Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Button Pusher

Yesterday I spent a few hours at Empire Farm Days.  Although there were some resources for a potential small farmer, most of the money in the displays was on mega-farming equipment.  The kind of stuff you need to farm more than a thousand acres of corn, soybeans, wheat, or hay, or milk a few hundred cows.  There's lots of economical structures, and tools, but the big thing in the biggest booths is automation.  Bigger tractors that do more at the touch of a button, conveyors, pumps, sensors, automatic clean-out pipes...  It occurs to me that in that place there were many men seeking to become chair-sitting button-pushers.  I'm doing financially quite well as a chair-sitting button-pusher, but the health effects of chair-sitting are not acceptable to me, so I'm seeking a more active career.  I'm sure if I had a long talk with those other farmers, they'd think I'm crazy...

The other conclusion I made at the trade show was that if a small farmer is going to compete with the big boys, the small farmer should not bother selling corn, or soybeans, and hay and dairy were questionable operations.  I think there is still a niche in beef if the small farmer does direct sales and offers grass fed or other custom finished cattle.  The big farmers all sell by the tractor trailer load and don't have time to work directly with customers.  But the small farmer really needs either a niche product or a large variety feeding a vegetable stand.

Freckles!

I'm in my mid 30's, and my father noticed this weekend for the first time that I've inherited his freckles.  Before I changed my diet I was never able to tolerate enough sun to bring them out.

Yesterday I spent 5 hours at an outdoor event, and only my left arm that had gotten extra sun on the hour drive over felt overexposed.  I took my hat off and started shading that arm with it, and I'm just a little pink there today, with no pain, so it should heal up quickly.  I'm wore long sleeves when I doing yard work after the event just in case.

Speaking of my outdoor event, I spent most of that five hours walking around the event, and I think I did pretty well.  I'm a bit sore today, but nothing extreme.  I still did yard work and helped move some boxes after the event.

Sunday, August 5, 2012

Connection between Fibromyalgia and Oxilate?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2174474/The-GP-gave-fruit-veg-cure-aches-pains.html

Hrm....  More meat and cheese in this house!  I don't eat very many carbs because of my hypoglycemia, so  I've already cut back on potatoes, and carrots, and have seen improvements, but this puts a lot more on the no-no list.  I really need to learn how to prepare organ meats in a way I can stomach with so many other foods moving off my diet.  Organ meats can provide all the vitamins needed that most Americans get from vegetables.  As my diet currently is, I often crave a bit of veggie and have a big roast veggie meal, or a salad or some such.

Thanks for pointing this out, fellow bloggers:
http://blog.sethroberts.net/2012/08/05/fibromyalgia-improved-by-no-longer-eating-fruits-and-vegetables/
http://yelling-stop.blogspot.com/2012/08/fibromyalgia-and-oxalic-acid.html

A critic of this low oxilate diet suggest the failsafe diet, which has so many no-no foods that it's ridiculous.  Everything but meat is counter-indicated in someone's interpretation of the diet, and a few think eating only meat is too much protein.

I think only self-experimentation, considering one food at a time can really give me good data on what is or is not a problem...