Farm
Summer is over
August 01, 2011
The days will quickly shorten now and the plants will put all their energy into fruiting. It will be all we can do to keep up with the harvest until the first frost kills everything off. But that's a ways off yet. Now is the time of good eating
Nitrients in food
August 01, 2011
That said, I cam across an interesting article about cooking methods and nutrient retention in broccoli. (It wouldn't be too much of a leap to assume that the same goes for other vegetables as well.) The bottom line is that stir frying is perhaps the best method for locking nutrition in the broccoli. With microwaving, you lose nutrients, mostly vitamin C because it leaches out with any water you cook. I assume that steaming and boiling vegetables does the same thing. That's why the water has that green color when you are done! I suppose you could drink that water or put it into soups instead of pouring it down the drain. And one last thing, stir fry with heat resistant oils like extra virgin olive oil, coconut oil or lard. Some of the other oils don't lock in the nutrients as well and the high heat chemically changes most vegetable oils into toxic compounds.
Composting inside and out
August 01, 2011
Your internal composting happens primarily in your small intestine. There you have vast number of microorganisms that compost the food you eat so that the nutrients can be absorbed. If the internal conditions aren't right, like the compost bin under the tree, you won't get full nutritional value from the food you eat.
In the weeds
August 01, 2011
Life is a little like that. Without constant tending the "weeds" in our life can take over and crowd out what really is important. Make sure you take a little time today, and every day, to clear out the unwanted distractions that are robbing you of the energy you need to fulfill your destiny.
Nature abhors a vacuum...and so do cows.
August 01, 2011
Seems "somebody" left the door to the cow barn single latched instead of double latched, again. They ran around the house; I ran around the house. They sprinted toward the highway; I sprinted toward the highway. See what I mean about not needing coffee? At this point I'm not trying to herd them like some horseless cowboy, I'm just trying to prevent a lawsuit.
It all turned out in the end. My daughter Gabrielle enticed the alpha female back into the barn with some sweet feed and eventually the rest of escapees followed. Nature did what nature does, cause chaos.
That is why every living organism consumes energy. It takes energy to keep things organized. It takes energy and a good fence and secure gates. Every organism, every system has distinct borders that require upkeep. Failure to allow for these very basic and simple laws of nature have caused many projects to fail. We pretend that things, once up and running will "maintain themselves." Hah! Nature and my cows say otherwise.
A new bantam chick!
August 01, 2011
By the way, a bantam is basically a miniature chicken. We keep them in the barn to help keep down the fly population and to add a little color to the barnyard.
What ever happened to milk?
August 01, 2011
The milk you buy in the store is no longer milk. It’s a highly processed and manufactured food. I didn’t know this until my father-in-law started milking his American Milking Devon cows and I got to drink real raw milk. The difference is not just the taste, but the nutrient, microbial, and enzyme content.
The stuff you get in the store is basically powdered milk. Yuck, right?
What got me thinking about raw milk again was a post by Jimmy Moore about what happens to his blood sugar after drinking various things. (Jimmy Moore is one of the most important sources for health information of the web. If you are not familiar with him I highly recommend you spend a few minutes checking out his blog.)
Two of the drinks he tested were 2% “milk” and raw milk. Look at the difference and how unstable his blood sugar become when he drinks what most of us consider milk. I’ll tell what that means after you look at the graphs.
You can see that the 2% “milk causes a dip in the blood sugar and then a fairly steep rise. While you can’t draw any broad conclusions based on just one person’s results, you can see that drinking 2% could actually cause you to get hungry because your blood sugar drops.
By comparison, the raw milk barely budges the blood sugar at all. Now theoretically, the only difference between raw milk and 2% is that the 2% has some of the fat taken out. Clearly, there is more to the story than that. Bottom line, raw milk is food. 2% “milk” is, well, I’m not sure what it is.
The stuff you get in the store is basically powdered milk. Yuck, right?
What got me thinking about raw milk again was a post by Jimmy Moore about what happens to his blood sugar after drinking various things. (Jimmy Moore is one of the most important sources for health information of the web. If you are not familiar with him I highly recommend you spend a few minutes checking out his blog.)
Two of the drinks he tested were 2% “milk” and raw milk. Look at the difference and how unstable his blood sugar become when he drinks what most of us consider milk. I’ll tell what that means after you look at the graphs.
You can see that the 2% “milk causes a dip in the blood sugar and then a fairly steep rise. While you can’t draw any broad conclusions based on just one person’s results, you can see that drinking 2% could actually cause you to get hungry because your blood sugar drops.
By comparison, the raw milk barely budges the blood sugar at all. Now theoretically, the only difference between raw milk and 2% is that the 2% has some of the fat taken out. Clearly, there is more to the story than that. Bottom line, raw milk is food. 2% “milk” is, well, I’m not sure what it is.