Human Health

Some of you may know that we began eating gluten free in January, 2013 by choice, not because we needed to. After doing much research, it really is amazing how bad gluten really is for our bodies. Gluten is contained in many forms. Some I am sure you are familiar with, wheat, durum, spelt, barley, rye. There is even gluten products contained in soy sauce. It is hidden in many different things. You really have to read the labels. We started going to a naturopath last year and had our blood tested in May. My thyroid level was very high. It came in at 46. The normal range is below 20. I was five months into eating gluten free. I have to wonder what it was prior to January. I just had my blood retested in January of this year. I’m happy to say it has dropped below 20. I was and continue to take licorice root capsules each day and continue to eat gluten free. I am so pleased that my thyroid is now in tip top shape. It just goes to show you that you don’t always need prescription medicine to make things “right”. Natural remedies work just as well.

Tapped in

Tiz the season – maple syrup time. Started tapping our property yesterday afternoon and finished today. All tapped in – 360 taps. We got it done. We also got the main line up on the leased property today. What a leg work out! We also have another property we are working with this year. We expect to have about 1,000 taps this year. Also every excited to use our R.O. (reverse osmosis) machine.

Maple weekend will be March 22 and 23. We will be participating this year. Join us. We will have tours of how we do this. We will also have syrup tastings right from the pan and will have some maple syrup for sale.

What we’ve been up to

Keith and I just got back from a 3 day conference in Somerville, MA attending our second Soil and Nutrition Conference. We had the pleasure of listening to Graeme Sait and his colleague, Joel Williams speak about soil health and human health. They both are from Australia. Graeme began his talk about the reason he does what he does. When his daughter was young she had an accident and was in a coma for three month. He made a promise that if she came out of it, he would do something that would help the world. Luckily, she came out of her coma and after driving around trying to decide what he would do, he decided to educate people about nutrition. He has been doing this for 20 years. He speaks to many organizations and government officials throughout the world. He met with the head of a large grocery chain in Australia with their scientists. They were so impressed with what he had to say that they requested every farmer that provided them with produce to grow this way. Right now this one chain of several grocery stores will only buy produce from farmers who grow nutrient dense vegetables. Word has spread and folks would only buy produce from this chain because the taste was so remarkable. Because of reduced sales in other supermarket’s produce section, another chain has gotten on the bandwagon. It sure is nice to see this. Graeme actually met with the Dole Corporation and has been consulting with them and it appears that farmers who provide Dole with produce will also be growing this way. Graeme travels nine months out of the year to spread this education. We applaud him and the work that he has done. He has written a book and is in the process of writing three other books.

Graeme mentions the work of Dr. James Hansen. He wrote a book entitled Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and our Last Chance to Save Humanity. He is about 76 years old and has worked on climate change for 50 years. ALL of his predictions have been accurate. If they continue to be accurate, we have four years left to make major changes. One of the big problems is the carbon that is in the air. Carbon should be in the soil, not in the atmosphere. One of the major reasons this happens is conventional growers grow on the same land year after year. They take from the land, but they never return anything to the land. If we just increased our organic matter in our soils by 1% that would solve a major problem. NOFA-MA who co-sponsored this conference, made a challenge after listening to Graeme’s climate change talk. They are going to challenge every NOFA-MA member to increase their organic matter by 1% this year. We certainly plan on doing it and hope others join the cause. We hope any homeowner with a garden plot, big or small, will join the challenge. Every little bit counts. Spread the word. Do some research. We need to do this.

We have been growing this way for two years. This summer will be our third. We continue to learn and every year our produce gets better and better. We are growing on a new 3 acre plot this year where we will be adding many amendments to get our organic matter up by at least one percent. If you do not have a garden, we encourage you to purchase your produce this summer from farmers who do grow this way. Your body will thank you and your palate will thank you.

On a final note, our summer CSA sign ups continue on our website: http://www.stillseekingfarmllc.com. It is our hope that we have the honor of providing you with vegetables the way they ought to taste.