Friday, March 29, 2013

Thinning

Most of my seedlings are up, some are getting too tall for humidity domes already.  It's time for one of the slightly sad duties of gardening: thinning.  Uncertain of how good my older seeds were, and confident seed was much cheaper than space under plant lights, I planted more than one seed per cell in my pots.  In some very poorly germinating seed this turned out to be very prudent, as even with the extra seed only a few cells are showing any sprouts, but then others have 2-3 plants in every cell, and one of my sources of broccoli seed was incredibly fertile and the pot is overflowing with sprouts.  Right now both sprouts in the cell are cute little promises of future mature plants, but if I let them continue they will crowd each other out and not do so well in the garden, so out come the scissors, and I have to choose one to keep, and one to be thinned.

*clip*  A sprout falls to the floor.  It's promise gone.  But yet I've given more promise to it's brother that is left behind to thrive.

Sometimes I have to do thinning in my life too.  Just this week I unsubscribed from one of my gardening e-mail lists. It was educational, but it took too much time to filter for useful info, and that took time away from more targeted reading and actually getting away from the computer and using what I'd learned.

Saturday, March 23, 2013

Mid-Victorian Life Spans

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2672390/

The above article discusses how aside from infant mortality and poor family planning, mid-victorians were often more healthy than we are today.  This seems to suggest that farm life plus vaccination and proper prenatal care might do very well for me.

Thursday, March 21, 2013

Week 1

Wait, week 1?  Hasn't this blog been running for 2.5 years?  Well, yes, but note the very first words of my first post: "Well, I had planned to start this blog some time from now, when the really big experiment begins..."

Well, it has begun.

This week I planted a couple trays of seeds.  This alone is not all that unusual, I did this for many years while living in the city, but this year I have 17 acres to manage.

Obviously my two trays are not going to go very far in the grand scheme of things, they are just the start of my personal garden.  In the future I hope to have a greenhouse against the south wall of the house, but for now I'm just going to be content with my trays.  The majority of the land will be put to small livestock or hay and sold to support the farm.

I'd like to start chickens soon so I'll have them ready to eat before my June company comes, but I'm putting that on hold until the credit card has been paid off, and at the rate that repair bills are piling up in this old house, who knows how long that will take.  I may have to settle for showing off live chickens to my company...

So what does this have to do with health?  Long before I found my way into the paleo type diet, I theorized that
A) Almost all processed food is bad for me.
B) I'd get a lot more exercise if I gardened more.
C) I seem to be healthier when I eat more meat.
The farm is going to encourage me to eat mostly fresh foods or minimally processed foods, get some exercise producing them, and also provide as much meat as I need.

This is a really huge experiment for me, it is not an ordinary hobby that I can give up easily on, I've moved to another county, and purchased land with an old home in need of lots of repairs.  There is a lot at stake here in me being successful at this.  I have a bit of the sense of the founding fathers when they said "And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor."

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Fifth Belt Hole

Not too much to write about lately.  I'm still loosing weight, hit the fifth belt hole today.  If I loose any more weight I'll have to break out the leather punch and make a new hole.

My swelling glands may be a carb thing rather than a wheat thing.  I'd not been able to trigger the reaction with potatoes, but maybe I just don't like potatoes enough to eat too much of them.  Last Saturday I had a half a slice of cake, and a couple pieces of quiche, and a grain free supper, Sunday I had grain free breakfast and grain free lunch, but I ate a half a bag of dates and a couple bottles of juice and got my glands swollen up that afternoon.  It could have been the cake the day before, but it seems like not that much...  I'll have to continue being observant on the matter.

The excess of fruit was to fight fatigue on a long drive.  My posture and my ability to stretch while sitting are improving, making long drives more comfortable, but I had issues with low blood sugar making me sleepy.  Not sure if this is specific to long drives, or related to the exhausting week prior and the party with cake at the destination.