Boosting the immune system! Farmgal style..
So I had a very busy few days over the weekend and had a great time! but I also got exposed to a possable health threat, now I think? I got off lucky and the odds are very good that nothing will come of it..
I called my momma and it turns out that I had the very same thing a couple times as a young child and each time it was less then the time before and as an adult, we are less likely to get it then a child is..
Still, with my momma’s surgery date (hopefully, still waitin for some test results to come back) hanging over my head and knowing that I had pushed myself for a couple days with less sleep then normal, it seemed like a good idea to give my body a boost
The first thing I did was add in more sleep/meditation.. I can’t say just how important finding time to calm your body and your mind in prayer.
The next thing I added in more of was WATER! Lots and lots of extra water, flushing your system and making sure that you are up on the water is very important.
The comes food- A large apple per day, a full cucumber per day, fresh greens, including nettles, wild violet tea with raw local honey, reducing as much white suger as possable, staying away from meat for the moment, apple cider vingar 2x daily.
then I made a wash of apple cider vinager with simmered cloves as my face rince..
And then time will give me my answer… but I think I will be just fine..
So what do you do to give your body and health a massive boost rapidly when you need to?
Well, I didn’t get much done in the garden on the weekend, but hubby worked on it for a bit on the saturday when he was puttering around..
he got a new row of strawberries done, plus cleared the area for all the wonderful plants that Deb shared with us, we got a whole little area planted with just them, stillĀ need to get some ground cover down on them but they are all coming along well, and I look forward to watching them spread and fill that whole area over the next few years till its ready for little bits to be taken out and split for other areas of the garden..
The apple tree, the crabapples, the blackchokeberry are all in bloom now, still waiting on the late cherries and the peach to bloom yet..
Need to have my first pulling and crop of rhubarb over the next few days..
Wild violets are in bloom and will be working with them this week as well..
The apple mint is growing like crazy and I need to step up the harvest on it.. Stay tuned for a awesome recipe using it soon!
The potato’s are coming up, and these were overwintered from our own cellar and then planted in the spring!
While I know that most foks see these and break out the weed and feed! but I see this lovely covering of a amazing plant that I can eat its leaves, its roots and I have been waiting for them to get this bountiful as I have wine on the mind! HMMMM, homemade Dany wine or mead..
Farmgal got busy helping put on a SCA style lunch for a hundred plus folks
Only gotĀ limited photos as I was busy workingĀ for most of the day, including missing a two hour seminar onĀ working the lucet.. sigh… another day as they say.. plus I missed the heavy crossbow talk .. pout..
Ā One of the nicest things about the events is that they are so family friendly, I didn’t get any photos with little ones that don’t show faces so won’t post them.. but I also adore how sweet all the couples are from young to old š
As I look at the sheep flock walking by, one of the young ewes whole backside is covered in poo, she is the third one in less then two weeks to have this happen..the first time I was OĀ my gosh and we cleaned her off and checked her all over,Ā took temps and found her in perfect shape but with loose stools..huh.. ok..
The pasture is growing and they are on eating lots of fresh stuff, so these things can happen.. then about a week after that, I could not help but notice that in my smaller flock, who is onĀ different pasture also had a very runny covered butt, and this was strange to me as the day before all was well and again she seemed perfectly healthy and in fact both girls have seemed really bouncy after about 24-48 hours.. and I have been keeping a close eye on them trying to figure out what is the cause..
Then I saw it, one of my girls pushed her way though the sheep fence and the green fence to nibble -Wait for it.. rhubarb leaves, not alot, she took maybe three bites and then walked away.. and yup, she now had very loose stools but otherwise is bouncing around and good mood.. are they self-medicating somehow? and if so, for what!
I have a small area that I grow a number of self-medicating plants for the sheep and they get limited graze in their off and on, the last time I put them in, they all wanted burdock and wormwood, along with some nettle and then headed back out to the main pastures.. hmmm, according to my books, they should not! want to get rhubarb leaves and I am NOT recommending you ever feed them to anything!..
But I am finding it very interesting that they are making this choice, they have good pasture, plus hay, so trust me this is not about wanting fresh greens, this is something else..Ā Its certainly a intense choice for a spring clean out and I will need to consider putting up a layer of green fencing along the sheep side to keep them out.
Well, lets get the bad out first.. my wonderful brown doe was very much expecting, and she pulled a nest and I was sure she was going to have little ones, and then I waited and kept checking on her, she was eating and drinking and friendly…sigh.. and I went to bed, and the next morning when she was checked on, she was gone, having passed away in the night, clearly something had gone very wrong in the pregancy and or birthing process.
Now I have read this can happen in my rabbit book but it was a first for me and to be honest a bit of a shock, given that she had seemed so bright eyed the night before and was happy to see me and my bit of fresh greens and i saw her have a drink of water and knew by the feed dish, that she has been eating during the day… but none the less, she was gone and I had a huge moment of guilt, as I was the one that breed her.. which as DH pointed out, if she was in the wild she would have breed and in truth more often then I breed my does. Still every time I walk by her hutch, which is a number of day, I keep waiting for her to appear and say hello, that empty hutch is SO! empty at the moment..
However has life often happens on the farm, across the way in her own hutch, my other doe has given birth to a lovely little of little ones.. now they have a huge bed of pulled hair, I barely checked the nest as it has been on the cool side and didn’t want to bother the babes.. Today was the first day for ok weather, its been raining and as you can see the little ones are plumb and just starting to get their coats in.. more photos in a week when they have fur and their eyes open.. somewhere in that nest is my new keepback doe, and I am looking forward to find it..
As I sit here sipping water out of my “glass” glassĀ gotten at a farm sale for less then a cent in cost, filled with my own well water, listening to cracking thunder, and the patter of my old boy hound that hate thunder, singing birds, and when you look at the windows, field of green has peacefully grazing sheep and out the other, all you can see if my huge almost in bloom apple tree
It peaceful, as most folks that read the blog know I keep a well-stocked pantry and that includes both stored water and included in that is X number of bottle water cases for those “just in case” ..but somethingĀ has happened over the past couple weeks, that dated water needs to be rotated out and drank.. wow, I can’t believe the looks and even the odd comment I am getting about drinking bottled water..
One of part of me almost wants to pour the bottled water into the steel bottle and just haul it around like normal but the other part of me is stubborn.. and I have now had at least one small child very sweetly explain to me that its bad, looks from folks and even a “not cool” from a guy I don’t know from adam..
There is a part of me that is kinda wow on this.. is plastic bottles the new smoking?Ā Have we in fact reached a massive level of “frown face” that being seen with one of these is enough to get you judged..
I guess part of the reason, I refuse to just pour it into the steel bottle is because I in fact know how much I do in my daily life to reduce my green “footprint” and I find being judged on something so simple to be on the vaguely amusing side.. its kinda like peaple watching in reverse..
Speaking of doing things that are not normally done, I am thinking about lettting one of my best rhubarb plants go to seed this year and try and grow baby plants from seed- Yes, I know that they don’t grow trueĀ but I might get one or two new plants that are ideal for my farm and then I can grow them and split them for many years to come.. anyone done this in the past or working on that project now?Ā Can’t believe how many of them are trying to go to seed already in early may! At least they are ready for their first picking, boy the strawberries plants are slow this year though.. not sure why..
The first Osnabruck “grolar bears” were the children of a female brown bear and, evidently, a male polar bear. Born in 2004, the cubs were the first hybrids to show up after nearly 25 years of the two species’ cohabitating. Researchers observed the cubs and found that the hybrids are a bit smaller than the polar bears, have long necks like their polar parents, but have the shoulder humps typical of brown bears. Other features include thicker heads (like grizzlies), visible tails (like polars), and blended feet ā partially insulated with hair like the polar bear, partly long-toed like the grizzly.
Hunters from the village of Ulukhaktok, N.W.T. knew there was something different about the polar bear they were stalking but couldnāt put their finger on it. Ā It was far more aggressive than anything they were used to. They even called off the dog for fear the large white mammal would kill it. Ā On closer inspection after it was shot and killed, it turned out not to be an ordinary polar bear but one that was a cross between a polar bear and a grizzly, unofficial known as āgrolar bearā and āpizzly.ā
āThe first hybrid we had ever seen around here a few years ago was pretty nasty. They (hunters) usually stalk the polar bear using a dog but this bear was so aggressive they couldnāt use a dog on them. It was too dangerous,ā Robert Kuptana, who lives in the western Arctic hamlet of about 400 people on Victoria Island, told the Toronto StarFriday.
Over the years as grizzly bears have wandered further north following the Caribou herd, the hybrid variety has become more common, the 69-year-old Kuptana said, adding that just 10 days ago, a hunter from the village, Pat Ekpakohak, and his two grandchildren killed three of them. Ā āOne is pure white, one is partly dark and the other is fairly dark brown and the top part is white,ā said Kuptana, who took a picture of the skins. Polar bear and grizzly habitat overlaps in the western Canadian Arctic around the Beaufort Sea. Grizzlies are known to occasionally to go out on the ice in the spring to feed on seals killed by polar bears, according to the Canadian Wildlife Service.
A DNA test conducted by the Wildlife Genetics International in British Columbia on a bear shot and killed by an American hunter in 2006 confirmed it was a hybrid, making it the first documented case in the wild. Ā Ian Stirling, a research scientist and polar bear expert with the Canadian Wildlife Service in Edmonton, said in an interview with National Geographic that the hybrid was ādefinitely notā a sign of climate change. Ā Andrew Derocher, a professor of biological sciences at the University of Alberta, is in Ulukhaktok, where he is doing polar bear research and saw the skins from the three hybrids. Ā He told the Star, āIt seems to me they are getting a lot more common, at least in this part of the Arctic. Ā āI think the story here . . . is that the number of grizzly bears on Victoria Island has increased quite markedly over the last 20 years. And part of that might be related to changing environmental conditions up here. Itās a bit warmer and itās quite clear the grizzly bears are well-established here now and, of course, there is a healthy population of polar bears around,ā he said.Ā David Paetkau, president of Wildlife Genetics International, based in Nelson. B.C., told the Star it was a āquirkyā development that canāt be totally explained and that he was only interested in talking about substantive work that his firm does.
So here is my question, is it in fact a mule or can these hybreed make babies, and if so can they cross back and forth on which both breeds… so if the first DNA proven bear was in 2006 but the hunters can take four in a matter of a two weeks, there has to be alot more of them up there on that island and if that can happen there and in the zoo, it can certianly happen in other areas if climate change effects the plant and animal growth, its like the killer whales moving in ever increasing numbers up in the Canada north do to the changing sea ice.. hmmm, going to have to follow this one as more info becomes available..Ā Now we have half wolf-half coyotes in ontario/quebec within proven DNA moving back down into the upper eastern states with the daughter mix outpacing their parent species, wonder if that is what we will slowly see happen in regards to this mix, the best of both mixed into one package..
Now I am going to give a heads up that while I will do my best to be careful in my wording on this subject, I know that I could and most likely will cross that PC line so if you read it and think, that was mean or whatever, know that I am writing with the best thoughts in mind and that words on a page can be hard to get right..
First a story from my childhood, one of the things we picked and loved was PincherryĀ pancake syrup, and if you have never picked them, they are tiny little red berries with a pit and they are so! sour, that to eat one raw will pucker your mouth and make you spit a number of times at a min.. the whole family was out at a local campsite that had lots of wild pincherryĀ tree’s and we were all picking away, there was a couple in a motor home, and the wife watched us doing this and sent the hubby over to get her some, he avoided us and walked over to a patch a bit down the road and picked some,didn’t answer our smiles or hello’s and took his handful back to the wife, who put them all in her mouth and chewed, and then spent the next bite spitting and coughing and rinsingĀ her mouth, while making comments about crazy Canadians.
Now we all thought it was funny, because if they had just bothered to ask us, we would have happily explained what they needed to do and even shared the recipe etc, as I have grown up and I see folks watching me wild craft in the outdoors, I have often thought of this as I have seen or overheard folks say, she picked that,Ā grab some and let try it.. but what they don’t know is that I am going to blanch that once or sometimes twice before use to take the bitterness out, that I not going to eat it but make a salve with it, or that those roots I am digging are not for raw eating or cooked eating but are for drying and use in a tea etc..
Its theĀ pincherriesĀ all over again, folks see, and folks do but they don’t have the rest of the story.. I got thinking about all these tree’s that Hidden Harvest is planning on working with (and I do think this is an excellent program, and I can already tell the odds are I will get more involved in the program itself because I do believe in it) but it got me to thinking about that the fruit picked while miles above what you can get in the store in terms of freshness, will not look at all like the fruit in the stores, it won’t taste like it either.. many times different trees in wild area are from seed andĀ you never know what you are going to get.. Some will be more sour, some will be small, some will have more seeds, thinner or thicker skins and if the fruit has not been sprayed and looked after, then we will have lots of buggies, and worm holes and brown spots in the apples etc.
Unless you want and know how to use sour plums, browned spotted apples, tiny little crab apples, or cherries that are have ready right now, and some that are not quite ready, because that is the truth, I mean look at my own grapevines, when I cut the clump, 10 to 20 percent not ready, 10 to 20 percent overripe, and 40 to 60 percent perfectly ripe, which makes me wonder just how much get cut off and throw away for us to get that perfect clump of grapes in the stores.
So lets assume that we give that bag or box of tiny crabs apples to folks in need of food.. and then get it home and now what! They can’t eat them fresh, they can’t make a pie with them, which means they need the rest of the story and the training and equipment to choose to
All of the above they are still going to require some kind of sweeter added to them to make them so you can eat them in any kind of amounts..
Which means you have now asked folks to have jars, screens, linens, sugar or honey etc. plus the spending the powder heating costs assuming they have a working stove etc..
The nuts are not different, I have cracked black walnuts, I know folks drive them over with car around here LOL and let me tell you , its work, steady, not easy work.. so while it sound amazing.. we can pick up XX amount of pds of this kind and that kind of nut,Ā how do you get it from the raw nut into a workable form for use?
Try and picture it.. worked nine hours on your feet in a store, picked up the kids from school, made supper, you are tired, and want to just watch an hour of TV or read a book, how likely are you really to sit down and spend hours cracking nuts.. I mean we have a heck of time get folks to even save and use their pumpkin seeds, and they are super easy to prepare and eat compared to nuts..
I love the idea of so much of this food finding its way into food banks and lower-incomeĀ families where it’s neededĀ but I think without training and making sure that you find the right peopleĀ that its given to, that it’s just wishful thinking.. and in truth I worry that much of it will just be thrown away when they get it home.
Now I know that Callie K has got some first hand knowledge in this area, so I am really looking forward to hearing her thougths on this?
This little guy’s shell was barely the size of a quarter across (I measured; it’s only one inch from one side to the other where his back toes are) and so freshly hatched, he was still dirt-smudged from digging out.Ā SO CUTE!!Ā But, as you can (hopefully) see from look in his eye, he really was a man on a mission; so he got a lift to the pond right after his photo shoot, Photo Credit and note given to Deb Weyrich-Cody
“farmgal” Wow, have you ever seen such a cute baby turtle, I have seen these turtles in a number of ponds in the local forest by me and a few of them had signs that went up that they were active breeding/hatching grounds but I have never really seen anything but the adults or half grownĀ ones.. Maybe I will try toĀ find out more over this year and see if I can plan a stake outĀ hatching event.. I have a really amazing trail camera thanks to my dad and it could be placed carefully so I don’t lose it, if I can find a nest and maybe just maybe I could have a series of live hatching photos of the little ones coming up..
thanks so much for sending the photo and info and for saying yes when I asked if I could share it publicly!
Just another Day on the Farm 