to state that it was cancer. When I questioned him, he admitted that he had not looked at the X-ray before he came to talk with us. (He was the doctor that we fired). We were shocked recently when my sister read the death certificate and found that it stated that the primary cause of death was pneumonia! The secondary cause was advanced lung cancer. Did she have lung cancer, or was it only pneumonia? We will never know. But knowing what I know now, there is a possibility that she might not have had cancer.

Hospitals and doctors can be hazardous to our health and life. It is important, more now than ever, to do all we can to not need their “services”. It is our goal here at Jehovah-Jireh Farm to help provide good, healthy food to help keep you healthy and out of the doctor’s office and hospital.

Home Chiropractic

I used to be suspicious of chiropractors. I called them quacks that pulled your leg and took your money. I said that because the people I knew that went to a chiropractor would go two or three times a week for months on end. After we got married, I saw some people that were truly helped by chiropractors and my opinion of them changed some. I also went to Dr. Kevin Wyman in Gaithersburg, and he helped Cathy and me several times without repeated visits. He even taught me how to adjust a twisted pelvis with two wedge shaped blocks, and it has helped us on numerous occasions. His main job is working for an insurance company, evaluating chiropractic claims to spot fraud. He only operates his chiropractic office part time and does not have to have all his income from his practice. We highly recommend him.

Several years ago we got a book and DVD on home chiropractic that have been very helpful for our family. It taught us how to evaluate the problem and how to correct it. There have been different times that a vertebra was out of place on one of us, and within a few minutes Cathy or I were able to adjust the spine and make the vertebra pop back into place. Often the pain went away almost immediately. Sometimes the spine has to be adjusted a number of days in a row, because it keeps popping out again due to the weakness of the muscles . My opinion of chiropractic has changed since I have been able to experience first hand how to move the spine and see that it actually relieves the pain and corrects the problem.

“Home Chiropractic” is simple enough that each of you could probably learn how to do the basic adjustments to the spine to relieve pain. It is not a comprehensive chiropractic course, but it is a valuable tool. It gives you a tool to help correct the problem right away before the vertebra gets “set” in its uncomfortable position and becomes difficult to get it to go back to its correct position. It is my opinion that one of the reasons that people have to keep going to the chiropractor for weeks on end is that is how chiropractors make their money. If they corrected the problem in a visit or two, they would not have enough patients to keep them in business. The other reason that people have to go to the chiropractor for repeated visits is that a person tends to wait for a number of weeks, months, or years before going to the chiropractor, hoping that the pain will go away on its own. By that time the vertebra has become “set” in its wrong position or the nerve has been pinched for too long, or other damage has occurred. It then takes longer to correct the problem, and sometimes the problem can’t be corrected by chiropractic methods.

If you go to a medical doctor, his main tools are to give you pain killers, exercises, or surgery. When a vertebra is out of place and causing pain, the pain is not because you have a lack of pain killers in your body. Not all back pain is because a vertebra is out of place, but if it is, and a simple adjustment by your spouse fixed the problem, you have no need to go to a doctor whose solution is to do surgery on your back and leave you with potential lasting pain and restrictions on what you can do. Surgery makes the doctor a lot more money than taking two minutes to pop your spine back into place.

Learning simple chiropractic techniques is a health care tool that I believe is important for each family to have.  The spine contains the central communication network for the body. Because of that, the health of the spine can affect the health of the body. A pinched nerve in the spine can cause a seemingly unrelated problem in another part of the body that is serviced by that nerve.

The Home Chiropractic Handbook and DVD can be ordered from these websites:
http://www.home-chiropractic.com/
http://www.heattherapyprod.com/chiropracticpage6.htm

To Plow or Not to Plow, That is the Question!

By Myron Horst

Note: Whether you garden or farm or not, I believe that you will find this article interesting. The subject “To plow or not to plow” is a much more important subject than what most of us realize. There is a surprising conclusion.

In farming and in gardening there are opposing voices, those saying that the ground should not be plowed or tilled and others saying that the soil should be plowed. Both methods appear to work, but which one is the best? One of the challenges in life is discerning the best solution to take.  There are many things in life that “work” and highly educated people promote them as being the answer, but in the end there are consequences or side effects that outweigh the good. It is also important to ask the question: “It is better as compared to what”. For our family, we are not just interested in producing food to eat, we also want to produce the most nutrient dense food that we can.

No-till farming has been growing in practice here in the U.S. The method used by most farmers today is to spray Roundup to kill the cover crop or weeds that have grown in the stubble of the previous crop. The new crop seeds are planted with a special no-till planter through the dead plant mat that is left on the ground. No-till farming has enabled farmers to be able to farm a considerably larger number of acres because all they have to do is spray and plant. No plowing and no cultivating.

For me, the subject to plow or not to plow came up again this past winter when we watched the video “Back to Eden.” It was a documentary of a man who had an impressive looking garden. The documentary had excellent pictures of beautiful plants. Most of the shots were close up and it looked impressive. He did not plow or till, but used a mulch layer on the ground to suppress the weeds and build a rich black soil. He had been gardening this way for a number of years and was getting good results. The method of gardening was presented as God’s method, and as an almost no work garden. I was convinced enough to try it on some of our vegetables.  A lot of Bible verses were quoted throughout the video. But is he right?

I found a website, called “Farming God’s Way”. It is an organization that is teaching African farmers how to farm and to provide for their families. They too advocate not plowing and putting down a layer of mulch. They call the mulch layer “God’s blanket”. They intersperse the teaching on the farming method with Bible verses. It sounds like a very Biblical method. But are they right?

The voices cautioning that the ground should not be plowed or tilled have been around for a long time. Newman Turner and Ruth Stout from years ago both strongly recommended that the ground should not be plowed.

About six years ago, our family went to visit the Rodale Institute’s organic research farm in Pennsylvania for their farm open house. I was very interested in their no-till system that appeared to be a real answer. They had developed an organic no-till system that did not use chemicals. They invented a large roller that would roll the cover crop and kill it by crimping the plants. The roller was mounted on the front of the tractor and a no-till corn planter was pulled behind the tractor for a one pass planting. The cover crop created a mat, or mulch layer that helped conserve moisture and provided nitrogen for the crop. I was impressed with the system and we went back the next year to learn more. That year I was not as impressed. There were a number of problems that they had not been able to fix and the yields were not as good as conventional tilling.

On the other side of the subject is the teaching of Carey Reams. Reams stressed the importance of plowing to reverse the calcium and phosphates in the soil. Calcium tends to move down in the soil which is evidenced by stalactites and stalagmites in caverns. Phosphates tend to rise to the top where they can be washed into streams and rivers. By turning the soil over, the calcium is kept in the topsoil layer and the phosphates are buried back in the soil. Calcium is an important element in producing nutrient dense, high brix food.

So which method is best, to plow or not to plow? For me as a farmer in researching a farming method, I like to go to the oldest agricultural book, the Bible, and see what it says. On this subject it opened a window into a totally new perspective for me, that enabled me to see the collision course that farming is on today.

About the Garden of Eden it says this: Genesis 2:15 “And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.”

  • The Hebrew word translated “dress” means to till. Even in the garden of Eden it was necessary to cultivate.

In Ezekiel 36:34-35a it says that plowing and cultivation was an important part in the land becoming like the garden of Eden. “And the desolate land shall be tilled, whereas it lay desolate in the sight of all that passed by. 35 And they shall say, This land that was desolate is become like the garden of Eden”;

  • Tilling, or plowing appears to be an important part of creating a fertile and very productive field or garden.

Isaiah 28:23-26 It says this: “Give ye ear, and hear my voice; hearken, and hear my speech. 24 Doth the plowman plow all day to sow? doth he open and break the clods of his ground? 25 When he hath made plain the face thereof, doth he not cast abroad the fitches, and scatter the cummin, and cast in the principal wheat and the appointed barley and the rie in their place? 26 For his God doth instruct him to discretion, and doth teach him.”

  • Plowing produces clods of earth. Cultivation breaks up the clods.
  • This passage says that God’s method is to plow the soil – the opposite of what the Back to Eden film said, and the Farming God’s Way states. In my research, on almost every subject, I have found Christians saying and believing opposite things to be true. It can be confusing and misleading if you take what one person says without checking things out yourself.

The oldest agricultural book has some strong words about no-till farming and this is what opens the window to a bigger perspective of the subject.

Proverbs 12:11 He that tills his land shall be satisfied with bread: but he that follows vain person is void of understanding.

Proverbs 28:19 He that tills his land shall have plenty of bread: but he that follows after vain persons shall have poverty enough.

  • Plowing and cultivation are important for success in farming and in gardening to produce an abundant crop.
  • “No-till” is following “vain” persons who think that they know and have the answers, but in the end it results in poverty.

So, is the old agricultural book right? Is no-till following vain persons? Does no-till result in poverty? There are some interesting things that have come out recently.

Rodale Institute, about a month ago, released the yield data for their 2011 yield trials of conventional tillage and their no-till system. The conventional tillage system yielded 95 bushels of corn per acre and 39 bushels of soybeans per acre. The no-till system yielded less than half the yield of corn even though more seeds had been planted per acre – only 40 bushels of corn per acre. The no-till soybeans only yielded 20 bushels per acre. Only half the yield with no-till is a sure way to poverty. http://www.rodaleinstitute.org/20120627_challenging-yields-challenging-weather

In conventional farming, no-till comes in a package. It requires the use of lots of chemicals – Roundup to kill the grasses and weeds, GMO (Genetically Modified Organisms) seeds to resist the Roundup, pesticides and fungicides to kill the bugs and fungus because the crops are so low brix that the bugs and fungus try to eat it up to return it to the soil. No-till is a method that is promoted by the Monsanto Corporation who gives huge donations to many of the big university agricultural departments. So, of course, the no-till trials show the no-till advantage. But one thing to remember is to ask the question: “No-till is better as compared to what?”. They are not comparing no-till to properly remineralized, plowed, and cultivated soil, and they are not looking at the long term effects of the whole no-till system. They are looking primarily at short term crop yield comparisions.

The no-till revolution has resulted in a very high percentage of conventional soybeans and corn being genetically modified to resist Roundup. A New York Times article talking about GMO Roundup Ready crops says: “Those crops made it so easy for farmers to control weeds by spraying glyphosate [Roundup] that Roundup Ready crops now account for about 90 percent of soybeans and around 70 percent of the corn and cotton grown in the United States. And use of glyphosate skyrocketed, at the expense of rival herbicides.” They go on to say how super weeds are becoming resistant to Roundup, and Dow Corning is looking for approval for their GMO corn that is resistant to 2,4, D (an ingredient in Agent Orange) so that 2,4,D can be sprayed after the corn comes up, instead of Roundup to control the Roundup resistant super weeds.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/26/business/energy-environment/dow-weed-killer-runs-into-opposition.html?pagewanted=all

We can see, that at the heart of the GMO controversy is actually the question, “To plow or not to plow?” No-till has resulted in GMO seeds being used in a high percentage of our crops. What is the effect of GMO grain? Does it improve health or destroy it? Just released this fall is a French study on the long term feeding of GMO grains to rats. The rats grew huge tumors and 70% of the females died. If you have not seen the pictures of the rats, the pictures are worth a thousand words. You can see the pictures at:
http://www.naturalnews.com/037249_GMO_study_cancer_tumors_organ_damage.html

Last week Russia halted all imports of GMO grain after the French study came out. http://rt.com/business/news/russia-monsanto-corn-ban-005/

We see a progression of following “vain” persons promoting no-till. No-till requires the use of herbicides, such as Roundup. The use of Roundup results in the need for GMO crops. GMO grains have the potential of resulting in cancer. But that is not all. There are more consequences of following “vain” persons:

The United Nations in a report states that the suicide rate for farmers worldwide is higher than for non-farmers. In the Midwest of the U.S. where most of the corn, wheat, and soybeans are grown, suicide rates among male farmers are two times higher than the general population! This is a sad and telling statistic. No-till farming has not resulted in grain farmers becoming more successful. They have become more dependent on the big corporations and the chemicals and seeds that they sell. The more dependent that they have become, the more it drains their wallet. Finally, in despair and financial hopelessness they commit suicide.
http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/csd/csd16/PF/presentations/farmers_relief.pdf

The suicide rate among farmers dependent on Monsanto is highlighted by the suicide problem among farmers in India. The Infowars.com website reports that in India every 30 minutes another farmer commits suicide. Over 250,000 farmers have committed suicide in India alone in the last 16 years! They often committed the act by drinking the same insecticide that Monsanto supplied them with. http://www.infowars.com/monsantos-gmo-seeds-contributing-to-farmer-suicides-every-30-minutes/

The Hindustan Times reports: “India’s Bt cotton dream is going terribly wrong. For the first time, farmer suicides, including those in 2011-12, have been linked to the declining performance of the much hyped genetically modified (GM) variety adopted by 90% of the country’s cotton-growers since being allowed a decade ago. Policymakers have hailed Bt cotton as a success story but a January 9 internal advisory, a copy of which is with HT, sent out to cotton-growing states by the agriculture ministry presents a grim scenario. ‘Cotton farmers are in a deep crisis since shifting to Bt cotton. The state of farmer suicides in 2011-12 has been particularly severe among Bt cotton farmers,’ says the advisory.  Bt cotton’s success, it appears, lasted merely five years. Since then, yields have been falling and pest attacks going up.” http://www.hindustantimes.com/News-Feed/Business/Ministry-blames-Bt-cotton-for-farmer-suicides/Article1-830798.aspx

As I reflect on the above information, I realize that what that old agricultural book said: “He that tills his land shall have plenty of bread: but he that follows after vain persons shall have poverty enough.” is more accurate and not as radical as what it first sounds. The long term results of no-till is not sustainable because of its heavy dependance on chemicals and GMO seeds and the poverty that they bring with them, not only to the farmer, but also to those who eat the GMO grains. Healthcare costs have skyrocketed in recent years and are draining the wallets of the consumer, bringing them poverty and dependance on the government to supply healthcare.

It is helpful to be able to step back and see the bigger picture. In the end, the big corporations such as Monsanto and Dow Corning will fail because their products are not sustainable and end in poverty. It all goes back to a subject that at first appears to be relatively unimportant – To Plow or Not to Plow — That is the Question!

Cathy’s Cooking Corner

Cathy recently wrote a blog post for the Pantry Paratus website that you might find interesting on homeschooling on the farm.

The Kitchen Classroom with Cathy from Jehovah-Jireh Farm
http://pantryparatus.com/blog/homeschooling_farm/

Sunny Side Up Eggs

When I fry eggs I usually fry them on one side and then flip them over and fry the other side. This method is usually recommended so that the eggs are completely cooked. Restaurants are not allowed to sell sunny side up eggs because of the chance that they will not be cooked enough to kill bacteria.

Myron wanted some sunny side up eggs like he had when he was a boy, but I always hesitated at the problem of getting them over fried on the underside and not done enough on top. Recently I remembered seeing my mother put a little water in the pan with the eggs and then putting on the lid. I decided to try it. It did the trick. The eggs weren’t overdone but still cooked through the way he likes them. After 25 years of marriage and cooking, I am still learning some pretty basic new things.

Crack the eggs into your skillet. Fry them on the underside with a little butter. When the eggs are ready to be flipped, instead pour several tablespoons of water into the pan and cover it immediately. Cook them till they’re done as much as you like them.

A Living Laboratory – Jehovah-Jireh Farm

Our new slogan:
“More than a farm — a living laboratory researching the secrets of food, health and life.”

This new slogan better describes who we are. Our farm took on a new focus after we moved to this farm a little over five years ago. This farm became more than just a pasture based farm. It became a living laboratory where God has showed us many things about food, health and life. Many times it is like trying to drink out of a fire hydrant as we try to process what we are learning, researching, and observing here on the farm. We have only shared in the farm newsletters a small part of what we have been discovering. We have many more exciting things to share with you.

It all began with finding the research of Carey Reams in agriculture and also human health. That has led us to other research. Each puzzle piece that fits together makes a bigger picture. It is not that we spend a significant amount of our time in research like a traditional lab, but things keep dropping into our lap from unexpected sources. Problems on the farm become learning experiences as we look for answers.

The article in this newsletter, “Weeds in the Garden”, is an illustration of research we are doing and answers that we are finding that run counter to conventional “wisdom”.

Please do not get the impression that we know it all and have all the answers. We have many failures as the announcement below illustrates. We feel like we are only peeking through the keyhole and are not yet seeing the full picture. We are here to serve you and to provide you with top quality food, and to help you to be successful in growing your own high quality, health giving fruits and vegetables. We appreciate the many things that you have shared with us and taught us.

The Importance of Having Your Own Garden

With each passing year, it is becoming more important that you have your own garden if you want to be healthy. Acid rain and sulfur and other acid fertilizers are removing the water soluble calcium in the soil. The rain water that I have been testing this year has been running about 6.0 pH. The USDA reports a significant decrease in calcium in our foods over the last 50 years. The calcium in our food is much more available to our bodies than calcium supplements.

Sometime I would like to go into detail about my research about calcium, but for now I will just share this — calcium is required for each cell in our body to be replaced. If calcium is not available, the cell cannot be replaced and degeneration occurs. Calcium is much more important than just for our bones and teeth.

It is important to put high calcium limestone on your garden each year to replace the calcium lost to acid rain and what is removed in the produce you harvested.

Another important reason for having your own garden is to be able to provide food for yourself and your family if our food supply in the grocery stores becomes disrupted. Food is a necessity of life, and we as a nation have become dependent on other countries and states on the other side of the US to supply a significant amount of our food. Knowing how to raise your own food is an important back-up plan. We need to share with each other things that work and things that don’t work in gardening. Gardening is an ever learning process.

Weeds in the Garden

by Myron Horst

I have observed that it is easy for gardeners to get focused on the wrong things in gardening. Weeds are one of those things. I have observed people going to great lengths and expense to control weeds, as if gardening is all about controlling weeds, rather than producing an abundant crop of nutrient dense food. Controlling weeds becomes a big burden for them and takes the fun away from gardening. Weeds and grasses can be an important fertilizer, they can be a curse, or they can be a lesser part of the gardening experience.

This past winter, someone sent us the link to the “Back to Eden” video. It is the story of a man who implemented a method of gardening very similar to the Ruth Stout method of using mulch to control weeds, except he used a lot of Bible verses to make it sound like it was God’s method of gardening. It was an impressive video with great pictures of beautiful plants. He portrayed his method as an almost no work method of gardening. We decided to try the method on two rows in each of our gardens. It was not “no work” gardening!! It was a lot of work loading the wood chips into wheel barrows and wheeling it into the garden and spreading it. I was glad we did not have to cover both of our gardens with wood chips.

Recently I looked at the “Back to Eden” garden again and realized that it was only about 1/3 the size of our smaller garden and 1/6 the size of our large garden. I was surprised at how few plants he really had in the garden. There was a lot of space between the plants. What is easy to do on a very small scale in a hobby garden for fresh eating can become very labor intensive if you are trying to grow most of your food. If we are going to produce enough health giving food to sustain ourselves and our family, there has to be a better way.

Carey Reams, who discovered how to grow high quality, nutrient dense food, said that one of the best ways to control weeds is to plant rows close together so that the plants shade out the weeds. We have tried that method for the last several years and it has worked very well for us. It has allowed us to spend little time on weeding. We now spend much more time harvesting than weeding. We garden intensively in rows.

The first thing is to get the right nutrients in the soil. We spread about an inch and a half of composted chicken manure on the garden in the fall and plowed it under. Each year we put down some soft rock phosphate and high calcium limestone. The first year, put down about 50 lbs of soft rock phosphate per 1000 square feet and 100 lbs of high calcium limestone per 100 square feet. Each year after that a smaller quantity of each should be put down to replace what was removed and depleted during the year.

In the spring, we rototill the garden and plant the rows of green beans, corn, and other row veggies in rows 24 inches apart. The potatoes we plant 30 inches apart. This spring we made the mistake of planting some of the sweet corn 30 inches apart. That allowed significantly more grasses and weeds to grow. The rest of the story we will tell in pictures.

After the plants emerge, we use this small tiller to cultivate out the small weeds. It has only a 14 inch tilling width and easily goes down the rows planted 24 inches apart. It only takes about an hour and a half to till a 1/4 acre garden. We then hoe out the weeds in the row. In the sweet corn and potatoes we cover the small weeds as we hill the corn or potatoes. It is much faster than hoeing out the weeds. About a week or so later, we run the tiller between the rows again. This is the last time it needs to be tilled. By then the plants are starting to shade out the space between the rows and the weeds don’t have a chance.


This is 10 rows of green beans 50 feet long. There are another two rows of green beans that are to the right of the picture.  Notice how the rows have grown together, shading out the weeds and shading the ground from the sun and reducing the drying out of the soil. When a wider row spacing is used, it allows sunlight to reach the soil and germinate lots of weed seeds. The ground has the desire to always be covered.


Does planting the rows close together reduce the yield? Not if there are enough nutrients in the soil. The first picking of green beans was four buckets. The second picking was last Monday with about 13 buckets of green beans.


The third picking on Friday produced another 15 1/2 buckets of green beans. The beans had very few bug holes and when cooked were tender and delicious; nothing like what you buy in the store. The yield so far is the equivalent of 5.6 tons per acre and there are still more beans growing on the plants. Cathy and the girls canned about 200 quarts of beans and froze another 100 quarts. We all helped pick and snap the beans. It took much longer to pick the beans than what we had spent total in weeding. The outdoor canner was great because the ladies could can 26 quarts at a time and it kept the heat out of the house.


The zucchini was planted in a row and the squash and pumpkins to the left were planted 5 feet apart in each direction. That is a 6′ step ladder with a sprinkler on top which shows how tall the squash plants are. I am realizing that watering the garden before it gets really dry is an important part of controlling weeds because it allows the vegetable plants to continue growing rapidly and stay ahead of the weeds.


This picture illustrates the goal with weeds: make the weeds unhealthy and the vegetable plants healthy. The weed in the center is bug eaten and the beets are strong and healthy. Too often, it is the opposite. The key is learning how to feed the vegetables and not the weeds. Nitrogen will make weeds grow just as fast or faster than the vegetable plants that we want. Too much nitrogen attracts bugs to the plants we want. Soft rock phosphate and high calcium limestone are important elements in the soil. It is also important to foliar feed the plants with a spray each week to keep the brix of the leaf above 12 so that the bugs leave it alone and go after the weeds. The foliar sprays that we use are in this article: https://www.jehovahjirehfarm.com/articles/2010/07/13/an-incredible-substance-raw-milk/

This year we also discovered another foliar spray that dramatically raised the brix of our pasture grasses and some plants in the garden. It is important to test how a foliar spray is working by testing the sap of a plant leaf with a refractometer. The same spray can cause the brix to drop in some plants and raise it in another. The formula is 4 of our raw pasture raised eggs and a tablespoon of feed grade molasses in a gallon of water. It puts a glossy shine on the leaves.


Weeds and grasses are an excellent fertilizer, as the trees in our American chestnut orchard illustrate. These trees were planted as nuts only five years ago. The gate is about 9 1/2 feet high to the cross bar. The trees have grown so dense that it is difficult to walk through the orchard. We repeatedly hear that it is important to keep the weeds down so that they don’t compete with the plants that we want. You often see orchards where they have sprayed RoundUp under the trees to control the grass and weeds. We did the opposite in this orchard. When the trees were smaller, we allowed the grass and weeds to grow 1 1/2 to 2 feet tall before we mowed it. It was not unusual for some of the grass to be above the hood of the lawn tractor. What we were doing was building topsoil with the grass. The roots of the grass go down about the same distance as what the plant is tall. When it is mowed off, the roots of the plant die off until they are about the same size as the plant that is above the ground. Those decaying roots made topsoil to the depth of two feet. By repeatedly allowing the weeds and grass to grow tall and mowing them off year after year, it created a soil that allowed the chestnut trees to grow rapidly. The same principle can be applied in the garden. After a crop is harvested for the year, rather than tilling up the ground and letting the ground be bare, allow the weeds and grass to grow, but mow them off before they produce seeds. Use the weeds to your advantage.