farmacy

source

: ) Excellent advice.

More healing in raw plant foods than any prescription you would get over the counter!!! Mask symptoms until serious disease results. Grow your own health... and do it organically.

I had JUST finished reading this article when saw this post! Haha.... http://drbass.com/disease-cure.html

I love this, would like to see more "farmacies" around

Speaking of cucumbers: I work nights and my favorite pick-me-up (no, dont go there) is a cucumber. Eat all except one or two slices for an energy boost. Use the two slices to rub all over your face and don't wash it off. Feels great and gives you great skin.

Family health issues was what got me started on looking into how food is grown and processed. Growing up we always gardened and foraged for food, but it was mostly to prevent hunger, since my parents were very poor. My mother and grandmother (who lived with us), did teach us some things about food and healing. During summer we foraged for elderberries and black currants, and from the unset of fall until mid spring, we would drink elderberry or black currant juice with dinner. Elderberries are great for boosting the immune system, and black currants are loaded with vitamin C.
Fast forward to 1999, when I had my first child. My daughter had colic really bad. Today we know that it was because the formula we used contained milk. At the time the only thing that helped was chamomile tea and long walks.
In 2001 I had my twins prematurely (a boy and girl), and they had continued health problems and so did Peter and I. The healthcare system in Denmark couldn’t help, so in the end we immigrated here to America. Better healthcare helped a lot, but we still had major health issues. I especially got very sick starting in 2005, and was diagnosed with celiac disease. My kids were tested too and all had celiac. This got us started on a gluten free diet, and I could see how my kids started to get better. We bought a house and I started gardening and buying organic. In 2012 my son was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome and psoriasis, and my youngest daughter with Hashimotos. At this point my son had been in speech therapy for many years. While not completely non verbal, he didn’t speak a lot or inter with the other kids in school. I started reading and researching both and concluded that better food and a better diet might help. We cut out all dairy, grains, processed sweeteners and processed foods. After four weeks on this cleaner diet my son started talking in class. After 2 months, the special aid teacher called to tell me that he was sitting with the other kids eating lunch and taking. She asked what we had done, and I told her that all we did was look differently at the food we eat. Today my son are in college studying accounting and most people don’t realize he has Asperger’s. He still has things he is struggling with, but I am confident that he will be able to live a normal life. My daughters Hashomotoes also got a lot better. She began sleeping at night, temper tantrums disappeared too.
Me? I kept going down the rabbit whole of food, now that I had realized that all healing starts with food.
In in 2015 we bought our 1/2 acre homestead, we bought chickens and I started planning our two gardens. I quickly realized that we didn’t have soil, only dirt that nothing would grow in, so I started improving the soil in the front yard, and we build the first beds in our backyard.
Fast forward to today, and we have a thriving homestead with a food forest garden, a raised bed garden with 20 beds, and livestock in the form of chickens, ducks and rabbits. Our health has improved tremendously over the years, and we find that we love this lifestyle. This year I am very close to have produced a metric ton of produce, with a calorie count of 1/2 million. We only raise about 50% of our own meat, but the meat we buy are the highest quality we can find. I grow a lot of medicinal herbs, as well as plants that have dual purposes like being both food and medicine, or medicine and fertilizers. Permies is a constant inspiration and confidence booster, that what I do is right. I have always struggled with depression and gardening has helped a lot. I love sitting or working in the forest garden, watching all of the birds, rabbits, gophers and squirrels. Even seeing a snake makes me happy. Every year more animals and insects move in. Last year it was pray-mantis, frogs and crickets. This year it has been ladybugs and black bumblebees. There are now seating in different places of the garden, and a small deck for meditation and yoga. I have started to add small sculptures around the garden, and light, that light up the garden at night so it’s so beautiful. There are always joyful surprises, like raspberries and strawberries still producing fruit, even though we are now in December.
My kids are now adults and the first one leave the nest in April, after getting into Southern Oregon University with a nice big scholarship. Soon Peter and I will reach retirement and I am happy to know that once the kids have moved out, we have food security. The trees and scrubs will grow bigger and produce more. Next year we will get our first avocado harvest and once our berry bushes has settled in we will have lots of those too. Best of all though is that unlike my mother, I don’t have to forage for currants and elderberries, since those grow in my forest, but just like my mother we drink elderberry toddies and currant juice every day once the cold and flue season sets in.
It has been a long journey, but it has shown me proof that all healing both physically and mentally starts with food. The right food and the most clean and nutritious foods.
Now I am teaching others around me how to do the same. I do garden tours, and teach people that it’s not as hard as it looks, and, if done right, very low maintenance. I feel tremendous joy when a new gardener text or email me, about having successfully grow lettuce and kale, or to troubleshoot problems. I love seeing them going down the same rabbit whole, and coming back with more confidence, joy and better health. I love when people bring their children, and I just let them explore pick and eat right off the plants. Most of the time their parents step in and ask to wash it first, and they get very surprised when I tell them it’s not needed. Everything I grow is naturally clean, since we don’t spray or add chemicals. I wash my herbs, only because the cats often use my herb beds to pee in.
The look in a child’s eyes, the first time they pick a fresh sun warm peach of a tree and take their first bite, is priceless. The wonder comes first and then a smile while juice drips down their chin.
Lastly, it’s a joy to see that I don’t have dirt anymore. I have rich, dark soil full of worms and bugs. We also all have a much better health. The nurses and nutritionists I have talked with, say that they don’t know anyone with a healthier diet than us, and follow up with “How do you do that”?  Then the circle start again with me saying, it all starts with food.

Great thread to 'bump' thank you Ulla! I think you are so right that many of our health conditions can be attributed to a poor diet. This is the case for people without allergies and intolerances too. I wish everyone could have access to healthily grown food like yours. Part of it is accepting that tomatoes don't have to be perfectly round and evenly sized. If only we could tell the nutrition in a fruit or vegetable before selecting it, maybe people wouldn't choose based on looks alone.

Nancy Reading wrote:Great thread to 'bump' thank you Ulla! I think you are so right that many of our health conditions can be attributed to a poor diet. This is the case for people without allergies and intolerances too. I wish everyone could have access to healthily grown food like yours. Part of it is accepting that tomatoes don't have to be perfectly round and evenly sized. If only we could tell the nutrition in a fruit or vegetable before selecting it, maybe people wouldn't choose based on looks alone.

Thank you Nancy. I think a lot of the problems are also poor education. I have talked to many people online, who don’t know where their food comes from, and the consequences of eating the way they do. It’s not just damaging to their health, factory farming destroys the land, and veganism makes livestock endangered species, do to the lack of people buying them. We have slowly cut away the education in where food comes from. One of my online friends didn’t know that carrots grow in soil, and if you ask children in school where food comes from, they usually say the grocery store. I also have parents saying “why grow food when you can just buy organic?” My answer is to do an experiment. First buy a box of organic strawberries from the grocery store. Then buy strawberries directly from a farmer of a friend who grows them. Place them in the fridge and see which ones goes bad first. The answer is always the ones from the farmer. Then I ask, why do you think that is? And I go on to talking about sterilization of produce, so they can last longer.
I better stop now, this is a passion of mine, and I tend to not being able to stop, ones I start talking about it. Just like the ugly vs perfect looking produce you talked about, people have to do the experiment by comparing their lifespans and taste, so to me this means to bring back school gardens. In Japan all schools have large gardens, where they produce vegetables, that are then served for school lunch. The classes take turns working in those gardens, with gardeners teaching them about plants and soil. It also means that all of the children get a good nutritious meal for lunch, feeding their brains so it’s ready to learn. I would love to see this in our schools here in America.
If you start with converting how the children looks at food, the parents will soon follow and the general health of the population will improve.