Mice in kitchen

Mice in your kitchen is not a popular subject, but to provide healthy food this is an area we have to address. If you ask your doctor they will tell you there really is no such thing as a 24 hour flu. Nine times out of ten it is contaminated food and one of the contaminators that is the hardest to be aware of is pests. Mice, cockroaches, ants, flies; all move about a kitchen area after coming in contact with contaminated drain areas, spoiled food in garbage cans and their own feces and urine. It is a horrible realization but it is a fact.

So how do we insure we are providing our family with healthy food that has not been contaminated? The first step is to realize that no matter how clean we keep our home, these unwanted guest will eventually be an issue. Mice and cockroaches hide in warehouses with food where they can chew their way into a box that is then picked up and moved to a grocery store, then that creature is transferred by accident into our home.

Being aware that this is something that constantly is happening, no matter how diligent warehouses and grocery stores try to be, will put us on guard to be preventative and not reactive. Taking action ahead of time with traps, organic scents or other pest control, is the only way you can be certain of this. This doesn't mean you have to pay big dollars for a pest control service. You can do much of this yourself, (see infodiypestcontrol link here).

Watching pest control operators use blue lights to see where mice have urinated in our kitchens reveals the horror of how they will crawl across cutting boards, counter tops and other food preparation areas. If we use powerful disinfectants, we may be transferring chemicals into our food that are as bad as the mice urine. A good option is to always put down wax paper or some other clean material to prepare your food on.

Never leave food out over night due to the fact all of these pests are nocturnal and will be traveling about during that time.

Remember mice can get into drawers where we keep our silverware, so covering your silverware with a hand towel can save you from contamination you didn't notice until mice droppings were discovered under the spoons.

Not a fun subject as we said before but very important to address.

Finding fresh food in the winter.

Where does all that fresh produce come from in the middle of an artic blast?

Do not be deceived by a pretty organic label or "fresh" label in the grocery store. You know that food has to be coming from the southern hemisphere where regulations are nothing compared to the U.S.; so how do we get healthy food in the winter.

The truth is, we honestly have no real way of knowing at this time how or where our food has been raised and under what standards overseas. We can wash the food to try and get rid of chemicals but that will not help the systemic action of the chemicals.

The only true way to know what we are eating is to know the grower or grow it ourselves then flash freeze that food to eat in the winter time. This is just to eliminate the chemical element but does not consider what nutrients may have been lost in the freezing process.

We do know that the faster you freeze your fresh food the better it retains nutrients.

I know others that are doing the drying process but there isn't enough research yet to show how much we retain in nutrients under that process.

Is Organic really healthy?

I think we are all starting to ask the question if Organic is really healthier than any other food process; AND; is it really helping my families health.

Pesticide, the word, means to Kill Pest. So anything that kills must be bad for us, right? Well let's word that another way, is it good for us?

I can eat card board but it's not good for me. And that is the way LD50 is basically measured, by how bad it could be for us in what doses. So the answer is that pesticides are not measured on how good they are for us. But the level of how bad they are for us and what our bodies can withstand, so a good answer is the less to no pesticide use is wise. But is that enough?

Unfortunately; the USDA is measuring Organic in much the same way. The pesticide use is removed but how good for us is the food that remains?

A GMO really can be a fruit tree in your back yard modified over the years to bring a certain looking fruit, but the real question you should be asking of all the food you eat is, how GOOD for me is it?

If the fruit tree roots are being watered by a irrigation canal that has all the run off of local farms using pesticides, or, if the fruit tree is growing in sand with little to no nutrient value, or, if heavy doses of manure are being used to create big fruit but it has no nutrition in that compost process; have we really gained anything other than it's not as bad for us?

We need a label that declares what the food has been grown in nutrient wise. The label should state if it has volcanic ash, Nordic sea kelp, natural worm casting compost, manure from nutrient rich soils the animals grazed on. THEN we would be able to say, yes, this food is actually GOOD FOR ME.

Public demand is what will prompt this and we need to start asking the organic fruit and vegetable stands these questions.

Dog and Human health gauge

Health in our pets is an interesting gauge of how our health is doing.

I was raised in the 70's on a large ranch with several dogs that never had a health issue and lived to ripe old ages. One was even bitten by a rattle snake on the neck and simply laid down for three days, swelled up to a football, then the swelling went down and was fine. That was good health to be able to overcome such a problem.

Same went for the family working on the ranch, no cancer or other problems.

But now we see pets with diabetes, cancer, allergies and every other human type condition plaguing our society today. Could we learn something from this?

The old farm dog lived in a natural environment, ran at least ten miles a day, ate raw food it could find from old meat to ...well I hate to say it, raw cow pies (manure).

The domestic dog today lives on carpet fibers made from petroleum synthetic fibers. Eats man made processed food and is lucky to exercise an hour a day.

Not a surprise that dog health is starting to be like our modern human health.

Natural is a buzz word but do we really even want to go back to natural. I watched a friends 21 year old daughter picking fruit off a tree and throwing away the fruit because it had a hole in it, so it had to be all bad...the truth is there was a larvae probably in there but cut it out and eat the good part.

The girl had a fit when I said that. But she wants to go organic and natural. Natural is dirty, not McDonalds boxed and shiny. Working in the yard makes us sweaty and dirty. This is what we naturally came from just a generation ago, but our lives are so homogenized, we are going to have to adjust if we are truly going to go back to healthy.

Getting out of the house with it's latex paint, carpet fibers and microwaved food could be just the thing you and your pet need to get back into an environment you were supposed to be in.

Minerals back into our diets

How do we get minerals and nutrients back into our diets?

Farmers have had to produce so much food so fast that our land is depleted from many of the needed minerals in our diets. If you don't believe that, eat a fresh tomato off your own vine and then try the store bought version. Taste and satisfaction in feeling well after you eat a meal is your body telling you something is good for you. If  you have the munchies afterwards or the food you ate didn't even register with your taste buds, be suspicious of what you are consuming.



Where do we get these minerals because organic just means the farmer is not using pesticides or chemicals. It does  not mean the food is healthier.

It comes back to you, you have to make the effort toward health. This starts with raising food that has these nutrients and minerals restored.

A worm farm is the most advanced biological means of reintroducing lacking minerals and nutrients into your soil. Their castings or dirt after they have digested the food creates amazingly rich ground for plants to absorb minerals. The next step I highly believe in is brewing a compost tea from those worm castings and including Volcanic Ash (Azomite ), Sun Dried Kelp from Nova Scotia that has not been heated more than 80 degrees (again available on line), and fish emulsion to this brew you are feeding your plants. With this you just reintroduced an amazing boost for the plant and that boost will be taken up by your body when you consume the plants fruits.

The other item is to throw away that processed salt and purchase Celtic Sea Salt to put in your diet.

Powerful steps to getting you and your family healthy.

How to get kids to eat healthy

As a child I was never fond of broccoli. Now I know why. It was the quality of the broccoli. Yesterday I was in a organic garden with a man who uses worm extract spray on his vegetables and has the complete organic loop in his garden. In other words he has fresh water, well composted fresh soil with worm castings and only fertilizes with worm oil. He picked off a head of broccoli and told me to eat it.

My childhood taste buds were screaming "NO", but I trusted him. The taste was amazing. It was actually sweet. He tossed a piece to his dog and the dog ate it ravenously. The over grown, nutrient poor vegetables that taste like cardboard from our grocery store are a big part of the failure to help us eat healthy food.

I challenge you to find a organic gardener who practices this technique and compare the food. If your child started its taste bud memories with that kind of flavor they will gladly eat healthy.

Now that was an easy thing for me to challenge but you and I know this kind of grower is rare. So this brings us back to the truth that we are going to have to make that effort to grow our own food if we are going to take real steps to healthy food.

I have to say, do not trust the word organic. I go to lots of organic food retailers and never have I had food that tasted the way that broccoli did. The problem is they are not nourishing the soil with fresh worm composting, feeding the soil with the minor elements that are so needed in our diets. They simply are using a compost with high nitrogen to produce a fast plant and not using chemicals. That is all it takes to be called organic but it does not give us food with all the nutrition our bodies hunger for.

When I stop at a organic retailer I ask how they prepare their soil, where their water comes from, do they let the land rest or do cover crops. If they can't give you this information than that should be a warning. If they are not into putting nutrition into the soil, then this is not what you are looking for. The final and best test is taste. Good nutrition taste good, if it doesn't have much taste then it is lacking these elements.

Contaminated Water Exposure in our Garden

We drink bottled water to avoid chemicals. And we addressed the issue of plastic bottles being a problem. But what about how we water our garden plants.

Water is the key uptake our plant is working at. The cell structure in the plant tries to filter that water but then we eat the cells that did the filtering. So it is important that we give the plants we consume water that is pure.

This brings us back to plastics: So many people feel they are doing so well by using rain water, but what are they putting that rain water in?

The other mistake missed is what is the rain water running off of? Is the roof feeding this drain made of asphalt shingles? And what happens to the water as it sits in the sun in this black plastic, percolating?

As a rule of thumb, trust your senses. If you can smell the plastic, then then avoid how you are using it. If the water does not smell right, then get rid of it and do not use it on your plants.

You may have to get much more creative here; and I guarantee it will cost more to use a clay pot, or more earth born container, to do the same process. But if you want to truly be serious about avoiding the effects of the un-natural environment our scientist have created, you will have to make the effort.

Plastic and our Food

Plastic is probably the most ignored area of our health chain. It touches almost everything coming in contact with the food coming from our grocery; and even in our own gardens.

More and more there is a concern that this could be a leading problem in our health. Plastic as a petroleum processed product, that we now know, can leach and off gas into our food.

So how do we avoid it in a world that has driven all our food products and tools toward it?

Look for the alternative which is glass. Glass has been avoided due to breakage, but it is one of the best products for clean containment and easy recycling.

We take glass jars that have had jams or other food items in them and recycle them for our garden produce. Lemonade, Ice Tea, it's all in glass jars. Interesting enough you can really taste the difference if you pay attention, everything seems colder or hotter than something stored in plastic.

We also ask our local organic supplier to let us see where they grow the food. We look for plastics in that growing process. Often the water is coming through black plastic exposed pipes. If you sniff these pipes in the heat of the day, you can actually smell the plastic off gassing. We look for growers that use natural dirt corrugates or have a steel pipe system.

Let's be honest, this is really a pain to try and investigate and avoid plastics in our food. But consider how much plastic we are exposed to. If we can reduce that exposure we are taking the steps to a healthier life style.

Understanding Garden Compost

What is too hot and what is not?

Compost is a very vague term used indiscriminantly to describe everything from raw manure to leaves. So what really is compost?

It's really a process that builds live soil if it's done right. What we want to do is grow the beneficial organisms that help plants grow. This is a balance of oxygen, moisture, decaying plant material and animal excrement that builds soil.

Raw manure may be a part of that but the nitrogen and salt content will actually burn and hurt our plants if we put it on straight from the animal without taking the time to allow the microbial process and ozone to break it down into an element that is readily available for our plants to absorb through beneficial fungi.

Now let's make it simple. Time; time is the main element that helps all of this to happen. If we follow the basic guidelines to composting and take the time to let the microbial pattern do its stuff, we will have great compost to grow our plants in.

Here is a good link from the University of Arkansas.

The Grow Well Garden Cart

One of the ways I have been working on to create that complete cycle from creating clean nutrient filled soil to growing the plant in a pesticide free environment is what we are calling the Grow Well Garden Cart.

This has the worm farm, irrigation system and an environment difficult for pests to attack built in a easy to move into the sunlight cart.

It started with my need to find sunlight for my garden without cutting down my trees. As a tree guy my trees are way over grown from too much good care (smile). But then I started adding modules to complete the cycle and it's working great.

It can grow food year round because I can roll it into the garage and put grow lights on it.

I hope to have more information about this in a month or so.

The Healthy Soil Cycle Plan

We learned about using the worm farm to start creating healthy soil, now let's take a look at the cycle.

It's much like building anything in that we have to start with a plan design, build it and maintain it.

 

Step One: What is your goal in how much food you realistically can produce. Start with something you know you can maintain in the future or what is the point.

 

Step Two: Don't procrastinate but buy that worm farm today, get a garden cart or a small area of the lawn ready and make sure you have a realistic way to water it.

 

Step Three: Write out a maintenance plan for the entire year and put it on the refrigerator.

 

An example would be to write in your yearly plan what harvest (carrots, beats, spinach) you want and read when those plants should mature. Then set apart 10 minutes every day to water and weed. This 10 minutes becomes as important for your mental health as for your physical health. People who garden are proven to be more at peace believe it or not.

 

So - stop and write down your plan right now and let's get started.

Healthy Soil Cycle

I help dozens of people get started with the Healthy Soil Cycle. I was started on this quest when Jerry Baker (one of the oldest men to swim to Alcatraz) introduced me to his -0- chemical garden. The taste of his Swiss chard (usually biter) was amazingly sweet. His cantaloupe plants were producing 15 fruits with taste so delicious you wondered if you need an insulin shot after eating it. Why was his food better - better soil cycle.

It starts with growing your own plants in soil that has had as little chemical applications as possible. We talked in earlier post how difficult this is, but start somewhere.

Then use the refuse from those self grown plants to feed you worm farm. This is key because the worms will produce new soil and introduce the soil biology (we'll discuss that later) that makes plants able to pick up minerals and nutrients our bodies need.

 Just go to ebay and look up worm farm

Or you can build your own project (Home Built)

 

The worm farm produces two important elements, soil from worm castings and a oil (nice word for worm pee) from the tappet you see on the bottom tray.

 

As you recycle your own food into the worm farm, you've now started your own healthy soil cycle.

The chemical challenge

My wife once made the comment, "well we grow an organic garden...right?"

I pointed at the water in the canal and said, "as organic as the chemicals in that water."

We are all wary of the wand spraying chemical truck in the neighborhood, but what about the household cleaning chemicals going down the drain? What about the oil, grease and gasoline on the roads running into the drains and into our water supply?

Trying to avoid chemical exposure is virtually impossible. So what do we do?

Filtering water is very important. I actually filter the water coming into my Garden Kart to insure I'm starting with something clean to begin with.

I also avoid many household cleaners that have worse warning labels than common pesticides.

It's important to think of the source of where everything is coming from when avoiding chemicals.

Contolling Spring Weeds

Weeds seem to be epidemic in the spring. Keeping weeds down around trees is a concern I always have in that often DIY and Commercial people are spraying liberally around the root base of a tree.

Trees natural weed defense is organic matter of last years leaf drop decomposing around the roots. This is what I use in that it is organic and healthy for the tree. However many people prefer the area around the trees to be bare or have grass up to the tree base. If you will not use the natural method, please do not use 24-d products or Roundup type products with "extended control" in that it has a sterilant that will harm your trees.

Caseron is one of the "pre-emergent" that can be used around trees in a healthier way in that it uses a gas that does not effect the roots of the tree however it is a chemical and be very conscious of it's label when applying to keep yourself healthy from chemicals.

Are you using chemicals this spring?

Here come the weeds...so does the weed killer - kill us?

If a professional was spraying that weed they would have rubber gloves, long sleeve heavy protective shirt and safety glasses. Not allowed to spray with any wind and not allowed to spray if it was so hot the chemical could volatize...what and how are you spraying?

Welcome

I have been actively blogging for a couple of years under my DIY Lawn Care site but more and more we are finding ourselves led down the path of trying to understand and promote organic living.
So this blog is dedicated to Health for our entire family from our children to even our pets. Years of researching Pesticides and Gardening is my background and I want to use it to help us all understand what really is "healthy".