AR AR

I always eat some spoonful of plain, real YOGOURT before or during whatever greens I eat so that the stomach bacteria culture gets reinforcement.
A diarrhea is also an overdue cleansing of the system, but with yogourt or with buttermilk it goes better to overcome the mono-culture of missing stomach bacteria.

Brenda Groth wrote:
absolutely keep lambsquarters if you like cooked spinach, as it is superior and free..and grows better than spinach in hot summers.

This I find extremely interesting. I live here my second summer and at the driest sunniest spot on the south wall side in fullest sunshine
grow the tallest lambsquarters, one now over four feet tall and full with flowers
and a few Sweet Clover made it too over six feet high.

whereas any spinach, lettuce etc etc  never germinated and only about five or six struggling Calendula
and no herbs whatsover germinated. Even early Broad Beans gave no production.

Now last year I had grass four feet high, which I flattened and later about four feet of snow weighted them down;
that was followed this year by little or  no grass growth but lots of Dandelion galore leaves, dark green wider than my hand.

What I had ordered and planted last year from Richter's did well to a point: I did not water at all this year:
the ground defrosted in June after all that snow, but it was too late for any tomatoes to set fruit.
Nights are already down to 5-7C so frost cannot be far away.... I liked the different Comfreys and especially
the many bees coming and going for their flowers.

So I let weeds grow and let grow what grows best and grows otherwise; also some Alfalfa went to flower and now to seed.

I appreciate the deep-rooters like Sweet Clover. I remember overseeding ten acres with Sweet Clover and that cured compaction
and all puddling so I hope the same for this former grass lot.

I think my ground is too chemicalized that I wait another year for  lambsquarter to be my spinach and lettuce substitute

I make daily Flaxseed oil
by chewing a teaspoon or two of flax seeds
mixed with cottage cheese
and
keep chewing and chewing and chewing
(33 times but not less)
until its all soft and good "predigested" by the saliva...

Sepp Holzer says in one of his German Videos that
neglected dried out soil
does not attract moisture,
because when it rains you get only floods and flooding and nothing soaks into the soil;

that's why he says he keeps all these different ponds, about 75 of them,
to keep his ground in moisture that soaks in any rain...

Wood in the huegelbed is another rain attractor;

and  rocks you see everywhere are micro climates that store warmth converted  from sunrays
around which he plants his tropical plants, kiwi etc....

Pouletic wrote:
That seems like a fairly straightforward way to apply moderation to the diet, and i find myself doing this, too. I do wonder if a three+ day cycle is too much to be skipping certain types of food. Does anyone have references to studies on cyclical diets with different periods?

No, never moderation!

I've lost that way sixty pounds over about twenty four month...
when I felt still hungry or "sleepy" I doubled up or more on freshly pressed apple or carrot juice...

all my body fat disappeared and at about 155-160 pounds I considered my weight as balanced.

I had no salt, no sugar in the house!

I also remembered my weight when I was twenty/twenty-two years young.

Now that helped me to visualize that something went wrong some forty-five years later
and so I simply resumed what I liked when i was twenty:
we had lots of apples from our garden: I put whole milk in the Brown mixer,
added apples or carrots, a raw egg or two.

My three day rule is my answer to not to get used to any one food:
yes, when frozen blueberries are on sale I buy two or three at 450 gram
and eat all of it, defrosted of course; at first I had put some cream on,
but that bought cream is itself "enriched" with stabilizers and chemicals and doesn't taste.

You re-discover taste.
Sugar or salt "burn alike on my tongue, no fresh fruit does that, not even a freshly squeezed lemon.

I was never an exercise fanatic; that became fashionable from the sixties on...so putting on weight and its consequences was my food-intake fault.

I drink two cups of local water, boiled for one or two eggs or not for water for my two cups morning coffee,
all other thirst goes away via freshly pressed juices -fruit-or vegetable...
My Taste is different from day to day...

In the 70's I had a singing Canary. I gave him one lettuce leaf. He ate all of it, then two, then three leaves...
finally I gave him one day  a whole head of lettuce and he ate the whole head of lettuce that day.
In the 90's I had two goats and I took them across my 10 acre field in an early weedy spring,
they would sniff at the Dandelions in the middle of the field,
(a field previously seeded to chemicals and soybeans) but would not eat any.
Only ate green from the side of the field where the ditch between the neighboring fields was...

I learned from my animals what not to eat: I had no cold since the 90's...


The last dentist said, my teeth are good, but my fillings get old and should be replaced!

I never eat tomorrow
what I ate today and what I ate yesterday.

Grains : one grain another grain and another grain like bread etc etc etc
are human inventions
like liters of alcohol, gallons of milk.

Milk is for calves, really!

You can eat apples, many apples from an apple tree, or many fruits from other fruit trees...
that is from a naturally grown tree, same with many nuts from one  tree.

That's why freshly pressed fruit-juices are OK, but better eat five apples a day, including the seed...

But a field of grain is very artificial, a human inventions, industrial really
so is the sum of grains turned into flour for bread.

For weeks I eat no bread;
yes, different "grains": spelt, Kamut. Quinoa, Rye, rice, different rice

I am not habituated to any type of food or drink or tea or coffee or juice
because I don't eat tomorrow what I ate today and yesterday.


Same goes for pounds of sugar and liters or gallons of honey and molasses,
all money makers from colonial trade,
but eating a sweet fruit or many different fruits per day beats them all.

Dandelion salad, nettle salad etc all goes and grows per season only...
then something else

Humans are browsers by natures, mushroom and berry and nut collectors
not industrial food consumers, food processors and manure producers for sewers.

Sugar, Salt simply don't buy it, don't eat it- there's enough of it in natural food;
the body stores poisons too!

you'll discover new tastes once withdrawal symptoms are "understood"
via natural eating...

Brenda Groth wrote:
  OK the deed is done.

i went out yesterday and walked the open property lines and placed a few siberian pea tree seeds in the gappy areas in my windbreaks and privacy screens, I had a few seeds left after doing that so i put a few seeds in two areas around my pond and a few seeds in some open areas in my little woods directly north of the pond and food forest garden..mostly as forage for the wildlife.

we'll see what comes of them..woke up to rain this morning, and it has raind for over 3 hours so far today..off and on rain now forcasted for the next 5 days..so..they should get a good start.

i'm fairly excited to see what becomes of this adventure

Brenda, please  update: how do the seeds do. This interests me and how fast they grow?
Thank you!

johnlvs2run wrote:
"oh no, snakes would hide in the grass!  She's from Arkansas. 

as a matter of fact, above farm had a pile of bricks right beside the outside barn-wall
and several arm-thick holes in the 'muddy' ground near/within above chicken/ducks/geese walking path
and as such was home of 'several' garter snakes: I saw one and smaller ones disappearing
in that brick pile and another disappearing in one of those holes...

But here on this property while my grass grows lustily this reminds me of "oh no, he's letting weeds grow!"
while I said:"do not look at what you see! but imagine all the goodness it does to the expanding roots
and the life developing within the soil to "grow yet." 

As a school-boy I had a flock of dwarf bantams and as such they turned and looked under every leave
and ate insects and insect eggs. So on the farm the likewise free range chickens turned every leave;
so do the guineas. Nearby some shed I went to one day, and the chickens are as curious as me, follow me
and there was at ground level a mouse nest... and in no time the chickens cleaned out the nest...

johnlvs2run wrote:

I like this idea of bending the grass instead of cutting it down. 
It seems to me this would be much faster than using a tractor or a scythe. 
I wonder what could be designed to do this more quickly,
or at least as effectively as a scythe, bending the grass instead of cutting it down.

Fukuoka insisted on not ever "cutting" the straw into snippets...

and attributed
success of his clover-green manure/grain seed method
emerging from under the "whole straw layer"...

and failure
to snippets, orderly, tidily placed dried straw
that is placed like nature would not place it...


I watched some of my grass here grow,
then fall over, uncut.

Then rain came, 
the micro-climate of temperature/ moisture

between
the yet non-existing soil here
and
this cover made up of bent over long-growth-grass

creates
an atmosphere, thus a shelter -
moisture for life,
moisture for germination:

didn't Planki also confirm this with his method of a dried hay layer
a "thickness" that covers grain seeds
sitting thus within an atmosphere
on top of a growing moist green manure...

so now I see here and there some fresh grass growing through this dried layer:
ultimately, this surface/no till treat
is to give future soil the capacity
to store future rains inside organic matters of root galore
to become more soil
for future growth of my vegetables...

I would venture to say that dried out grass has to be bent down
and come in touch with the soil surface
so often and over so many seasons until it no longer dries out:
there's now enough humus+moisture that maintains growth
of whatever vegetables will want to grow there.
Fukuoka proved that point too via his watering requirement reductions!


bending the grass instead of cutting it down,
probably with some sort of a roller,
but I prefer my foot bending green grass
so not to amputate the grass from its roots
and terminate or speed up its drying and moisture evaporation into the air:
no, you want that moisture rescued
and used by the roots and its system...


it seems that tools and chemicals
discriminate against life's possibilities...
the viability of various organs thereof

alas, a desired ritual,
like hand/arm movements
when smoking a cigarette,
totally useless body movements,
designed by an invention...

johnlvs2run wrote:
That's a great idea. 
Wouldn't this teach them to set foot outside the property though,
to "teach" you to come out and feed them? 
I'm curious how often and how long this training takes. 
If you don't watch them every day,
do they start leaving right away?

I started out with chickens in the barn and that barn was sort of located in the middle of a meadow.
Two dozen or so chicks I bought to begin with and whenever I went in there at feeding/watering time
I used that can+corn to rattle and get their attention and did so for some weeks until they grew bigger
and THEN opened some sort of an exit facing south-towards the meadow and close by the fields...
and watched them how one by one they ventured outside the barn- free range.
But would continue feeding, rattling them only inside the barn for some time.

Over time it turned out they would leave the barn, then turn east then north then west so go, go around
and around the barn... that part of the grass I kept cutting, they seemed to prefer their walking that way...

So later when I added goslings and ducks, placing them on the straw nests on the side of the barn walls
away from above chicken roosts, these animals became witnesses/subjects of the same corn can rattle,
soon they followed the behavior of the now mature chickens and walked around and around the barn
simply by imitating that behavior...

If there was some danger, wild dog or unknown human they all would flee into the "safety"
of their barn; or inclement weather would keep them there. 

The barn was always shut during the night so they were already waiting for me in the morning
to open "the gates" and out they would run...

Once nature was green and provided for them I stopped feeding them, only provided water
and only rattled the can to collect them for me to count them, or when I left afternoons
to come back at darkness I would rattle and feed corn inside the barn and so shut them in-
this kept roaming wild dogs outside...

This fields were open fields separated between different owners by some sort of ditch I could jump over;


I observed chickens would never venture too far from the safety of their barn,
but geese would suddenly line up in a row and march stubbornly in some pre-determined direction...
mostly going east towards that neighbor's corn field !!!

I observed that from behind the window in the house, but once the first goose entered the ditch
at that very moment I would go outside, rattle the can, the white Emden geese would run, run run,
and to my surprise, month later learned to take off, fly towards me, circled me several times before landing - 
then only they got some corn as their reward.

But everyone tries to fly at moments like this, chickens and turkeys keep running and flapping
their wings, all of the dozen geese finally did fly- but guineas did this always and very nicely from the beginning.

Yes, social animals, they learn from each other
and they managed and trained me...