A yogurt story

Many years ago when I had my first baby who was born in winter, we had a wonderful first year because she was raised on mother's milk only for at least six months.   But when her first birthday rolled around and it was winter again, she developed a very hot, very uncomfortable cheek which I found out was dry eczema.   I was given an atrociously expensive cream to apply to the cheek, for three days only, because it contained cortisone.   Of course the condition disappeared as if by magic yet not two weeks later it flared up again.   I was instructed to use the cream again.   And again and again as the condition kept flaring up time after time.

I then read a book by Adelle Davis called 'Let's have healthy children' and in it she advocates giving the child real yogurt and Vitamin A.   I could not conceive of how to feed a one-year old Vitamin A but I got the real yogurt, mashed banana into it and sweetened it (bless my naive heart) with sugar.   Not only did the baby love the stuff, it cleared that eczema in three weeks flat.   

Eventually she was eating a whole lot of other foodstuffs and the yogurt was relegated to the back shelf.   The winter her second birthday rolled by the cheek was getting hot and red again so I quickly started the yogurt regime again and this time the condition disappeared forever.   So to speak, since she is now heading for her 38th birthday this year.

I didn't even know at the time what the nutritional benefit was of the yogurt, which I do now, I just knew it was the wonder-working thing that saved my child's complexion.   Today I know that naturally fermented foods are probiotic.   And probiotics are what the intestine needs in order for the body to retain 80% immune-efficiency.   That's right.   The digestive systems controls 80% of the body's immunity, which majorly impacts on the overall health of the body.   Probiotics have been cited as a hedge against immune-deficiency diseases such as Chrohn's, IBS, MS, Lupus, and a host of others.   Once the disease is present it may not be possible to cure through the ingestion of probiotic foods but it will act as a hedge in healthy individuals and also lead to improvement in the daily function of people suffering from these diseases.   Here I also wish to quote another book I read in later years, called 'The maker's diet' in which Dr Jordan Rubin describes his recovery from Chrohn's disease, which until then had been considered a terminal condition.

Because the function is so large, the healing of the intestine has been cited as a mood enhancing process which aids brain function and concentration and relief for sufferers of ADD, ADHD and even Autism.   

So what are probiotics one might enquire, and how does one acquire them in food?   Firstly, eating organically grown food fresh and raw without peeling, is a good way of ingesting the bacteria and other microbes that are compatible with those present in the digestive system, which strengthens them.   Secondly, eating and drinking naturally fermented foods such as Kombucha, natural yogurt without flavourants and preservatives added, kefir and kefir cheese, sauerkraut, riesentraube and other fresh vegetables naturally fermented, gherkins naturally fermented instead of bottled with vinegar and taste enhancers, most notably sugar, and many others which I haven't even investigated yet.  

But since this was just a yogurt story I will keep the information on the rest for another day, another blog..

Here's to gut health!

I floated a website...

In January this year, 2016, my website for selling my farm produce went online.   To say that it took me two years to get to that point is not an exaggeration.   What you see is not all there is, it is the tip of the iceberg.   I took photographs during every season, researched masses of recipes and nutritional benefits of the produce, and populated a not-so-simple template for a website that I can use for orders online and it took months of hard graft.   Everything is not available all the time so that most of what is there is not visible until I enable it when the appropriate time comes for bringing it online.

All this blurb is just to say, don't wonder why I haven't been blogging.   And the other sentiment is, although there were so many times I decided it was all too much work for nothing, those hours are paying off now because next time a broccoli head pops into view, I can just go to the website, enable it and voila, it is available in all its glory, picture, description, recipe's and nutritional info all at once!

Check it out (orders only get delivered to Barberton, Nelspruit and White River, sorry!) but it is still interesting and useful for anyone in the mood to cook their own dinner!   More about this as we go...

www.farminabox.co.za

Farm in a box website

http://www.farminabox.co.za/

If you live in Barberton, Nelspruit or White River, Mpumalanga RSA, you can share in the goodness of my organically grown produce and authentic farmhouse fare by clicking on the link above and placing your order there...

The real initiation of the pond

Finally after the little girls had had their swim, it was the turn of the ducks and the geese to be introduced to their pond.   They took to it like ... well, need I say it?

Enter Iliah - prepare to be amused, she wants to catch a duck!

    Iliah in hot pursuit

 

They about face and so does she

And again... darn ducks!                  

When she decides to go in the geese go on the offensive and I have to run to the rescue!

Just another terrible day at the office for me :)

You may surmise this story is not about ducks and geese

... because what you see in the picture are turkeys and chickens?

Wrong. The story is not about the turkeys and the chickens, it is about the abandoned dam floor they are standing on. I always had designs on that old floor and when someone gave me some ducks and geese, I knew exactly what the floor was going to be - a pond!



We built the sides up with natural rock, with a pipe and tap inserted on floor level one side for emptying it out when dirty, then we lined it with plastic and built another layer of 'wall' with natural rock before cutting away the excess plastic, and voila!   A pond!








Of course the granddaughters had to do the tour of inspection first...   Notice how the clothes get less as the story unfolds...

                    Discovering clouds of tadpoles

Khairein decides she is having NONE of that!

So much fun and wonderment!   The ducks and geese had to wait until the next day.

Keeping bees in Mpumalanga SA

So.   Keeping bees in Mpumalanga SA is fraught with issues we didn't know of before we started.

First we had a few hives inside our rather extensive yard but when the grandchildren started coming along we decided to move them to other areas on the farm.   Fortunately we had spotted some badgers before we did the move, so we knew we were going to have to make it badger friendly.   What we didn't know was badgers was going to prove to be the least of our problems.

Here FJ is clearing land for establishing the hives.   As soon as he started the loader each morning he was joined by two fork-tailed drongos that flitted and chirped impatiently for him to start churning up the soil so that they could go after prey on the ground or on the wing.   I was on the loader with him when the project was nearing completion one day and heard him telling them to wait, he was going to get to their favourite spot soon ...

I asked whether it was customary for him to have conversations with the birds and he frowned and said "Yes of course.   When that's all you've got for hours on end..."   as if it made perfect sense to him...

When the land had been levelled we planted single poles to make it difficult for the badgers to reach, for fixing the hives to.

Someone we knew who used to do beekeeping with his sons was giving it up because the sons were going to university, so we bought all of his used hives and equipment, and set up our wonderful new apiary.

We planted flowering trees and plants and within weeks the first hives were populated.   Unfortunately there is a real unemployment problem among people living in the area and no sooner was there honey, than the trouble started.   We never considered the fact that people would brave African (killer) bees without the necessary smoker and protective wear, but they do.   And we have never harvested a gram of our own honey from this apiary.   

What is needed is a tall pole with a solar panel and alarm system, and a fence to keep animals out, so that when people move into the area we will be alerted by the alarm to take action...   Sigh.   We love our country but it is hard to have to consider security before one can do anything whatsoever always.

Animal, vegetable, miracle

is the most inspirational book I have read in a long time.   Author Barbara Kingsolver has been a favourite since I first read The Poisonwood Bible yonks ago, but who knew?   She is also a consumer with a conscience!   I almost feel as if she should be classed as a non-consumer, having read how they as a family pledged utter self-sustainability for the period of a full year, and the delightful results of said pledge.  

After six months of non-blogging I have been driven to my computer to continue blogging, if that will make a difference to anyone's life who may come across the articles and read them (all the future ones I now have in mind especially!)

I am sure that having come that far, living off the land and by one's own means for a full calendar year, it becomes second nature not to look to supermarket shelves for sustenance anymore, because whatever you are looking at has been grown from hybridised or GM seed, so that it will outlast transportation and the inordinate time spent in packing sheds being washed and handled, and on supermarket shelves, with little regard for taste.   And then it has either been processed, transformed into something different and sometimes unrecognisable (try chocolate coated olives!) transported 100,000 miles, radiated or otherwise preserved, with even less regard for nutritional value than taste.   Having tasted one's own produce, grown from honest seed which is true to how that food looked and tasted 100 years back, and having experienced the energy boost from ingesting such food, and the obvious health benefits, there is no going back.

What am I saying?   I am now more than ever convinced it is the right thing to source and grow heirloom type vegetables, I am looking forward to this year of change, and of growing the old so that it seems brand new...