Going Around the Bend

"The food you eat can be either the safest and most powerful form of medicine, or the slowest form of poison."

- Dr. Ann Wigmore, ND

It has been pointed out to us several times lately that we (meaning my husband and I)  have "gone round the bend" a little with regards to food.  Some come out and say it simply, "You guys are nuts!", others (like my mother) are more subtle, "Oh, it was nice to go visit your sister, we could talk about food....she even goes to Sam's Club" to which I give a small, involuntary shiver of horror and then smile and nod politely.

I don't deny that we have drastically changed how we live in the last 8 years and we actually are aware of how unusual we must come across to people.  We sometimes go out at night to the local bar and eat nachos and drink cheap beer and discuss how stilted we have become about our food while playing a few games of pool, but here's the hard part....once you know the truth about food and what you eat, how do you put the blinders back on and go back? 

Our progression into "craziness" went something like this:

• Watching one of your children become sicker and sicker wondering what was going on!
• Child diagnosed with a genetic disease that causes her body to react to gluten.
• Realizing that gluten is in just about everything.
• Freaking out in grocery store over what to feed your two -year-old that won't end up poisoning her.
• Learning to read labels.
• Wondering what exactly carrageenan, carnauba wax, and soy lecithin actually are.
• Finding out what they are.
• Applying Occam's razor to the food concept and realizing that, in general, the simpler foods are the better they tend to be for you.
• Finding a source of these "simple" foods.
• Realizing that it is cheaper and a ton more fun to raise/grow/process/store them ourselves.
• Raising/growing/processing said food.
• Watching as your friends, neighbors and relatives all think that we have slipped off the deep end.

The luxury, (and I do realize what a luxury it is) is that we have time.  We have had a lot of time.  Time to read, to research, to analyze, to try stuff out, to grow food, to process food.....it uses a lot of time.  We have, by some small miracle that I haven't quite figured out yet, set ourselves up to get by on only one income from one outside job.  In today's society, that is no easy feat.  To some extent it is because we really don't want anything - no cable TV, no high tech gadgets, no brand new cars, no foreign holidays, no new clothes, nada.  We do without and, personally, I am totally cool with that.  Less overhead equals less income needed to support it.  "Simplify, simplify, simplify"....Thoreau was on to something there.  So our entire source of entertainment comes strictly from living and raising our kids in the best way that we can.  One way to look at it is that I have learned to garden, can food, raise chickens, spin thread and knit due to sheer boredom, but the irony is that I am not bored....ever.  Maybe it is a mindset that we have fallen into that we actually love what we are doing all the time, instead of constantly working at a job that we hate so that we can go out and have fun later.

In my mind it comes down to the fact that every man, woman, and child on this planet has 24 hours in each day in which to do something.  For the great majority of us, what we do during those 24 hours is not likely to be earth shattering or life changing to the population at large, but what we can do for ourselves and our family can have a very large and lasting impact.  Thinking back to the jobs that I have held - waitress, food service worker, lab technician, animal caretaker, veterinarian - none of those.....none.....have meant as much to me as taking care of my kids and family.  I am never happier then when I am home, either working in the garden with the kids raising food, or cleaning a barn taking care of animals that I know will help to feed us. There is a very direct relationship between these activities and the lives we lead.  Working at a job, for me, is an indirect relationship - still very helpful and necessary, but not nearly as fulfilling.  It is a very basic desire - to provide for oneself and family. 

 

Another reason we have jumped off the deep end with regard to food....it's political.  Eating a meal, feeding your family, buying groceries - those things are political statements whether you want them to be or not.  Where your fork goes, so goes your money.  Buy your food locally and your money goes locally.  Local money, creates local jobs.  Local jobs help to maintain local infrastructure.  If you understand the food market - from how the food is grown, picked, processed, inspected, shipped, stacked and purchased - then you have a pretty good handle on how messed up the system actually is. All too many of our kids (and adults) think that the food just magically appears in the grocery store without any thought to the deep and twisted roads that food must take to reach those shelves.  For instance, if you don't like big capitalistic businesses, then don't buy things containing high fructose corn syrup or soy because most of the corn and soy in the country is planted, grown and chemically sprayed by Monsanto and other big Ag corporations.  If you don't like illegal immigrants then don't buy produce that has been harvested by immigration workers.  If you don't like government agencies then don't buy meat that has been inspected by the USDA.  If you don't like pollution then don't buy groceries that have been shipped thousands of miles so that you can have a nice ripe strawberry in December.  Hard to know what to buy now isn't it?  All over the board there with political problems and no one party is to blame.  We have simply chosen to cut out the middle man entirely and just raise our own or buy it as locally as we can from people we know.

So yes, we have 'gone round the bend' and will probably continue to do so until such time as the population at large realizes what a screwed up mess the food system is and actually takes steps to change it.  My guess is that when the food system changes, so will the medical system because people will suddenly realize what they have been doing to themselves for so long.   In the meantime, fair warning for any friends and relatives that come to the door for dinner, you may be asked to eat such things as organic, homegrown potato soup with onions grown in the garden outside and cheese that was produced in my kitchen.  I know it is a hardship when you really crave Sam's Club frozen fish sticks, but we do what we can to please, and I promise you won't leave hungry.

"A bend in the road is not the end of the road...

unless you fail to make the turn." ~ Unknown

Mr Pig Goes A Courtin'

Spring is starting to roll slowly around.  The sun is peaking up over the horizon a little earlier and staying up a little later every night.  There are many times when the weather has been warm enough lately to even smell the warmth of the earth, but the biggest signs that lets us know that Spring is on its way is that love is in the air.  Valentine's day isn't just for the humans of the world....our pig gets to have her love affair as well.  Granted, her pool of eligible bachelors was somewhat smaller than she might like, but then a kept pig can't be choosy.

For the last four years, we have purchased baby piglets to raise and then eat, but in the last two we have thought about saving the gilt (that's the female) and have her bred so we could farrow and raise our own piglets.  Last year's gilt was fine except for one small thing....she liked the taste of chicken a little too much and whittled away our chicken flock significantly with her ravenous habits. 

Mr Pig

But this year's gilt?  She was taught at a young age by the local rooster, Dominique (which is both his name and his breed....we aren't very creative with names for the animals that we might one day have to stew in a pot..."Bob-noodle soup" turned us off to that practice).  Anyway, Dominique taught her not to mess with the two footed and feathered crowd.  She happily allows chickens (and cats) to partake of her bounty of cracked corn and kitchen scraps without so much as a proprietary grunt.  In short, she is a really nice pig.  And so, she was nominated to stay and hopefully pass on not only her beautiful chops, but also her winning attitude to a herd of small screaling piglets. 

The question, however, was where to find the boy?  Technically, we would most like a Large Black - this is a particular breed that is easier to raise on pasture since they don't rut it up quite as much, but we weren't  into spending the prices being asked for a purebred boar, not to mention that you have to be able to house them and feed them - no small task to be undertaken when they can reach approximately 700 pounds. We found a rather nice one that was due to go to market unless they could find him a home, but he was already full grown, exceptionally large and more than we were up to paying once again.  Craigslist has any number of fun and interesting items for sale....including pigs, and we contemplated these options, but none of them stuck out as suitable matches for our pig. Our breakthrough came with finally taking the time to meet some of the neighbors. 



First encounter



My husband had been told about a farmer just north of us that had cows and pigs and sheep - doing basically what we are doing, but on a much larger scale.  It had been suggested that we stop up and see him some time and finally, one chilly December day, we made the trip of six miles and found a resource for bottle/bucket calves, milking advice and .....you guessed it, a boar.  All too often we forget to look around and tap into local resources.  We get caught up with the idea that we are the "lunatic farmers" of the neighborhood amidst an ocean of "conventional farmers" and we forget that there are, in fact, more and more of the us lunatics out there all the time - small family farms that are starting to make a small but significant difference in how food is raised.  But we need to work together and depend on each other - just like farmers did in the past.  All too often now, conventional farmers are out there on their own - big fields, big equipment, big risk.  The competition to produce more and more soy and corn has led to isolation and a general lack of public interest in farming in general.  Ask any non-farming person if they would want to farm and most of the time the answer is "No - I don't have the first idea how to do that!"  Conventional farming is daunting - even for the farmers that do it, and unless you are born into a family that farms, it isn't likely to be something that you would want to jump into.   But small farms, such as ours, are do-able.  With a little time and sweat equity we have been slowly turning this old homestead back into a productive farm.  One adage that I have stuck to when it comes to trying new things is, "Learn by doing" - you can read all the books on a subject you want, but until you are up to your elbows in it, it doesn't sink in.  So we were up to our elbows with a gilt that needed a boyfriend and, in this case, all it took was making a neighborhood connection to provide us with the answer.  The Rent-a-Boar.

A purebred Berkshire boar with proven quality...essentially meaning that he has been with a pen of sows and proceeded to get them all 'with pig' as the case might be.  Originally, the plan was to take Miss Pig for a visit up to the other farm and let her hang with the rest of the pigs, but Bill (the farmer) was a little worried that his sows might beat her up, so it was decided that Mr. Pig should come hang out in Shangri-La at our house.

Any time that you mix two 350 pound animals together there is a certain amount of blind faith that goes along with it because you realize that if they really don't like each other, there isn't anything that you will be able to do to stop the ensuing battle until the smoke clears.  We didn't need to worry with Miss Pig, she was smitten almost immediately and we are fairly convinced that he was taken with her as well. 

If you ever hear a person say that an animal doesn't have feelings, do me a favor -first, kick them in the shins and then direct them to this post.  Our Miss Pig had been without her pig friends since about late September when we took them to market.  The first few days had been difficult and she had mopped around without her buddies, but her gregarious nature and love of food brought her around fairly quickly.  On Sunday, however...when Mr Pig showed up....suffice it to say that it was love at first sight.  If you have never seen a happy pig with her new friend smile....you really should.

The Loneliest Appliance

We have a very lonely appliance in our house, it really doesn't see much use any more other than for the odd emergency and as a nice flat place to set things.  It has been relegated to the same useful level as the iron and the hair dryer - almost completely unnecessary.  Instead, it has been replaced by string....well, clothesline, to be more exact, and clothespins. The dryer has been laid off and is looking at permanent unemployment.

I originally set out trying to figure out just how much energy and money  this might save us - it isn't too tough of an equation really (how many kilowatts a drier uses) x (price per kilowatt hour) x (number of hours of use per week), in other words, information that can be readily found on the manual and electric bill.  But then it came to me that it doesn't really matter if it saves me 5 cents or $500, it is simply the right thing to do.  Convenient? - no, not really.  Good for the world in general?- Absolutely!  Last I checked, sunlight and air were both free, and any coal that I can save from being mined, hauled and burned for my mere convenience....so much the better.   It does definitely take more time to hang out clothes and it can get to be a little dicey when it is cold outside, but even below freezing, hanging clothes out to dry works.

I have heard any number of stories for why people don't want to hang out clothes. My favorites are the stories I hear from people that live in a housing development that won't allow clothes lines because they are unsightly.  Unsightly!  Clean clothes, bedding, towels and yes....God forbid.....underwear!  Seriously, have we become so prudish that we don't like the sight of clothes that everyone wears?  Or is it that we are so focused on appearances that we wouldn't want our neighbors to know that we actually have to wash our clothes rather than just constantly buying new?   Personally, I love seeing clothes on the line.  It shows a certain amount of dedication, thriftiness, cleanliness and care.  The other day, while driving around the Amish farms, I saw a place where they had rigged up a pulley line that stretched from the house to the silo - that clothes was flapping in the breeze 20 feet in the air!

Hanging clothes out can also be a rather meditative task.  It doesn't take a lot of skill - although if you have to fit three loads of laundry on a line that typically can only hold two, it takes a little planning.  I find myself talking with the cats that come to see what I am doing, or planning what to plant in my flower beds, or watching deer cross the field north of our house, or watching the birds chirp and flit around and, before I realize it, all the clothes are hung up and drying nicely in the sun.

"But", you say,.... and I totally get this because I have a hard time with this also..."it is just so convenient to go from the washer to the dryer - I mean, they are right there next to each other!  Hanging them out will involve a basket, clothes pins and hauling them to the line and then hanging them up and then taking them down again.....ugh!"  I know, it can seem like just too much.  This is where I invoke Nike's ad campaign...."Just do it!"  The hardest part of any job is starting it.  Once the ball is rolling, it is really very easy and surprisingly enjoyable.  I often realize that my family is one in about 100 that actually hang clothes out, but I like to imagine a day when it becomes the standard rather than the exception, and when you think about it, it was the standard less than 70 years ago.  That was the way that clothes got dry....period!  In fact, I still have some clothes pins that were my grandmother's and I will often think of her when I reach into the bag and pull out one of the pink ones that she used to have and it is something of a comfort, in a weird way, that we are sharing some of life's tasks - I try to imagine what the world was like when she was hanging out her clothes - that alone makes the time fly.

The other thing that people will say is, "I just don't have the room for a clothes line."  They live in an apartment, or have some other living arrangement that inhibits them from having a line, and to this I say, "Be creative"  I really don't like hanging clothes up outside when it is frigid - I like my fingers too much to freeze them off.  So, in order to appease the clothesline god of the house (my husband) and save my fingers, I rigged up a clothesline in the basement of the house.  I tied up a few stray pieces of line between the stairs and my treadmill (those things can be good for more than just running) and viola' - dry clothes and no frozen fingers.  It also worked out well that the wood burning stove is in the basement, so the warm air being given off by that helped to dry the clothes in record time.  The point of it is, clotheslines don't need to take up a lot of room and they can be taken down easily.  There are also wooden clothes drying racks that dry an amazing amount of clothes in a very small space - these are especially handy for socks and undies...or in the case of my kids playing outside in the winter....mittens.

Just out of curiosity, I did run some numbers to see what it costs us to dry our clothes. The US has roughly 115,000,000 households that all have laundry to wash.   Using some average dryer specifications of 5kW per load, and an average energy bill of $0.10/kWh we come up with 5kW x $0.10 x 115,000,000 million households = $57,5000,000 for one load of laundry per household per week. Granted, that isn't really all that much per household, but it does start to add up.

I went a little further and checked into how much coal it takes to produce 1 kWh and there were ranges cited from 0.8 pound per kWh to 2.1 pounds per kWh. I averaged the amounts cited and came up with 1.3 pounds of coal per kWh. Assuming that a dryer uses approximately 5 kW, that ends up being about 6.5 pounds of coal for each dryer load of clothes. Now, when you figure in the number of households....we are talking 747,500,000 pounds of coal per week for each household to dry one load of clothes. Even if only 1 out of 10 households dries their clothes per week, we are still talking about 74,750,000 pounds of coal! 

I couldn't even picture that much coal unless it was in a rail car that I see fly by me while stopped at a railroad crossing.  Figuring that rail cars can carry roughly 244,300 pounds of coal (and that was the largest capacity I could find) - that is roughly 305 railroad cars full of coal for one tenth of the households just to dry their clothes once weekly.  Please, someone tell me I figured these numbers wrong, because that is really kind of disturbing.  Now, when I see a coal trains, I think of it more in the number of dryer loads.....dryer loads that could be free - free of energy cost and pollution.

 It is hard, sometimes, to feel like we make any difference at all just being one person trying to do something good for the environment, but if we all do small things and we all encourage others to do small things....it starts to make a difference.  And maybe, if we are very lucky, there will be housing developments eventually that won't allow dryers and will insist upon there being only clothes lines instead.

A Case of the Hives

I have something of a bull-headed streak. Probably stems from being born in the year of the ox, but if I get something in my mind that I would like to do, or imagine myself doing, it tends to eventually happen.  That is just the way that I have always been and likely always will be- sometimes to my benefit, sometimes to my detriment, and very often to the consternation of my husband, but at least I am consistent.  I see things in my head that just seem right and if I feel strongly enough about them, then Fate seem to help me out on many occasions - such is the case of the hives.

Over a year ago I mentioned that it would be nice to get some bee hives and start collecting honey.  We looked at trying to find some used hives from people that were getting out of it, but they are somewhat hard to come by.  We checked into ordering some from a catalog, but it just never quite seemed to be the right time for it, they were too expensive, or both....we shuffled our feet.

Then I mentioned it to one of my friends at work who also happens to be a mail carrier.  Let me digress here for just a minute and say, if you ever need to know something about the neighborhood that you live in.....ask a mail carrier!  I am constantly amazed at the amount of information that they carry around in their brains that has been accumulated from years of delivering mail to the same houses.  I once had a stray dog show up and managed to find his home simply by asking the mail carrier.  After describing the dog to him he said, "oh yeah! That's Toby. He lives at such and so address.  Noticed he wasn't there today to bark at me when I dropped off the mail.  The owner won't be home though until sometime after 6 pm because he works in town."  Then, thirty minutes after talking to the mail man, someone drives up to get the dog because the mail man had called the owner and the owner had sent his cousin out to retrieve the dog.  Wow!  Seriously, we should make better use of these people and pay them more for their abilities.  Anyway, I happened to mention to my co-worker/mail carrier that we were looking for bee hives to get us started.  She paused for a minute and then said, "You know, I think Hans used to have bees out at his place.  I have delivered supplies to him in the past."  And from there, as all good grapevines go, I tracked down the person to contact about Hans's used bee hives.

Contacted......No response.

Tried again......No response.

And then, Fate stepped in, as it often does.  Hans had been rather ill for quite some time and then rather suddenly passed away.  As always happens when people pass away, there is the process of sorting out all the stuff of their life and deciding what to do with it.  Someone in the group remembered that I had been looking for bee hives and called my office. 

But I was on vacation and out of range to be called.

My very astute assistant, however, knew that I was looking for hives and made the deal for me, and picked them up herself. The hives, beekeeping suits, a smoker, a honey centrifuge, and enough books to keep me happily busy all winter long.

And so, we have hives - two full hives to be exact and all the accoutrements  They will need a little cleaning and fixing here and there, but they are hives none-the-less.  Next up.....bees.

 Most of the texts on the subject recommend getting to know the local bee keepers, so I hopped on the Internet to see what I could find.  Eastern Iowa Beekeepers Association proved local and rich in information.  Shot off an e-mail to the person in charge and within an hour or so was notified that the following day they were due to have one of their meetings.  They only have four meetings per year - one for each of the seasons - and a day or two later and I would have missed it entirely.  Again, Fate seemed to step in and see me through.

I am not one to like going to meetings, especially meetings in which I know absolutely no one, but I felt compelled to tackle this one. When Fate had handed me so much all ready it seemed like a snub to not make the effort at going to the meeting.  I came in slightly late and sat in the back of the meeting room.  There were approximately 30 people there, most of whom were somewhere in their late 60s.  The main topic of conversation was to highlight some of the findings that had been discussed at the state wide bee keepers convention that had taken place in November.  Many of their facts were somewhat worrisome.....There used to be 6 million bee keepers in the U.S and now it is down to roughly 2 million.  Well over half of all the honey in the U.S. is imported from oversees.  Over half of the hives in the U.S.  have been dying over the winter- unable to produce enough honey to support themselves.  Many bee keepers are not even able to collect honey from the hives because the bees are having a hard time making enough.  Colony Collapse Disorder is all too prevalent and no one, as yet, has a good handle on why.  It wasn't encouraging information, and I found myself sitting there thinking that maybe this is a little more than I might be up for this spring. 

One of the first things that I asked a few people was, "where do you get your bees" and several of them gave me different names of companies that sell Queens and a few pounds of bees.  One bee keeper swore by a company out of Texas that he buys bees from every year, and then it dawned on me to ask why he had to buy bees all the time.  He was having about 70% die off each year, and I thought 'well, if these bees are so great why are they dying off?'.....on to the next person.

Finally, I worked my way forward in the crowd to talk to Floyd - he had been one of the speakers that had gone to the convention and had given much of the information on what had been discussed and some of his own tips for helping hives to make it through the winter.  A quiet, soft spoken man, probably more comfortable in the company of bees than he is around people, but he was happy enough to answer my questions.  I knew that maybe, once again, Fate had thrown the right person into my path when I asked him the standard question, "where do you buy your bees" and he looked a me with a slight smile and said, " I haven't bought bees in over 9 years.  I have nucs (short for nucleus) that I raise up"  So, of course my second question was, "Do you ever sell those nucs?"  to which his response was "Yeah.  I will have 30 of them to sell come this spring."

My psyche, at this point, heaved a huge sigh of relief - here was a person who knew what he was doing and apparently did it well since he had several dozens of bee hives all over the county and in my local area.  In fact, he suspected that I was probably driving right by several of them on a daily basis.  Fate has a funny way of eventually making things happen.  I like to think that if I am open to Fate and the possibilities that come with it, and then bull-headed enough to stick it out, my plans eventually come to fruition in most cases- not always, but I have found that even failing miserably at something has always served to teach me something as well.  You never know just when Fate will reach out a hand and help you along, however, it is my belief that most people are simply to scared to grab hold and run with it.  I very much agree with the Serendipity sentiment that "life is not merely a series of meaningless accidents or coincidences...But rather, its a tapestry of events that culminate in an exquisite, sublime plan....that if we are to live life in harmony with the universe, we must all possess a powerful faith in what the ancients used to call "fatum", what we currently refer to as destiny."
Floyd and I talked a little more about various start up tips and then I asked him when he starts checking his hives in the spring...."First week in April.  Give me a call and you can tag along."

Tag along I will.  See you in April, Floyd.

An Open Letter to My Alma Mater

Dear Iowa State College of Veterinary Medicine,

 Thank you for the sound education you gave me regarding anatomy, physiology, bacteriology, dermatology, pharmacology, internal medicine, surgery, histopathology and any number of other 'ologies' that I am sure I have forgotten more of than I ever imagined I would learn.  I am, however, most unhappy with the status of education of production animal medicine. The thing that always sparks me off in this regard is typically a comment or article in the quarterly published Gentle Doctor magazine that I receive since I am supposed to be a happy alumna of the college. This month, it was one of the bullet points in the Dean's Letter p.3 (#4 to be exact)
     

 "Establishment of the Swine Medicine Education Center, a collaborative effort that provides unmatched access to a modern production system that includes 90,000 sows and nearly two million pigs and complements our swine, beef and dairy summer programs, and our rejuvenated food animal field services unit." [emphasis is my own] 

You are supposed to be perceived as the "leader in production medicine" also known as "food animal medicine" or to those lay people that may be reading this, "meat".  You are a land grant college in the very middle of the American Heartland, dedicated to the science an innovation involved in feeding the masses, and yet the system is terribly broken and you are all busy trying to fix the system using more of the same technology that broke it in the first place.  

 Stop.  Look around you. 

The world is slowly waking up to the food that they eat and what it is doing to us.  This is clearly evidenced by books like The Omnivore's Dilemma by Pollan and movies such as Food Inc.  You may have not read or watched them yourselves, but you should.  The research being expressed by these people is sound and, what's more important, makes good sense.  You taught me to look at research objectively and I have....theirs is better than yours.  It shouldn't take more antibiotics to grow our meat, it shouldn't take chemicals to sterilize our food, it shouldn't take people dying from food borne illnesses for you to wake up and realize that maybe nature might have a better way. 

Is it because the large pharmaceutical companies won't pump millions into the coffers that you so desperately need to keep going?  Is it because big businesses like Monsanto, Cargill and Pfizer will leave you high and dry if you actually do what is right and study the differences between organically grown, sustainably managed, pasture fed animals and the high stress, GMO corn-eating, pseudo-food animals that are currently being produced by IBP and Tyson?   For shame.

Well, just so we are clear, this is one veterinarian that you trained that will not be contributing to your college unless it is to train the next generation of veterinarians to think for themselves and wake up to what is happening to our animals.  We take an oath at the completion of our vet school education, an oath to protect the welfare of the animals we treat, to speak for those who cannot speak for themselves and yet here we are locking them up in confinement operations that are clearly NOT in their best interest.  I would like to see any one of you live one day in a space confined such that you couldn't all lay down at the same time and there was so much fecal material in the air around you that it was difficult to breathe.  Or maybe you should all be housed over your own excrement for a while and in such a noisy environment that you can't sleep unless you are completely exhausted.  We have all heard what stress does to our own systems and yet we expect our animals - those that will give their lives so that we may eat - to endure such conditions so that our clients can make the most money per unit.  We have lost track of the fact that those units are, in fact, animals.  Veterinarians should be leaders in this area....we know better and yet we are following - following the big Ag money.   Being led along by our noses in the hopes that we, too, might make a bigger piece of the pie at the expense of all those that we are supposed to be minding the welfare of - the animals and, as a result of that, the people that eat them.

Take a stand.  Will it mean money lost? Probably! Will it mean healthier animals and people? Absolutely! And the people that are waking up to this monstrosity will flock to your doors and beg to learn what you can teach them, or beg for the services of the veterinarians that you graduate.  Be the leader again, please, so that I can once again feel pride at calling you my Alma mater rather than cringing when someone points out that, once again, there is a food recall or thousands of eggs that have been contaminated and the only option is to simply throw more antibiotics or more federal regulations at them. 

We need small farmers in Iowa - not corporate giants.  Iowa is a dying state.  Most of these students that you are teaching right now will likely flee these borders like so many rats from a sinking ship. Wonder why there are a dwindling number of food animal veterinarians? I don't. With corporate giants running the show, how many vets do they really need? There are more large production units and more CAFOs in Iowa than in several of the surrounding states, there is more transgenic corn and soybeans grown here than almost anywhere else.  We need to diversify. 



My own role in this has been to conduct some of my own experiments. Once again you taught me to pay attention and keep records and for this, I thank you.  I can honestly say that there is a clear, distinguishable difference between the eggs that are raised in confined "caged batteries of birds" vs those from my flock of free range hens. I also raise a few pigs, a dairy cow and we buy all our beef from a local farmer that raises them on pasture.  The differences in our food quality and thus our health are substantial. And by supporting local farmers I am helping to ensure that small town Iowa actually has a chance to survive.

I realize that I will very likely not be high on the list to win any of the prestigious awards distributed to the "good soldiers" of the veterinary profession, but it is my honest belief that if you don't periodically stir the pot, all the scum rises to the top. I feel it is my obligation, as outlined by the oath, to continue the improvement of my professional knowledge and competence and so I put this challenge to you as directly as possible.....Lead, don't cave into big agriculture corporations that threaten to undermine this profession and ruin the trust that the populace has previously had in the veterinary community.  Lead, find a better way, a more humane way, a more sustainable way to raise the food that we need to live on.  Lead, so that others will actually want to follow. 

The Darkest Day

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_102.html

We are quickly approaching that time of year again.  And, no, I don't mean the time of year that involves elves in red suits, flying reindeer, nativity scenes, bell ringers or carols.  I mean the time of year when the terra firma that we stand on every single day is angled as far away from the sun (or toward it if you are below the equator) as it will be for the entire year.  The day is as dark as it will be for this year's race around the sun. 

Every day, whether we think of it or not, we are cruising through space at a fairly consistent pace of roughly 67,062 miles per hour, not to mention that the Earth itself is rotating at the same time at roughly 1100 miles per hour (this, of course, depends upon your particular latitude, but for middle America, it is roughly 1100 miles per hour).  Taking those two speeds and revolutions into consideration suddenly makes even the wildest rides at the amusement park seem like child's play.

Now, add in the fact that it has all been going on for approximately 4.5 billion years without significant change or alterations and I find myself standing outside at night looking at the stars with  my mouth agape in complete amazement.  The concept of time is completely lost on humans.  We have no grasp of what billions of years means.  One year?.... yeah, that's understandable.  Ten years?....well, most of us can look back that far and, ironically most of the time we say something like, "Wow! Where did all that time go?"  or "If only I knew then what I know now."  Fifty years? ....We see marriages that have lasted that long and, if you are like me, you say "I wonder how they did it?"  A hundred years?.....This is about the level that humans can reasonably be expected to comprehend on a personal level.  Beyond this point, it becomes antiquity, mystery, mythical.  We may know stories and have a few artifacts, but we really have absolutely no physical idea of how life was several hundreds of years ago much less 4 billion.  I would even hazard to say that the average person, if tossed back in time a few hundred years, would not have the first clue about how to survive using only their wits and the tools afforded them by the Earth itself.  The learning curve in the wild is pretty ruthless.

We, as humans, have lost touch with the Earth.  Oh, we use it daily - we drag coal and oil out of its depths and we haul the fish from its sea and crowd cows, chickens and pigs into insanely small spaces and force the Earth to grow crops that we then rob for our own uses.  We get the Earth to do our bidding and then we all happily go home to our houses, warmed during these cold, dark months with all the oil and coal, turn on our televisions to yet another ridiculous reality show, eat our overly processed, artificially raised food, and then go to bed so we can do it all again the next day. 

Pretty depressing, isn't it?  Sorry about that.  And, to be fair, there are more and more people doing what they can to help the cause, but many days it seems woefully ineffective.

I battle with this "woefully ineffective" thing myself.....all the time.  Sometimes I chalk it up to seasonal effective disorder, but mainly it is just do to the world in general.  Regardless of my mental state, I try to remember that this change in the seasons is a good thing.  Winter is a time for reflection and hibernation which seems to eventually eliminate the depression and readies a person for spring.  I find I can read and digest more books in the winter months than any other time of year. 

One especially good one that I have been working my way through is Folks, This Ain't Normal  by Joel Salatin.  If anyone thinks that I am hard core about living on a farm sustainably, Joel puts me to shame.  I honestly wish I could convince everyone to read this book because he not only understands and talks about farming sustainably, but he does it and proves that it can work on a larger scale.  Much of his emphasis is on treating the earth with respect and being creative in how we solve problems such as energy, food production, water conservation and housing.  There are a few New Year's resolutions that are forming based on this book alone. 

Another book that I am reading is The Joys of Beekeeping by Richard Taylor.  I have been reading a few bee books, but upon opening this one and reading, "The thrill and fascination that filled me then as I watched large swarms stream into hives has never weakened....It follows exactly the pattern established millions of years ago...We see only a small part of the surface of things.  The rest will be forever hidden from us, to be appreciated for its felt but unfathomed presence."  In short, he had me at 'hello'.

I realize that my choice of writers has a lot to do with the level of connectedness that they feel - not just to the subject that they are talking about, but to the earth as a whole.  Emma Restall Orr wrote:  "Perceiving the world as a web of connectedness helps us to overcome the feelings of separation that hold us back and cloud our vision. This connection with all life increases our sense of responsibility for every move, every attitude, allowing us to see clearly that each soul does indeed make a difference to the whole.”  

Those "feelings of separation" are one of the problems with today's society. People no longer feel connected.....to anything.  Ironically, despite e-mail and twitter and facebook, we are all much more disconnected from each other and from nature.  It really isn't natural to sit in front of a computer screen all day and remotely learn about things happening somewhere else when our world - the only one that we will be able to actually touch and physically interact with - lives outside of our house.  

People live for connection with the world around them - eye contact, hugs, relationships.  Without it we are only so much protoplasm walking around without aim or purpose.  It costs nothing to pay attention to other living beings that share this Earth as well- animals, trees, insects - and often these connections prove to be sometimes deeper and more profound than our human ones.  So, as the earth rounds the corner yet again and makes its way back into the hours of daylight, my hope for everyone this year is this.... May you find a connection with some part of the earth around you - be it a roof top garden somewhere in the city, a farmer at a local market, a stray cat that adopts you, the bees in an apiary, the moon coursing through the night sky, or your neighbor next door.  Make this year count because you just never know......maybe the Mayans were right.

Guarding the Night

Of course I always have ideas of blog posts in the middle of the night.  This one came to me sometime deep in the night as I heard my faithful dog barking at the unknown entity in the darkness, keeping watch.

There are many dark and scary beings that roam the countryside.  Many people have visions of the idyllic country life and all the fun farm animals that are raised in green pastures with white trimmed fences, but at night the landscape changes quite a little and now the advantage goes to those animals that were bred for the night.  Around here we have it pretty easy - coyotes, raccoons, skunks, opossums, fox, eagles, owls and the very occasional mountain lion that roams through.....those comprise most of the predator animals that we have to contend with.  Deer, although technically not a predator animal, are fairly predatory when it comes to vegetable gardens.   We, however, have a secret weapon against those beings that reign in the darkness. 

Gina.

Gina came to us under some amount of duress - Keith didn't want her around and I did - and so has it continued for the last four years, but with some amount of compromise, it all works out.  Gina works the third shift around our farm.  When the rest of us are heading in for the night, she goes on duty and then, as the sun comes up, she heads for her kennel where she sleeps the day away in the straw and sunshine.  She is a breed of dog that was bred for guard duty - half Pyrenees and half Golden Retriever she has a thick coat that protects her even in the worst of the weather.  She is at her happiest when there is new snow on the ground. 

Unless it is raining, I really have no idea what Gina does all night.  I know that she probably goes walkabout once in a while and I know for a fact that she sometimes brings home what she considers a tasty treat, but by any human standards (including mine) it would turn your stomach.   Once I even came across a raccoon that apparently met its doom at Gina's jaws. Many times she will be asleep on our porch, but any noise at all will send her rocketing off in full alarm mode any hour of the night....unless it rains.    When it is raining, I know right where she is....under the porch.

Gina hates thunderstorms and has carved out quite a den for herself under our porch where she rides out the flashing and booming.  When it is really cold out, she crawls under the porch and sleeps in the window well next to the wood burning stove - the window there likely stays very warm and it isn't unusual to see her and a few cats piled up enjoying the warmth.  On the very coldest of nights, when it dips into the double digits below zero, Gina gets to spend the night in the shop in the garage where the temp is kept a stable 32 degrees throughout the winter. 

Being a veterinarian, I personally know several people that would consider this horrible treatment of a dog.  I know many a pampered pooch that gets the prime sleeping spot on the bed and gets fed entirely too many table scraps.  I know dogs that are people's children and, from a business perspective, this is just fine by me, but dogs and humans have a very long, complex and symbiotic relationship that has allowed both of us to move forward. 

Wolves, in their domestication of man....because yes, it really did work that way in my mind....they trained us that if they hung out and kept danger away and worked to help us round up animals while hunting, then they too would benefit by having a place to sleep and some food tossed their way once in a while. Suddenly, dogs opened whole new avenues of life up for people - we could hunt better, we could control grazing animals better, we could avoid being eaten by cave bears better. But don't get me wrong - these were the dogs that could take or leave us - they didn't need us to survive, we were just a helpful ally with opposable thumbs to them.  Today's dog is much more dependent.  We have bred them to maintain their juvenile qualities longer, thereby never gaining their complete adult independence from us.  We have tamed the wildness down quite a lot.  In the case of the Pug....maybe a little too much.  But then again, they have domesticated us as well - we now have dogs that are members of the family and enjoy all the privileges that go along with that.  Good food, soft bed, warm house, drives in the car, walks in the park........  Something gained, something lost - there are always trade offs.  Gina, however, has a fairly good mix of domestication and wildness about her.

Gina has a job to do.  This is important in the dog community.  All too often I will see pampered pets that have every convenience given to them get themselves in huge trouble with their happy homeowner because they destroy things in the house, or eat things, or jump on people, or bark.  This is a dog's way of saying "I'm bored and I want something to do."  Gina takes her job very seriously - she is the mobile fence on our farm.  If I had to build a 6 foot fence around everything I grow to keep it safe from the deer - the farm would look like a penitentiary.  Just having her around to let the riff raff know
there is a dog on the premises is enough to make them keep a respectable distance.

The cats, however, take some liberties and move in for a quick bite at the kibble bowl once in a while.  Gina tolerates this with a certain amount of aplomb.  She acknowledges the cat while quietly wagging her tail and then promptly eats the entire bowl of food to prevent any more cat shenanigans

She has free reign.  Dogs are smart - very smart.  They know where home is - where the food bowl lives, so I don't worry about her wandering off too far. But she does love to ride in cars.  Recently, one morning when I was due to put her in the kennel for the day, I couldn't find her anywhere.  Walked and called, walked and called.  Drove around the block looking for signs of her.  Walked through the woods looking for her.  Nothing.   Finally, just about at the point of calling the shelters, neighbors, and surrounding vet clinics, I realized that my sister's car was parked across the road at her business and that the back hatch was open.  On a whim, I went to inspect.  Sure enough, she was sitting up in the driver's seat looking at me with her dog grin, panting, "Come on! I have been waiting to go for ride for hours! What took you so long." 

Gina also gets to commune with the wild side of the canine family.  We have entirely  too many coyotes that roam the area, but thankfully, she is large enough that no coyote in its right mind would take her on in a fight, and they give her wide berth by staying out of her territory, but they do have an odd sort of communication.  Listening to a pack of coyotes on any night is enough to give a person the chills, but listening to your own dog raise her nose to the sky and howl in one long, plaintive cry back at them will make every hair stand on end - it is so eerie, primordial and, in some ways, heart wrenching. 

I believe that a dog, at least once a day, should be told that they are a "good dog"  - it keeps their tail limber with the wagging that you receive in return.  My kids have a chore (although it hardly classifies as a chore) to go out and let Gina out during the day for a while so she gets a little human interaction.  Watching her romp and play with the kids and watching them throw their arms around her shaggy neck and bury their faces in her fur is one of the highlights of my day....and her's....and my kid's.  Dogs have a wonderful, sponge-like ability to absolve you of your worse moods.  They are always happy to see you no matter what a rotten day it has been.  They don't notice the scowl that you might wear on your face that sends your family running the other direction - or if they do, they don't care.  They still come up to you, tail wagging and eager to give love and attention without  expecting anything in return.  I think it is this guilelessness, this simplicity of a dog that makes them the object of so much attention and love - people always want something in return.  If only people could learn one more thing from a dog...become just a little more domesticated themselves....this would be a good thing to learn.

It is getting late.  My dog alarm has set out barking several times already as I have finished typing this up, no doubt to send whatever small carnivores scurrying in the other direction away from our farm.  I will rest easy tonight knowing that we are guarded faithfully by my furry comrade and that, come morning, I will be met with a wagging tail and excessive gratitude at receiving her bowl of food and the five small words that make her day...."Good dog, Gina.  Good dog."

Like a Nut-Seeking Squirrel

One of the biggest challenges that we have, storing all the food that we do, is keeping track of  it all.  It can get to be a little bit like a squirrel burying nuts in the yard - a little bit here, a little over there- until we find ourselves in the kitchen wondering whether or not we actually do have any corn for the dinner and, if so, where might it be?

We have come up with a solution to this problem and it is remarkably easy.  It requires paper (graph paper is nice), some tape and a pencil (or pen)

One of these posted at each of the freezers and at the cupboards that hold the canned food, and we can quite easily keep track to what goes in and what comes out.  Something new goes into the freezer - another square is added.  Something gets taken out to be used and a square gets crossed off.  Keeping a pen or pencil attached to the list ensures that no one can use the excuse of "there wasn't anything to mark it off with."

We try to make sure that all of last year's stuff gets used up first ,so that is typically somewhere on the top of the freezer to avoid having to unpack the entire thing.....but I am still trying to find that one quart of 2010 corn that is supposedly in there somewhere. 

Civil Disobedience and Fearlessness

I wonder what Thoreau would say about today's political/environmental/social situation?  Probably just what he wrote about the Mexican war and slavery in his own time.

"A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight." - Thoreau 

Thoreau's writing of Civil Disobedience is what has led to countless non-violent revolutions around the world - Gandhi, King, , Apartheid in South Africa, anti-war demonstrations in the U.S. in the 70s...and it is what keeps the people camped out in tents at College Green in Iowa City in the Occupy movement.

This came up the other night because I was trying to explain to one of my children why we do what we do....it's a form of civil disobedience.  We don't necessarily break laws, but we don't really follow them either, at least with reference to the farm and what is considered "normal".

I waffle almost daily as to where I fit in to the socio/political scheme of things.  It used to be pretty simple....Democrat.  Now.....not so much.  The government has become too polarized and I don't think that enough of my ideas of what is right and good necessarily fit completely into only one category....nor should they.  For entirely too long we have tried to keep the two party thing working for us, but clearly it has ceased to work in any sense of the word.  For all intents and purposes, I am a free thinker.  I don't even like the word "independent" as it implies too much of a party and either the Democrats or Republicans work to coax the Independents into their camp to help achieve the majority.  I want the Independents to be the majority.  A majority of people that think for themselves and find someone electable without the input of corporate money and lobbyists.  Is that even possible anymore?

I saw a research study recently that was very interesting.  It examined the brains of members of the different parties and analyzed what part of the brain was used with relation to their political affiliation.  Liberal thinkers tend to have a larger anterior cingulate cortex, a region of the brain linked with monitoring uncertainty, which could help them cope with conflicting information. Conservatives, on the other hand, have a larger amygdala, an area linked with greater sensitivity to fear and disgust.

There seems to be a lot of "fear and disgust" being thrown around out there lately.  Turn on any T.V. talk show or listen for a few minutes to Fox news and you are made to feel the doom and gloom of the current administration.  I refuse to be this paralysed by fear.....but I am disgusted.  Disgusted that we are a people that are so quickly influenced by people who know how to use our fears to their best advantage. 

So, I stew about what to do.  Move away? - become an ex-patriot somewhere less stupid....less fearful? Or, do you dig in and try to make some kind of difference, however small.  So far, we have gone with the latter of those two options. 

My daughter was expounding the other day about what she wants to do when she grows up.  She wants to "do something"  not just sit around on a farm all day.  I tried to picture what she visualizes me "doing all day" from her 12 -year-old point of view, and granted....it didn't seem like much.  I go to work, I fix animals, I come home, weed things, write, read books, clean things....in short, a pretty quiet existence to a thrill-seeking tween. 

But, in the bigger picture, my husband and I are very busy....busy raising kids. Kids with the knowledge and understanding to be able to see what is going on around them in the world and possibly do something about it to make it a better place.  It is a very slow process to be sure, and often fret with more trials and tribulations than I like to recount, but we try to model for them what we hope will help them to "do something" later on in life- work ethic, patience, perseverance, deductive reasoning, equality, boldness....it is a tough job indeed. 

Of the things that we try to teach the kids, one of the hardest that I have found to teach is fearlessness.  "Don't be afraid."  How many times on dark, stormy nights have I said that to my kids and then found myself laying awake at night with the fear of what the world will eventually become for them.  But fear begets fear and it only paralyses, and it makes us unable to look at a situation rationally and act appropriately.

I remember being a kid and being afraid.  I was afraid of the bogey man that my brother swore lived behind the garage.  I was afraid that the house would catch fire at night and we would all be burned to a crisp in our beds.  I was afraid of being kidnapped because of my mother's constant warnings against "stranger danger".  I was afraid the world was going up in a blast of nuclear energy.   As a kid, you learn fear early and well.  The hard part is un-learning it.  And the even harder part is trying to help your kids unlearn it as well.  What I have come to understand through all the un-learning, is that the opposite of fear is not bravery - that is facing something despite the fact that you are still afraid.  The opposite of fear.....is knowledge. 



So, maybe we are hard wired to be what and who we are, or maybe it is learned from years of our parents teaching us not to talk to stranger danger.  The research study itself wasn't so sure which came first - the fear and then the conservatism or the conservatism and then the fear, but I don't think that we can stand to be stuck in this muddy government anymore, which brings me to another thought...

"...let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance." 

-Franklin D. Roosevelt

Personally, I wish he could address that speech again to this nation of prime time, news program zombies that believe every horror story that they hear and then take that fear to the bank and proceed to tear the country asunder with their hatred of all things new and different.

I think the main thing that has conservative people upset about the whole occupy and civil disobedience thing is that it is out of the norm, it pushes the change forward, and for many people that movement of change is a frightening thing.  But it doesn't need to be if the fear can be un-learned. Civil disobedience requires fearlessness, it requires trust and it requires critical thinking.  I am hoping that maybe, by practicing as Thoreau suggested we can help our kids achieve a sense of fearlessness in this crazy world.   A little less of using the amygdala and a little more of using the anterior cingulate cortex would be good for us all.

The Space Between

The space between Halloween and Thanksgiving is quite possibly my least favorite time of the year.  There are many reasons for this:

1.   Halloween is over and the next time there will be this much chocolate in the house is probably Valentine's day, which seems like forever.

2.   There are often elections and I am constantly, unrealistically hopeful that somehow, this time, people will be smart enough to elect individuals that will miraculously save the planet from the horrible tipping point it is about to go over.....and I am completely depressed every time.

3.   All the un-realized expectations for the year come home to roost - the green house that didn't quite happen, the fourth planting of lettuce that didn't happen, moving flowers that desperately need to be thinned and moved. And although, technically it isn't too late.....it's too late.

4.   The weather suddenly turns rainy and cold - not cold enough to snow, just cold enough to be dreary and miserable.

5.   The darkness starts to sink in earlier and earlier as the earth slowly rounds the corner on her mission around the sun and we speed the process with the "fall back" in our attempts at maximizing our sunlight hours.

 6.   I check off another year on my life's calendar.

The final reason is probably the most likely for why I enter into this late fall funk.  I don't remember when birthdays stopped being fun and started to be something that you more or less dread, but it happened a while ago for me. 

I would like to say that I have a great way of working myself out of this funk.....but I don't.  I wallow in it for a while.  Depressed by the dying flowers that hang on the vines, saddened by the small green tomatoes that never did get to the stage of ripening.  Resenting having to start fires to keep the house warm at night, and finding all the kids' coats, hats, boots and mittens that I know will, from now until May, lay all over the entry and drive me crazy.   I, quite honestly, am completely pathetic at this time of year.  I am a car out of gear and I can't seem to shift into anything productive.

Until it snows or Thanksgiving arrives....whichever comes first. 

If they both come together....well, so much the better.  The snow covers over all the brown and wilted and makes it look crisp and clean.  Thanksgiving officially kicks off the holiday season, although to enter into any shopping store around Halloween is to to be inundated with Christmas stuff - it's really kind of depressing.  I was in one craft store over a week ago and it looked as though Christmas had vomited all over one section of it.  I stayed well away from this section.....but, I digress...  By "holiday" I don't mean "shopping"  - I absolutely hate to shop, but I love the feeling of the holidays.  Family and friends near, card games late into the night, blustery snowstorms during which you can camp out in bed with a good book, spiced wine, the smell of pine trees.....  The first part of winter, before the cabin fever sets in and drives everyone crazy -that is the holiday season in my mind. 

Once this season rolls around, it feels as though I am finally in gear again to get something done in the house.  This winter's mission is to finally get a bedroom.  Yes, sad, but true.  We have been living in this house now for almost 9 years and my husband and I have been camping out in what I call "the wreck room"  Our bed is there, along with the computer and until recently a television and a ton of toys.  It was generally where the entire family would congregate at various times to try to watch a movie, play computer games or just generally come to harass me in my vain attempts at sleeping in.   Nightly, I typically crash into a computer chair or two and step on a Lego or Barbie shoe on my way to bed. 

No more.   I have visions in my mind of a quiet place of solitude to which I can retreat as needed and not be disturbed by my pack of children.  Maybe this is a bit of a delusional idea, but it is what I envision to try to help me get back in gear. 

Of course, what is required to make this happen is for me to move everything out of this room so that I (and my husband) can redo the floors, wall and ceiling.  This is a bit daunting to say the least.  Especially now.... at this time of year when I am busy being old and pathetic.....maybe after a few more pieces of Halloween candy, checking the weather report in the hopes of at least one more 70 degree day and sending off a few more letters to my delinquent Congressmen, or maybe.... I will just hold out for the snow.

Killing Frost

Death comes in on little cold feet, and strikes down the last of all that is green and growing.  Halloween was previously known as, more aptly, The Day of the Dead, and for us in the Midwest it is true to form.  The potatoes have been stored, the tomatoes have been canned, the beans are picked, the garlic is buried deep in the garden to prepare for its resurrection in the spring.  The garden is done for the year and now it is Death's turn to rule for a while.

People generally fear death.  It is a common enough thing really, but no one is ever completely prepared for it when it does come. We try our best to avoid it, we mourn when it happens and we share our grief with others in the form of funerals and wakes.  And always it remains a mystery - what happens when we "shuffle off the mortal coil?"  It does give us pause.

Being a member of the medical field as a veterinarian, I have had entirely too much association with Death.  We are the only medical professionals that are routinely allowed to take a life, and not only allowed, but sometimes required to.  It can be a very heavy load to carry at times.  Death starts to take on a new guise - almost as that of another person you find yourself talking to at odd moments.  There are times when I feel that I gamble for a patient's life with Death as the other player....sometimes Death wins....sometimes I do.  There are even times that I invite Death in as a last and final means of ending suffering and it dawns on me that we are kinder to our pets than we sometimes are to each other in this respect.  I have seen too many people slowly withering away, and am only left with the hope that I either die very quickly, or that by the time of am of an age to be sick and old, that we will have advanced enough to allow directives for a means to end a life with dignity.

As such, I have developed a very weird and twisted view of Death.  It really isn't so bad, nor is it  necessarily to be feared.  Death is quiet and contemplative.  It leaves those around it touched with sadness, love, loss, memories, but mostly it strikes a cord down deep inside that reminds us all that, at some point, it comes for us too, and in the meantime all we can do is live as fully as possible. 

Funerals kind of freak me out though - almost too much pomp and circumstance.  Funerals, in my opinion, are more about doing "what is expected" than about celebrating a person's life.  To that end, I have directed my kids to never have a funeral for me - only a wake sometime after I am gone, and they are to have it at a bar and serve the best whiskey they can afford and play the music loudly and dance.  Clearly, my social graces are lacking, but I come from a long line of people who felt that we are only a mere blip on the radar of the universe and death is only a small moment of that time and then the circle of life rolls around and keeps moving on. 

It is sometimes interesting to talk with people about their pets and their views of death.  They are often more open than they would be if it were a person because the rules of society are very lax when it comes to a pet's death and burial, and yet we often feel as strongly (or, in many cases, more strongly) about the loss of a pet than the loss of a beloved person.  I had one client explain to me that he really hates the idea of caskets and doesn't want to be buried in one.  He wants to be buried standing straight up somewhere near a tree "like a fertilizer stick" he said.  Oh, if only society could be so open as to allow that to happen.

I really don't quite understand the whole casket and embalming thing myself.  When did this become the standard?  We want to be preserved for what? Our wake?  Does our vanity really extend past death?  The arguments that really get me are when people say it isn't sanitary to bury people in the ground without a casket....are you kidding me?  It is worse to put people in the ground with all those chemicals on board and inside of a hermetically sealed casket made from whatever non-biodegradable material we have most recently manufactured so that, at some future date, someone that doesn't know us has to deal with our hideous remains when they decide the cemetery should now be a shopping mall.

Happy Day of the Dead

Garlic Greatness

About four years ago I realized that garlic was something that I could actually grow in Iowa.  For some reason, I had been under the impression that garlic was a tropical crop, but upon making my discovery, I launched into production.

I ordered four bulbs from Seed Savers and then was rather surprised when it showed up on my door in October.  What?! 

Turns out you start garlic in the fall and it over winters rather nicely.  Broke those four bulbs of garlic up into roughly 20 cloves and planted them 4 inches down in well tilled soil.  Then covered them with another 3 or 4 inches of straw.

And then I worried

Seriously? They can stand temperatures that reach well below zero for weeks at a time?  I was a little skeptical. 

When March finally rolled around I started patrolling the garlic patch.....and patrolling.....and patrolling.......and just about the time that I was convinced that all was lost, the garlic poked its head out of the straw and started reaching for the sky with its long green stems. 

Since that first year, I have gained more confidence in my garlic - and I have gained more garlic.  The first year we ate all but the 4 bulbs I saved back for seed in a matter of weeks, so I started saving back more bulbs each year.  Now, I am up to saving approximately 7-8  bulbs which, when split into cloves, equals approximately 40-50 bulbs of garlic.  Not to mention that I have started some from seed - these, of course, take about 2 years to get up to edible size, but they help to supplement the constant garlic cravings. 

Garlic is one of those herb/vegetable/seasoning plants that can go in just about everything.  I use it when I pickle cucumbers, I even just pickled some of the garlic by itself this year to be used later in things like salad dressings.  Every pizza gets topped with it, every jar of salsa contains it, and when in doubt it gets added to just about everything. 

The health benefits of garlic are touted to be many, and personally, I really don't doubt any of them.  My one main medicinal use of garlic however involves its use in ear aches.  Don't ask me why this works, but it has now - twice.  Slivers of garlic warmed in a tablespoon of olive oil on the stove - I take a sliver of the garlic and wrap it in a cotton ball and then place that in the ear with a little of the warm (not hot) oil that it was sauteed in. Leave it in overnight and replace in the morning if needed.....so far haven't needed to because the ear ache has been gone.   When I did this to my 9 year old, I had looked in her ears first with my otoscope and been somewhat horrified at how red they were and how much fluid was present behind the ear drum - "doctor visit for sure" I thought, but tried the garlic and the next morning she woke up happy and ear ache free.......weird, but wonderful.  

I am also convinced of garlic's ability to repel mosquitoes and other biting insects.  I haven't actually put on bug spray for a few years now because they just don't bite anymore.  Other people will be over and are constantly slapping at them so I know they still exist and are around, but I haven't had more than  two or three bites all summer.  Then again, it could be that I really smell like garlic all the time (to more than just the bugs) and have become so immune to the smell, that I no longer notice.

So, now, as the leaves all fall to the ground and the days start getting colder and shorter, I prep the soil for next year's crop of garlic, tuck it in and cover it with a warm blanket of straw.  Knowing that it is out there, huddled under the snow and straw and soil just waiting for Spring's resurrection, helps to make the quickly approaching winter a little more bearable.