Snow Day on the farm!

The boys are very hearty

Is winter here? Don't count on it this year.  It snows, about 5 inches, I think about plowing then read the forecast, thunderstorms on Monday.  Ahhhhh, I love it when mother nature does the work for me.
Plenty to do today, tons of pics of animals in the snow, hay in the barn today for the ponies.  Warm water for everyone, the bucket heater does triple duty on these days.
Josie is starting to settle into milking, we had a nice 1/2 gallon today and she continues to relax.  She is a saucy little cow of large opinions, but she is starting to gain a bit of patience with us and double the food doesn't hurt either.

two Mille l'fleur D'Uccle hens fluffed and keeping warm

 

Suvi and Brownie munching on hay in the bunny cabana

snow piggie

Our cow family

Cleansing remains a fun journey at this point.  The rules are fairly simple, still no caffeine, starches, grains, carbs. Tons of new veggies, no sugars.  So far we are eating tastier than we have in a long time, I cannot believe the cooking rut I have been in for years.  We had pulled pork barbque tonight and mashed cauliflower with dill and cheese.  The greatest new recipe, which I am still playing with and will post when I have it down pat, are my new gluten free cookies, macaroons of almond and coconut.  These and most of my recipes this week come from a truly gifted cook and her website, kalynskitchen.com.  If you cannot find something delicious and healthy to make there, you are not looking or are not hungry.  Some tweaking has been done to the recipes true Maddrey style, but they are solid as is.  I find our cleanse to at this point most closely resemble South Beach phase one, but I am loving the new cooking challenges of omitting my nasty little habit ingredients, you know, fat and fat, sugar and bacon.  I have a sweet tooth, a fat tooth, bacon molars and bread incisors, Frank has a bacon tooth, and potato tooth and cheeseburger everything else.  For my part, I am feeling better than before the fast, much more energy and the mood swings are somewhat less homicidal as long as you don't consult Max for corroboration on that point.  A twinkly cold snowy good night to all.

Josie's first sharing!

Here is the first half gallon of milk from our sweet Josie cow, we are all still working out the milking politics but the milk is fabulous. Do you dare to dairy?

Fasting turns to cleansing on Day 3

Today we ended our fast with a smooth transition into Cleanse 1.  Our fast was 3-5 days and owing to how we were feeling, it seemed like time to move on.  How were we feeling?  Like we hadn't eaten since Sunday and were still doing all of our daily work and farm chores in the cold ass weather.  That being said, we were not dramatically seeing any difference in daily digestion, energy or inflammation, all of which had been very apparent when I had first fasted.  Truly, I was not even hungry, my body has given up on that while fasting, I was just really cold.  And not when I should be cold.  I can hack lessons in 30 degrees and wind no problem.  Not today, so onward and upward.  Frank was just hungry and depressed.

Cleanse 1: This is the adjustment period and the actively seeking to rein in the blood sugar time.  Restrictions include, no: Alcohol, tobacco, firearms (kidding),caffeine, sugar, sweeteners, starches, grains, carbs.  Limited fruit, some limits on meat (mostly volume).  Let me get this clear, we like bread and french fries, add bacon to that and we are desert island ready, add chocolate and a gun and we are officially our own nation.  The emphasis of this stage is to keep digestion optimal, blood sugar very low and keep the hydration going.  It is also to find many new and exciting ways to cook and present our really healthy foods.  If you are burned out on cooking, one more meatloaf and you will jump off a bridge.  Fast baby, fast.  You will appreciate your food, all of it.  Everything already tastes sweeter.  Tonight, Sundried Tomato and Garlic Hummus with carrots and Roasted Broccoli with Garlic, Balsamic Vinegar and a bit of Parmesan Cheese and mushrooms stuffed with Tuna.  Mmmmmm... Could have been sawdust, still would have been great.  I have pinned about 40 recipes on pinterest that follow our diet at this point, if you are interested look me up.

On to the business of the day, even cold and a bit headachy, the show must go on.  My new greenhouse has welcomed its first plants today!  This greenhouse was a craigslist find lean to, and is attached to my room.  Someday it will passively heat the room in the daytime and at night my wood fired cookstove will heat both at night. The stove is still in a state of rebuild, but Frank has installed a small propane heater temporarily and we have a 100 gallon stock tank in there for heat sink.  Even more exciting is my friends Eileen, Kevin and Elizabeth are gifting me their Koi to live in the stock tank.  We will use the soiled fishy water to hydrate and fertilize the plants and grow watercress and basil in a gravel substrate suspended in the tank.  But for now, I started with the basics, Basil, Cilantro, Dill, Parsley.  Some lettuce, spinach and kale are in hanging planters that can go out as soon as the spring thaw comes and 5 varieties of onions are going.  I am out of leek seed so I will be hunting some down this week.  Onions are always a tough call here, I feel as if I never start them soon enough.

The shelves in the greenhouse are ugly, but they were made of found lumber and pallets and the middle shelf on both sides is an insulated pallet, providing bottom heat for seedlings by using a 60w bulb.  Take that poor pepper germinators!

seeds planted today

oyster plug spawn

For the early afternoon it was time to do something with the spawn if the refrigerator, no, this did not just turn into a housekeeping blog.  I mean spawn, spores, fungi, not last months leftovers, the stuff I actually paid for, Mushrooms.  Today was Oyster mushroom day, they have been laying about long enough and I had a bit of time to start installing them on the stump of an old cherry tree that came down in a storm this summer.

plug spawn in drilled hole

Off to the woodline with my trusty drill, 5/16th bit, hammer and spore plugs, a vroom and a tap and a rinse wash repeat, and with any luck, there will be mushrooms next year.  I will blanket the soundest sections of this log at about 4 inch intervals with the plug spawn, then it appears there will be quite a bit left over, there is one other stump to inoculate then I will be building my mushroom garden of logs nearer to the house.  I have turkey tails, lions mane, shittake and maittake to plug as well.  Oysters are supposed to be the most resilient so they get the unattended tree line, the others will live in the woods next to the house where I can water them more easily if necessary.

Goals and Directions

So besides stripping our chassis of about 20 plus years worth of industrialized national gunk, what is this whole really inconvenient and slightly painful food restriction business about?  I say this as the sugar free headache is descending on me.  Like a hangover, but so much worse. Must. Find. Chocolate.
Anyway, we live on a farm and are trying to be self sustaining, we are becoming fairly aware of what we will be able to provide ourselves with should we continue to farm in this approximate climate.  It makes sense to adjust our bodies, recipes and minds to live within our means, not just in a way that is local, organic and seasonal, but full down to the last pancreatic enzyme.

Lately the Blood Type Diet, and many others have focused on what the Weston Price Foundation has been saying for years.  If you eat a diet indigenous to you, your body has a full understanding of it and will utilize the food efficiently and not create waste and toxin issues.  The Weston Price Foundation would say this diet is that of your tribe, island or immediate area.  But we are mutts, so I believe using their principles and not the Blood Type diet of what I ate when I was incarnated 14,000 years ago.  Which would be totally muddy anyway due to the genetics of blood typing.  You have a finite ability to digest foods.  Specifically, the stomach may be able to break down a food but the endocrine system is the one that has to classify, enhance, process, deal with imbalances and ultimately make custom blend body juices to assimilate that food.  If you cannot assimilate the food, we get anything from leaky gut syndrome, gas, bloating, constipation, diarrhea, and the real kicker is inflammation.  The last can appear as arthritis, arterial sclerosis, headache, back pain, and many many others.  In this environment of restaurants, super mega markets with every spice, food and drink you can think of, plus a host of additives no body was ever meant to digest, we have taxed our endocrine systems past all reasonable limits.  Variety is everything, second only to convenience, what is digestible in a Hot Pocket?  Anything?  How about Chinese Food?  How about Sushi tonight, Pakistani tomorrow and Bistro for lunch, with a bunch of pastries and really sweet coffee thrown in there too?  Can you say diabetes?  That is what happens when the endocrine system starts to fail, stress too, hypertension as well, ulcers, dyspepsia, oh and fatness, obesity.  Look around, have you seen anyone fitting this description lately?  I am not even ragging on the people eating fast food, too easy.  They are dead already.  I am speaking of the ones that don't even know they are at risk.  Remember?  They ate sushi?  Healthy sushi? Maybe made from fish that came all the way from Japan? 

   Eating close to home is what we are aiming for, wiping the colon and pancreas clean, the internal tabula rasa.  Starting anew and only asking of the endocrine system what is fair.  We will re-introduce foods slowly to our systems, lots of veggies first, leave the grains and sugars for last.  As you would begin to feed an infant foods, watching for ill reactions, even excess saliva can be a sign of intolerance.  The veggies introduced will be ones I can produce in my garden.  I use alot of Agave nectar as a sweetener.  Why?  It is organic, inexpensive and yummy.  Drawbacks, comes from the desert and is packaged in plastic.  Why not use honey? We have bees and if our demand exceeds supply, I can buy local honey from the Mennonite farms and reuse a glass container doing it.  I can also tap my maple trees and use maple syrup to sweeten almost anything, the only reason I haven't is the dreaded American plague, convenience.  When cornbread and banana cake appear back on the menu, you now know how they will be sweetened.  I will keep cinnamon and cocoa on hand in my root cellar, these I cannot grow, but will use sparingly as a treat.  The big elimination that will hurt is rice.  We love rice, Basmati in particular and do not grow it.  I have high hopes that my friend Jamie will procure seeds and technique to grow rice that purportedly loves living in Vermont. But until that time, I will trim it's presence on the menu.

The final word from Frank, wrapped in crocheted floral lap blanket is "I don't like fasting".

Slow... Ending Day 1

End of day 1 easing into our fast, fine with me, not so for Frank, he is sick and wants a steak.  I hear that.  We eased into the fast by having a few Kale chips here and there.  Not enough to make a caloric dent but enough to feel like we had a little crunchy to eat. 

Brad's Raw Chips came our with their own Kale Chips last year, the Vampire Killer variety.  My great friends Michelle and Shekinah gifted me two boxes.  I was pretty sure kale chips would taste nearly as inspiring as a kale smoothie.  I will pay you good money to keep kale smoothies away from me, out of sight even.  There I was, having forgotten lunch and heading out to teach riding lessons empty stomached and no easy food around to snack on, but the kale chips.  They were amazing, they were so garlicky and delicious, kale, consumed in seconds and box licked.  At seven dollars a box, I was hesitant to feed my need commercially as we can't get a second mortgage right now.  Days later Frank's mom Norma comes for a visit with her winning smile and a promise to teach me to make kale chips.  Off to Michelle and Shekina's farm for a visit, some kale and fishing.  While Norma and Frank are reeling the bass in hand over fist, I am being escorted to the kale beds by Michelle where I picked about a 50 gallon drums worth.  Moderation has never been my strength.  Norma was initially somewhat cowed by the pounds of Kale ready for crisping but soon rebounded to the task.  We began with a discussion of oven versus dehydrator and in true minimalist style decided on both. The oven chips were ready right away yet slightly more brown and limp, the dehydrator scented the whole house and delivered bright green super crispy chips the next day.  With a little expert tinkering and zsuzsing, we happened on a heck of a recipe.

Kale Chips:

As much Kale as you can lay your hands on
Garlic
Olive Oil
Really Good Salt
Balsamic Vinegar
Pesto
Extra Parmesan Cheese if you desire

Rinse the Kale, shake well and tear into bite size pieces, you may want to avoid the stems if they are tough.  Put 6 cloves of Garlic per 1/2 cup Olive Oil in a blender, add 1/4 cup Balsamic Vinegar, 4 large tablespoons Pesto and 3 pinches of salt. Blend.  Once smooth, pour a 1/4 cup at a time into a large ziplock or similar bag.  Add bite sized Kale and shake until coated. Add extra parmesan if you desire. Place kale chips on parchment paper and bake at 300 until crispy if you are using the oven. Place chips in the dehydrator at about medium for at least 6 hours. 
Eat enough for an army and watch the color of your stools change.  Ahh, entertainment in the country.

Fasting morning day one

This morning Marco has chosen to help me with the lemon juicing. So of course this will be a lemon maple cat hair cleanse. With a bit of coconut oil on the roofs of our mouths to help pass the hair balls? Poor Frank has woken up with a stuffy head cold and hopefully will feel much better faster due to the influx of vitamin c. I hope he gets a fever. Feed a cold, starve a fever?

Time to Clean House!

And by house, we mean the temple and by temple, the body comes to mind.  The new year is upon us and it is time to meet this 2012 change in vibration extravaganza with gusto.  It is time to blow this year out of the water, and of course any old buicks or cadillacs that are hanging about with all that gum from grade school in my colon. Ugh, not a pretty picture, or notion, probably one best left behind a locked bathroom door, in a basement, in a house with no address. The inception of the cleanse idea predates the holiday season and has now come to the reality phase.  Last year, I ended up sugar addicted after Christmas, no that is no cocaine under my nostrils, I am snorting powdered sugar, don't judge me.  This year to top off the sugar addiction, oh evil peppermint bark of wanton doom and cellulite, we add the fact that I ate the state of Maine while on vacation.  It was lovely, tons of coastline, but you will never get to see it, I seem to have eaten the whole thing.  I didn't mean to, but breakfast at Elsa's Bed and Breakfast was unbelievable, grapefruit royal, baked apples and pears, gingerbread pumpkin waffles, the day started with a blood sugar spike.   Then of course by lunch, after great pancreatic exertion, somehow we managed hunger again, just to be assaulted with American feed trough portions for lunch, and some alcohol, we are talking vacation after all.  Then just when we were pounding on the door of situational diabetes, along came dinner time with Pavlovian regularity, bells and drooling and about 2000 more good ole' US dinner calories.  Lord help us, now we shall cleanse.
    
     Both Frank and I grew up in cities, have been raised on Flouridated water and easy breezy air pollution as well as our fair share of antibiotically enhanced, hormone raging, irradiated meats and shiny pesticide covered fruits and veggies.  This was our menu unawares, and though we are drastically changed in diet and food sourcing at this time and have been for years the cold truth is that we have accumulated a wealth of molecules, particles and chemicals that sit in tissues from fat cells to spinal fluid, synovial sacks to epithelial cells and possibly even our DNA and RNA.  The foreign, engineered, imbalanced, toxic or just overdosed fat soluble vitamins will continue to take up space in organs and indeed most of our body's fluids until we help escort them out.  The immediate sensation pushing my personal push broom is that of being bloated, moody, hungry, sugar craving, salt craving and water retaining.  That is a 6 dwarf day, Snow White may now gasp, grab skirts and run away in fear.  All sensible people know any more than a 3 dwarf day makes humans intolerable.  So at this time motivation is high for change, time to capitalize on it.

     To begin this personal health odyssey, we will start by fasting, this allows the body to take a break from the chore of digesting food.  There is no known indigenous culture that does not embrace fasting for one reason or another.  Clarity, spirituality, awareness, as well as weight control, digestive disorder, grief, and gratitude are but a few of the reasons listed in cultures that range from Arctic populations to those in the South Pacific.  What we hope to achieve by fasting first and foremost is a reduction in inflammation.  Digestion of foods, especially the winter diet heavy on protein and cooked carbohydrates and cooked vegetables and fruits is an acid forming diet, it is also a very intensely demanding diet for the pancreas to keep up with.  More fats and sugars create a huge demand for the regulation of blood sugar levels and the ability to produce insulin.  Step one in any dysfunctional relationship (i.e. my relationship with food right now) is to take a break, gain a bit of perspective, everyone take one giant step back.  So we will fast.  My goal is for 3-5 days, maybe 7.  I did make it to 7 last year and felt quite a bit better for it.  To aid in our fast we will be taking a pea sized amount of bentonite clay daily as well as a fasting tea featuring burdock root, and drinking lemonade made of fresh juice and maple syrup.  We will also take a tablespoon of apple cider kombucha and a bit of raw honey daily.  The lemonade is a 3-4 glass a day commitment with 1-2 glasses of water for each glass of lemonade drunk.  The viatamin C from the lemons will help keep the kidneys open and flowing, the bentonite clay and ACV will help prepare and condition the GI tract for cleansing and the maple syrup contains many water soluble vitamins as well as enough sugar to help wean the body back to a more sensible blood sugar level without terrible crashing and burning. 

     The theory is to start with a opening of the digestive tract, then cleanse the stomach to the colon, while nutritionally preparing the kidneys and liver.  Then the long term, 6 week organ cleanse begins and we will then move to the cleanse of the brain and spinal column.  So we begin on a Monday, nobody likes a Monday.

By the way, today was Napoleon B. Cow's one month birthday! He celebrated by keeping out of the wind and cold in his barn and some good milk from mom.  He also found some way through a gate and took an evening romp across the driveway but very kindly headed right back to the pasture when asked.

Napoleon B Cow's one month old today!