Son of a Farmer

“Whenever cannibals are on the brink of starvation, Heaven, in it’s infinite mercy, sends them a fat missionary.”  - Oscar Wilde

Herbs, Not Pills Will Cure Our Ills

Majority of conversations I’ve overheard on the health topic involve more pills than Hunter Thompson can shake a stick at. Seriously, everyone and their dog (yes, their dog) are on at least three different kinds of meds these days. I have no idea what any of them are or what they do, only that each little blue wonder seems to have an x or v somewhere in its consternating pronunciation.

From respiratory to digestive to immune to mental to emotional to muscle to bone, western doctors always know just the pharmaceutical to prescribe us. Ever wondered why 99% of doctors don’t recommend herbs, all natural healers from the earth? Oh, that’s right. They can’t make money off Mother Nature nor can the billion dollar machine that is the good ol’ Pharmacy.

Mother Nature has the answers, my fellow liberators. These ol’ pills may cure one ill, but they will create several more chronic problems for our bodies, minds and spirits. All of this is related. Agriculture is directly troubled by the same remedies. Any wonder why pharmaceutical monopolies like Bayer and others have dove pills-first into the agriculture seed industry. Yes, let’s sleep better at nights. But instead of popppin’ three or four and callin’ somebody in the morning, take a little valerian and all is well.

Here is a list of some wonderful plants for your garden that will help with common illnesses. Dandelion is one of my favorite cure-alls. Enjoy. Most of these make great teas (hot or cold) or can be taken in capsule form from local Health Food Stores. Next time you’re feeling under the weather, instead of shelling out $120 for a doctor visit and bottle of poison, go to your local plant nursery and buy a few dollars worth of plants or go to the Health Food store.

HERB                            CURES

Anglelica                   Circulatory system

Chamomile                Anti-inflammatory, sleep aid, calms stress

Dandelion                 Any Bacteria in body

Devil’s Claw               Arthritis

Lavender                   Nervous system, pain relief, skin

Lemongrass              Digestive system

Peppermint                All body systems

Sage                         Skin, hair

Self-Heal                   Women health, digestive, throat, skin

Spearmint                 Respiratory, Digestive, winter illnesses

Rosemary                 Great antioxident for all systems

Valerian                    Pain reliever, sedative

Happy healing!!!!

WHERE’S THE BEEF, INDEED

I’m an enthusiastic carnivore, my fellow liberators. But you better believe as far as my meat-eating habits go, I have gotten and will continue to get away from most store-bought beef.

I’m getting back to the old way of things on the farm. Anthing I want to eat, I am raising – from cattle to pigs to chickens. I just don’t trust most of what is on the shelves anymore. I’ve begun living by a motto – GROW YOUR OWN. If you live out in the country, raise your own foods. Even if you live in a city and can’t graise animals in the yard, at least start your own garden. Spend more for organics. Demand healthy, toxic-free foods – whether you are carnivore or herbivore. As long as corporations continue their stranglehold on American agriculture, we the people must be on guard.

Chose your meats wisely

With more and more light cast upon the dark wells of corporate agriculture, I’m continually dumbfounded at much of the practices on American feedlots. Case in point of the feeding cows their own dead brothers, sisters, mamas, and papas, which consequently brought us Mad Cow disease. If the cows are mad, what the hell are we? Distraught? Frantic? Parabolic? Envious? Pious? Or just plain ignorant.

It’s been well documented ‘they’ have been intoxicating packaged beef with carbon monoxide to maintain the red or pink pigment in the meat for weeks longer to save the beef industry $1 billion a year. What is it saving you or I as we gobble down our sirloins that have been sitting at refrigerator temerature for close to one month?

Check out this story from our friends at organicconsumers.org

Until next time, keep the home fire warm and the third eye clean.

WEIRD SCIENCE:
GENETICALLY ENGINEERED CANNIBAL COWS
Experts have long agreed that the fatal brain-wasting disease called Mad Cow is spread by the routine practice on industrial farms of feeding cows to cows—essentially turning natural herbivores into cannibals. (This practice of course is banned on organic farms.) Now a group of industry-friendly scientists have come up with a “solution” to the problem. Instead of discontinuing the practice of force-feeding bovine herbivores blood, manure, and slaughterhouse waste, scientists claim they have successfully genetically engineered a new cow that will not contract Mad Cow Disease, even when fed infected meat from Mad cows. Scientists have genetically engineered the cows to be born without normal nervous system prions, which go awry when an animal catches the disease. According to the researchers, the animals appear to be doing fine, so they apparently don’t really need those prions anyway (even though they are there as a result of millions of years of evolution).
Learn more: http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_3750.cfm

MY GREAT WEST TEXAS ORGANIC ONION QUEST

A health kick in a not-so healthy place

The day began like so many before. I woke up with a general sense of optimism that I’d make the world a better place as I contemplated America’s continuing downfall over a cup of coffee. Yes, today would be the day. I saddled up my War Pony (Dodge Diesel pickup) and my trusty sidekick Angler (Siberian Husky), and we headed north out of town toward the vast brown of barren and chalky cotton fields. This time of the year cotton should be boot-high, but what is up is pinkie-high at best. Pondering the immense disappearing act of the American farmer, I ran out of diesel seven miles away from the farm. Like I said, it was a typical day.

Though I was delayed an hour, we still harvested our sweet onions that windy morning  pulling, cutting, carrying, stacking. Six farmers getting back to the fundamentals of agriculture – sweet onions. Yes, nourishment for the body, pollution for the breath. Our garden was doing well despite the lack of rain, saved only by our southern-engineered irrigation system consisting mainly of duct tape, old hoses, metal tubes, and good ol’ fashioned sweat.

“I don’t think we’re going to run out of onions anytime soon,” our foreman Bill said with a smile. “This is a hell of a lot of onions.”

My Dad drove up, staring at the piles.

“Do you want an onion? We’re almost out,” I laughed as we glared across some two thousand pounds of sweet breath fresheners.

“What are you going to do with all of them?”

Hell, we hadn’t really thought about that.

“Sell ‘em.”

“To whom?” He had a point.

I made a few calls. Okay, I made one call. A friend’s mother ran a cafe in Big Spring. Surely she’d buy some.

Our logic was simple. We would depend on the local masses to purchase and consume our chemical-free goods. It was brilliant. Hooking up a trailer, we stacked a couple hundred pounds in boxes as I prepared for the trip back into town.

“We might oughta get you some more,” Bill said.

“Well, I’ll come back if I had to.” We were all quite optimistic. “I’ll even shave. Statistics say people are seven times more likely to buy onions from a clean-shaven man,” I rubbed my face and tipped my hat, knowing full-well I’d just pulled that statistic out of my ass.

“Do us proud!” Ray screamed. I didn’t know what that meant.

I drove away as Chongo, Adolfo, and George continued cutting the remaining onions and Dad, Bill, and Ray discussed the possibility of rain.

I scream, You scream, We all scream�period

I mean, everybody loves onions, right? I used to think so. My first three stops were all a success. I patted myself on the back for shaving and putting on a clean shirt. Don’s Tire bought 20 pounds, a few at Elrod’s Furniture, and Dell’s Cafe was my first real sales pitch.

“Locally grown, no chemicals, only organic fertilizer.” That should be enough, right.

“How much do you want for them?”

“A dollar twenty-five a pound.”

“Well,” the cafe owner wrinkled her nose. “I’ll take some, but I can get a 50 pound bag at Wal-Mart for 15 dollars.”

“Yeah, and do you know where those onions come from?”

“No.”

“South America.” No response.

“And do you know what they do to them there?”

“No.”

“Exactly. They don’t have the same rules for chemicals there. We use no chemicals – nothing. Only organic fertilizer, and its grown right here.”

I didn’t bother to get into the facts of South American countries using human feces as fertilizer. After all, she was finishing up their lunch rush.

“I’ll take that box right there.” She was still hesitant.

After leaving, I called back.

“Okay, 75 cents a pound, and the overwhelming sense of peace that you’re not supporting terrorists when you buy your onions.”

“Okay,” she laughed, but it was a done deal. “I’ll call you next week.”

Yes, play toward their obligatory patriotism. If it worked for President Bush and all those other idiots, it was bound to work for a young farmer.

I was not so fortunate at the next restaurants.

“We’re not on that health kick here,” one owner told me.

“No, we get ours from Cysco foods.”

“That just doesn’t make sense to pay that much for onions.”

“No, we’re not interested.”

“We can’t afford that.”

“The prices are better at Wal-Mart.”

Damn Wal-Mart and their low, low prices! A couple owners even sent their children to deal with me. It’s awfully humbling to be told by a 16-year-old girl, “I really don’t think we’re interested” in my onions…even if she is gorgeous. Fortunately, I had two and half months experience of selling heath insurance to fall back on. My skin was plenty thick. The word no only made me stronger.

I ate another onion for courage. And one for spite. Get to the point! My friends, I’ve told you this rather lengthy, somewhat painful story because a truth was confirmed by the majority of what I really knew all along – people just don’t care. Most people just don’t give a flying rip what they buy, where it comes from, who grew it, who profits from it, and who is left out in the cold. Most Americans want the cheapest thing they can get…and that includes food. And gee, I wonder why the American farmer is having such a hard time competing. Is anybody paying attention to agriculture? To the foods you put into your bodies? To where anything originates from? It doesn’t matter to most if it is laced with toxic chemicals, human feces, or pixie dust. It doesn’t matter if it came from four thousand miles away across countless borders. It doesn’t matter if it was slave labor. It doesn’t matter if it was from a country that hates America. It doesn’t matter that American farmers are dropping like flies. Nothing matters to the American consumer. Does it to you?

More than 65 percent of our food in America comes from across the border. Do you know which country? Do you have any idea what they put on their crops? Evidently, you don’t even question it as long as you can see it and buy it…cheaply.

Studies show our bodies are not nourished because foods lack the proper nutrients due to improper farming techniques. We rob the soil of its minerals and put nothing back in its place. It might look like an onion, it might smell and taste like an onion, but what’s really going into your body? The illusion of an onion. That’s what.

It’s sad most Americans have no clue what they put into their bodies, yet they’re willing to go on a diet concocted by some quack who told you to not eat any bread or carbohydrates so you’ll look skinny. That same quack died of heart disease. That takes real recognition, that takes extreme study on our behalf as a mammal. We consider ourselves the superior species yet do nothing to evolve. It doesn’t matter that American health and fitness continues to decline.

From 2000 through 2004, the World Health Organization gathered information about obesity in 36 different countries. Among this sample, 29 countries had less of an issue than the United States, including New Zealand, Mexico, Finland, Israel, Canada, Australia, Ireland, Peru, Sweden, Belgium and Brazil. Hello-oooo-o! Mexico is healthier than us? I mean this is the same country whose diet consists of beans, lard, and pig heads. I love all that stuff, too, but Jesus. Let’s keep going, shall we? (I’m almost scared to do so, but yes I will continue.)

Today, 28 countries have healthy life expectancies that exceed the United States, including the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, France, Germany and Japan. Yikes! The numbers and statistics blow me away. The more I find out, the more I am outraged. Does anyone get it? Does anyone care? I’m a knockin’. Will you let me in? Or is the illusion too thick? The lie too big?

I realize Big Spring, West Texas, USA, is hardly the fitness or nutrition mecca of the southwest, but come on now. Educate yourselves. Enlighten yourselves. Prop open your eyes and minds. Squeegee your third eye. Find the pulse of common sense. Stop, look, and stare through all the smokescreens and mirrors, all the bullshit and misconceptions, every last illusion. Shed the scaly skin around your eyes and soul. Wiggle free from that mindless trance of the majority, the dubious march to the sound of static. Ask questions. Demand answers. Take care of your body, mind, and soul. Take care of the American farmer. If you don’t, nobody else will, and sooner than later we’ll be gone. Will you miss us? Will you notice? I doubt it, unless not only cheap food but all food disappears from Wal-Mart’s low, low-priced shelves.

(Thanks to everybody writing in to SOAF. Love the cosmic convo. Tell your friends. Aw heck, even tell the people you can’t stand about this site. Lots a more goodies to talk about. *For those in places where local-grown organics are not available and would love to do something, including learning more about feedin’ yourself wisely, take a look at www.willitseconomiclocalization.org and check out some of their programs, research, and what-not. See ya’ll later on along the horizon.)��

WHAT’S EATIN’ YA?

Whatcha eatin’ lately? Hmmmm? After all, you are what you eat.
Most people have no clue what they’re putting into their bodies when they buy food at the local grocery store or Wal-Mart. Aren’t you a tad curious with what’s going on with our food supply in this country? Is there one? Don’t you care about how it effects your bodies, minds, and lives? If you do, good. If you are aware, inform those around you who are not.