Showing posts with label healthy eating. Show all posts
Showing posts with label healthy eating. Show all posts
Blueberries! Yum!
Come on over, the handpicking is awesome!
Open Wednesdays- Saturdays 8am-5pm or by appointment. 207-949-7662
Support local farms and come on over to harvest some blueberries! We can pick or rake you some if you are unable to get here during open hours, but we are happy to make individual picking/raking appointments to suit your schedule. Give us a call, send us a text, shoot us an email! We'd love to have you here at our homestead in Orland, Maine!
Old and New
Last night was our "old and new" dinner. It is sort of an unofficial tradition, a head nod among lengthening busy days, as we use the last of winter's storage and combine it with spring's first crops.
We used up the last of our winter squash, a Spaghetti Squash turned into pizza earlier in the week, and there was only one lonely pumpkin left. We collected parsnips, greens (spinach, lovage, dandelion, chard, kale & chive) and fiddleheads from the spring garden and turned the pumpkin into curry soup and muffins for our Old/New Dinner.
We are already feeling well-fed again by our little farm, with abundant eggs and ample meat, greens, herbs and parsnips. We feel such gratitude for this little slice of paradise!
Pick-your-own wild blueberries
We have a sweet little secret here on the homestead that we are sharing with you all for the first time! The contents of this delicios little field usually heads right to the factory, but this year we are shaking things up a bit and trying something new. We are offering pick your own berries on our remote field-- many wild varieties, they taste the best all mixed together.
Handpicking is open by appointment now, Raking will be open weekends or by appointment August 1st.
Please call ahead and for directions 207-949-0880 or email us at mainefarmstore@gmail.com
How to Heal
If you want to heal, from anything-- ANYTHING-- you have to peel it back before you layer it on. It's so easy for folks to say, myself included, I just need to exercise, I just need to eat more fruit, I just need to take this drug, this vitamin, this herb. I just need to go to this counselor, this doctor, this reflexologist.
Even when time seems or is undoubtedly, short. First, breathe-- and take a look at what you can do without. When (if) you see the doctor, healer, or therapist, you will have thoughtful, reflective, and deepening perspectives into yourself. You will be more able to resist status quo in terms of treatment (many of which lead to deepening malaise) and you will be able to make connections between seemingly unrelated ailments or stresses.
Most therapists, doctors, and healers do not practice integrative therapy. They do not have a connective knowledge of the way systems of the body and mind work together in delicate and intricate ways. They do not necessarily acknowledge the play of stressors, hormones, diet, toxins, disease, bacteria (especially good ones!) or how they impact each other in myriad and mysterious ways. It may be too much for you to know as well. However, making fundamental changes in your diet, your stress levels, and your awareness will show you how things are related. Ask yourself this:
What are you eating? Eat as if you lived 150 years ago. Eat nothing packaged, treated, processed or altered. Avoid most oils, avoid Pacific fish, and avoid all sugar. Consider eating local. Make organic a priority.
What are you drinking? To a body that is struggling, deficient, diseased or stressed, alcohol and caffeine only add to this. Especially avoid these if combating anything with symptoms of stressed adrenals including any gut ailments, Lyme disease, candida, thyroid problems, fatigue, depression or anxiety. Never drink anything with coloring, with unnatural sweeteners (like corn syrup or aspartame), and get your water tested. Avoid chlorine and fluoride.
How busy is your life? Find ways to deeply relax. Sleep more. Make changes to slow things down. Focus your energies on what truly matters and release everything else.
What is making you sad, mad, or stressed? If the people around you are making you feel drained, if they make you anxious or insecure, if they don't value, inspire, support, and encourage-- surround yourself with different people. Toxins come in all forms-- including energetic. Emotions have real energetic markers. Emotions are inevitable in the evolving human, but they must be balanced and tempered-- feelings of contentment, joy, and satisfaction must outweigh the feelings of sadness, anger, and stress.
Who are you? This is where I am always hung up. It is the question that should drive us, our lives, until the end. Even then, unless we are a totally evolved radiant being, I am guessing we'll still be working on this one. Here we determine our moral compass, our truest relationships with others and ourselves, our responsibility to this planet and its inhabitants, and the results of our actions. When we take responsibility for the "mess" we are in, whether that is health or relationships-- or whether we are looking further outward toward the state of civil rights, our environment, or our society-- we must ask, where are we implicated in this? Unless we are doing something to make things better, then we are making things worse. Period. Growth isn't stagnant by its very nature, and stagnation is decay. Sometimes bad things happen. We will grieve over this. This is how we heal. But to wear this "bad thing" and let it take over who we are is irresponsible. Everything is a stepping stone, we only need to take that first step. Start small, grow organically.
How did you get here? Tracing backwards our steps to an injury, to a mistake, to a tragedy, to a wrong turn on a path, to an outdated world view, to a stressor-- this can help us in peeling back layers. Sometimes our current problems are nothing but a whole bunch of unresolved little problems or a series of overlooked messages from our bodies or our world. We are good, as a species, at looking back and seeing more clearly. Use that knack we have have for hindsight vision.
Healing occurs in layers, and like all growth-- for that is what healing truly is and is leading to-- it can sometimes take years to peel it apart and grow (in a inward metamorphosis kind of way). In my healing process, I take turns looking at the layers in my personal or emotional life (relationships, what is energizing or draining, healing old hurts, reflections), my outward life (work, social), and my physical life (diet, exercise, location). It has definitely taken years and I expect it to continue. There is always more to learn about oneself. At times, often maybe, we don't even realize that we are peeling back the layers. These layers have become a part of us-- our story-- as a friend of mine says. It can be a long time of dancing to one step forward and two steps back.
With dedication to ourselves and to the greater good, we will eventually find the prize of health and self-knowledge. Healing ourselves is healing our planet. Our planet very much needs us to start looking within. When we stop poisoning ourselves--with poor nutrition, with toxins, with negative experiences and emotions-- we stop putting that out in our environment as well. Anything and everything we do, to heal, is an act of rebellion against the dominant world view of take and destroy, and anything and everything we do, to heal, will help strengthen our planet. This, I believe, is our moral imperative. With the side benefit of feeling better, happier, and more fulfilled.
New Fermenting Digs & Healthy Eating
Previously, I was simply using a clean, weighted jar fitted into the top of the mason jar to keep the fermenting cabbage below the surface. I kept the set up wrapped to keep out dust. That worked too. But this is way better !
I am a pretty firm believer in listening to your body's cravings. Sometimes those cravings need to be re-interpreted for our modern minds. We have been a bit brainwashed and our taste buds can get confused. Here is a classic example-- donut craving = sugar craving. Turn back your craving several hundred years and you can see maybe its time for a pick-me-up in the form of some fruit (nature's sugar). Or maybe it is a potato chip craving, which has been the hardest for me to re-train on. This is probably a fat craving. Try an avocado, a handful of roasted nuts, or something with grass-fed butter. I have loaded up on just a ton of butter during this re-training period for my body. I had really missed it I guess!
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| Here is one of my favorite snacks-- Purple Cabbage Sauerkraut stuffed into some perfectly ripened avocado. Yum! |
My body has mostly needed warming foods, low sugars, and lots of fats lately. I don't typically eat meats and finding non-soy proteins can be challenging. I have had some luck digesting raw cheese. And the chickens have decided its bright enough out to hand over one or two eggs daily. I'll take it! And really, they have deserved their rest. They are good birds.
Here is a link to a Sauerkraut tutorial: Easy Sauerkraut I hope you try making some! Its worth it to have the lacto-fermented REAL sauerkraut. If you really don't have the time, then pick up some of the real stuff at the health food store. Its a little pricey, but you will be hooked on its healthy, energizing goodness!
Fermenting Foray
Sometimes the problems we face are our biggest gifts. I would say this is always true, but sometimes the enormity of suffering in certain instances is so mindboggling that it is almost impossible to find that glimmer. That isn't the case here, although in those depressing moments before the glimmer hits, it can seem that way.
I have long suspected adrenal and thryroid issues. I was asking the wrong questions, to the wrong people, for a long time. When a routine check diagnosed a thyroid deficiency (hashimoto's) and the doctor I was working with pushed medications, I sprung into research action. I started on a spirulina supplement (BioPreparation MicroAlgae) and made immediate dietary changes. Through this action alone my levels evened out enough to convince my doctor to hold off on the med push. However, my exhaustion continued to deepen and I realized it wouldn't be so simple as the little green magic pill (algae) and giving up coffee.
As I researched I was astonished to find out that just about every problem I'd experienced since my early 20's. (Including some of the following: UTI, low back pain, kidney pain, cystic breasts, celiac type sensitivities, candida, ankle pain, exhaustion, and an absence of well-being) had a direct or indirect relationship with adrenal and thryroid dysfunction.
http://www.culturesforhealth.com/naturally-cultured-fermented-salsa-
Although a great way to use up our leftover apples, I flat out refused to eat this one. It had a bit of discoloration on the top, and one jar molded. Fermented foods are not going to carry botulism or anything, but still--- gross! The other two jars were edible, and they really weren't bad, just not my thing. Shawn liked them a lot and had them scooped over flavored yogurts.
recipehttp://raiasrecipes.blogspot.com/2012/10/cinnamon-apple-chutney.html
I have long suspected adrenal and thryroid issues. I was asking the wrong questions, to the wrong people, for a long time. When a routine check diagnosed a thyroid deficiency (hashimoto's) and the doctor I was working with pushed medications, I sprung into research action. I started on a spirulina supplement (BioPreparation MicroAlgae) and made immediate dietary changes. Through this action alone my levels evened out enough to convince my doctor to hold off on the med push. However, my exhaustion continued to deepen and I realized it wouldn't be so simple as the little green magic pill (algae) and giving up coffee.
As I researched I was astonished to find out that just about every problem I'd experienced since my early 20's. (Including some of the following: UTI, low back pain, kidney pain, cystic breasts, celiac type sensitivities, candida, ankle pain, exhaustion, and an absence of well-being) had a direct or indirect relationship with adrenal and thryroid dysfunction.
For now, what we have come up with, as our first step toward family health is the following regimen:
No caffine (green tea ok), no alchohol, no conventional sugar, no soy, no gmo. Additionally, I am avoiding all corn, white rice, and gluten. I also eat primarily vegetarian, and although I have found that my diet, with added problems from emotional stresses, has placed me here, I believe/know it was not due to vegetarianism, but due to my lack of attention to nutrients in my diet. Essentiallly, I was missing lots of raw foods, fermented foods, sea vegetables, whole food fats and was relying way too much on carbs and soy protein.
So we are aiming to fix that around here. Slowly, but surely, we are all healing and my energy is staging a comeback. I hope with careful attention it will continue. Our aim is to incorporate, over time, a 50% or more raw diet. Once the addictions are kicked, it's not nearly as hard as you'd think. I have found the most difficult challenge to be the relationship to food. I have always looked to food to sedate me; to comfort me. However, truly eating well means receiving energies from foods. Eating raw, especially young food, from cut and come again crops, is the best way to feel energized. It was odd, at first, to feel a tingling buzz after eating, but its a wonderful thing to get used to!
If you are interested in the history and role of fermented foods here is a great link:
Here's some info, with links to recipes, for our first fermenting projects.
Fermented Tomato Salsa:
We still had a wonderful crop of tomatoes at the beginning of November. The greenhouses hadn't frosted hard, but frost was coming. We collected all the reds and a few greens, and hedged a bet that the greens left would ripen. We lost that bet and all those wonderful tart zebra tomatoes-- the pigs enjoyed them still, however.
With some organic adds from the local grocer, and subbing green tomatoes for peppers, we made a large bowl of salsa, added some whey, and waited a few days. It was awesome to see the little bubbles forming and working their way to the jar top. I understand why Shawn's been hooked on wine-making all these years. The end result was delicious. We made a second batch! We use the salsa as a salad topping mostly, since we aren't eating corn. Delicious!
http://www.culturesforhealth.com/naturally-cultured-fermented-salsa-
Fermened Apple Chutney:
Although a great way to use up our leftover apples, I flat out refused to eat this one. It had a bit of discoloration on the top, and one jar molded. Fermented foods are not going to carry botulism or anything, but still--- gross! The other two jars were edible, and they really weren't bad, just not my thing. Shawn liked them a lot and had them scooped over flavored yogurts.
recipehttp://raiasrecipes.blogspot.com/2012/10/cinnamon-apple-chutney.html
More to come as we experiment with more raw recipes and right living--- stay tuned!
Grateful Harvest
The girls were tasked with getting in a bit better touch
with their food today. They already are pretty far advanced on this path,
knowing where meat comes from, how milk, cheese, and butter come to us, planting
and growing cycles, how to clean and cook vegetables—but the meat is a bit
harder.
Especially for the Little Middle, who avoids all meat except poultry. We
have all come to a place of acceptance, through years of tears shed, or tears
avoided, about life and death on a small homestead. It is still hard, and I
hope it always will be.
We are able to honor the spirit of life we share with
all creation when we show reverence for it. An empathetic tear or torn heart
for its [brief!!] suffering, are tears well shared. Little Middle cleverly avoided most of this
process, and when I sent her out for her photo documentation she took the last
picture—the one of the few meaty chickens still alive. Little Bird, however,
got some great photos. They are a bit graphic if you are sensitive, so I’ve put
them all toward the bottom of this post.
Joy in Our Food
Here is a quick little photo essay from September
Awe and love for the way the earth reaches out to us, trying
to connect to us in a language we can grasp.
What joy to see her joy!
She is so full of laughter and silliness as she poses for “high
fives” with this amusing carrot!
Eat Your Art.
Bending in the hoop house, sweating, I am overcome by the beauty of a leaf of lettuce. It is spotted, no motled, with maroon over an army-green leaf. It is glistening sunlight off drops of water. I look around, suddenly acutely aware of the leaf of kale, beaded with water and the pattern of the spinach, the flowering arugala; the bolting cilantro. . . all of it, Art.
Nature is art – everywhere spiraling forth into new life or decaying into new patterns. In the garden, we get to play with Nature’s canvas—we get to pretend that we are the artist.
How many times have I waited too long to harvest—let the prime pass by because I was too obsessed with watching the act of art—the actual action of art. The growing, unfurling, shooting forth—the intricate patterns and the way the palette mixes on the canvas in forms of insects, water, dust, light. . . .It hit me how often I have let the lettuce turn bitter or the arugala seed just for this reason—for this obsession with observation. But now, I’m realizing that this gift of playing artist, this gift that is alone for the gardener; the steward—is the gift of consuming art. Yes! We get to make the art a part of us! We then become not just artist, but also the art itself—in its ever-unraveling process of becoming. What a gift it is to be a gardener. Go ahead, eat your art!
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