Tuesday, May 11, 2021

Welcome back!

Nasturtiums in the Kitchen garden 


I didn't intend to be this long away from posting. Over 3 months! Stuff has happened though. How to unpack it all without writing a saga? I'll just say what you all might be wondering. We're still here and the whole family is doing well. Health hasn't changed since we last caught up, but there's always room for improvement, right? I don't believe in waiting until you NEED a doctor, before listening to your body. 

Anyone reading here a while, knows I try to provide good food for our family. 

Unfortunately, I've struggled with extreme weather events (aka: drought) to grow our own food. So began my experimentation with how I might be able to garden differently. Hello Peter Andrews', Natural Sequence Farming - and Permaculture, the wonderful brainchild of Bill Mollison and David Holgrem. Such a wealth of design by nature, I needed to start observing to help my garden grow better.  


Homegrown tomato on a BLT


Here's a sneak peak of some of the goodies, coming from my kitchen garden. Just two tomatoes were produced, but they were utterly delicious! Reminding me precisely why I continue with the struggle to grow food. Nothing in the world tastes as good, as what comes from your own garden. Although my success is extremely limited, it's still success I can build on. Which is why we are tweaking my kitchen garden area. 

More on that in another post though. It's still a work in progress. The whole reason for posting today, was a marvellous video I stumbled across recently. All to do with how human health is tied to the methods of food production. Why I found it particularly profound, is that it's research uncovered by a doctor who specialised in producing better chemotherapy treatments. He found the natural preventative medicine, in how human food was being produced. 


Approximately 25 minutes


Towards the end, the Doctor says something profoundly similar to Bill Mollison's belief in Permaculture, that the problem is the solution. The good doctor says, "Identifying a problem is so much of the solution". 

To summarise the video, it's how we produce our food that awakens or deletes our cellular response. This is the catalyst to disease, or a healing event. We all know Hippocrates said: let food be thy medicine. But this video was the first time I've seen a medical doctor, describe it as a whole system event. Which is how it should be. I don't think you'll regret watching the video.

Anyway, I hope you're all having success in your gardens, especially your edible ones. 


10 comments:

  1. Chris, thanks for the link to the video I will have a look at it later on. At the moment tonight there is a lot of thunder and lightning and a little rain on our side of town but on the other side of town apparently there has been hail. I hope you get some rain down your way too.

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    1. Glad you're safe and well at your side of Toowoomba, Chel. We skipped the hail and heavy rainfall too, but received a moderate amount of rain. Enough to soak the soil and collect puddles. So the garden is happy! Unfortunately we lost power Tuesday night, and didn't get it back until Wednesday night. Around 20 minutes away from being a full 24 hours. Thankfully Dave set up the generator on Wednesday afternoon, so we could run our fridges and freezer again. Didn't lose anything, just a bit of inconvenience. We all cheered when the power came on though. 😉

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  2. Hi Chris, good to see you back and know that all is well with you and the family. Thanks for sharing the video. I'm always a bit suspicious of people who talk so quickly that you can't focus on the message, so it needs to be watched a couple of times. While I agree that industrial farming has destroyed soil health and created less-healthy mineral-deficient plants, I'm a bit dubious about it being the sole cause of all the world's health ills, as so much else comes into play. The eternal rants against glyphosate keep coming. But who do we believe? I did a quick search and found this: http://npic.orst.edu/factsheets/glyphogen.html

    Does it break down in the environment or not? So many questions I have unanswered. So much else I have to check against his claims. Is autism actually on the rise or is it being diagnosed more? Blaming it on glyphosate is akin to blaming it on vaccinations and that was soundly debunked. What to believe? I don't know anymore.

    But your tomatoes look great! The cool summer we had here in Melbourne wasn't a good one for tomatoes and I discovered that the wallabies who are now visiting the property have a taste for tomato leaves. So there were nets everywhere. But it was a great year for zucchinis. I know everyone has loads of zucchinis, but not usually me. I was eating them every day. When I suddenly developed an unusual case of itchy hives the doctor asked if I had been eating anything I didn't normally eat. Oh, dear! Thankfully the chooks loved them.

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    1. Thanks for joining the conversation, Bev. A questioning mind is always welcome, because new information should be tested. Interestingly, the shikimate pathway, mentioned in the video, is something I've come across in permaculture in relation to plants too. A rather in-depth article was published at Deep Green Permaculture on How to Neutralise Glyphosate.

      Basically, good old Epsom salts, seem to make the soil pH more favourable to Pseudomonas (sp.) production of bacteria, that breaks down glyphosate. This species of bacteria is found in worm castings and fungi on forest floors. So when I heard the shikimate pathway mentioned in the video, and how it's correlated to human health requiring food production from those high populations of Pseudomonas bacteria, it clicked for me. A whole new avenue of investigation has opened up for me. I'm always curious about how we are affected by plants and the soil.

      It's probably a good thing I only got 2 tomatoes then, as they're from the deadly nightshade family. Which I can get itchy skin and inconsolable twitching feet, from. Unusual to experience it from the cucurbits family though. But I guess too much of anything can overload our system. Hopefully next year, tomatoes will make it onto your plate.

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    2. Oh yes, and glad to hear your chickens are doing well! They're always great for cleaning up the garden excess, and turning them into eggs. Which hopefully won't make you break out in itchy hives. 😉

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    3. Thanks for that reference article on glyphosate, Chris. I follow him on Facebook, but I must have missed that one. I've bookmarked it for further study. Very useful.

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  3. Glad you're back Chris! And I'm especially glad you've had some encouraging garden results this year.

    The more technologically advanced our society becomes, the worse our health gets. Yet the politically sanctioned "experts" can't seem to make the connection. I'm with you on doing our own research and working to grow more of our own food.

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    1. Hi Leigh. The garden has had amazing success with the return of regular rainfall. I'm dividing my time between getting soil stabilising plants on the slopes, and my smaller edible garden. I don't know how long this window of opportunity will be available, so I try to plant as much as I can.

      I'm of the firm belief that human health and psychological well being, increases the more connected to our food production, we are. Technology has helped us with the invention of "machines", but how much becomes the tipping point? I'm so grateful for anything with wheels, a pulley system or an engine. Less wear and tear on the human body. But we've perhaps reached the point in human evolution, where we've stopped finding the balance between our physical momentum, and the machines. No-one can halt progress, but it's a wise person who learns the balance.

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  4. Ooh another video for me to watch! Sounds very interesting, thanks for sharing Chris. I am always interested in this subject.

    Your tomatoes look delicious!

    Glad you are back and to hear you are all okay.

    xTania

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    1. Thanks for popping by and leaving a comment Tania. 🙂 I share your interest too. Food and the soil it comes from, has endless possibilities. We've really only just started to do more in-depth research, on how edible plants effect our human biology, like an eco-system.

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