Month: April 2018

The Grass IS Greener!

OK! You have heard the saying “The grass is greener on the other side.”, and usually when we say that, we are alluding to the truth that often we think the grass is greener on the other side but when we get there, we find it is the same grass that we had before, but it just looked greener!  Well, I am afraid that Oreo discovered that at least at this point in our spring, the grass definitely was greener on the other side!

Of course, we were thirty minutes away at Micah’s ballgame when I realized I had missed a call from our sweet neighbor, so I immediately returned her call. She informed me that Oreo, our 7 1/2 month old steer had escaped our pasture and was happily grazing on the growing grass in theirs.

Immediately, Jeff packed up his chair and headed home. In the meantime, I called Noah to see if he knew of anyone who had experience with cattle who could help until Jeff got there. Then, I tried to get ahold of the farmer I bought our cows from and couldn’t reach him. I then made a plea on Facebook and texted a couple of people. Then Noah, who was still at work, called back and said he didn’t know anyone else but was headed over. Now this is a big deal to me because he hasn’t had much experience with our cattle because he moved out before we had more cattle than just the two mamas. This was such an act of love!

In the meantime, our sweet neighbor, Susie, was sitting at the back of her house keeping an eye on Oreo.  She was concerned he might realize he was FREE for the first time in his life and head toward the road, but thankfully, he kept his head down most of the time devouring the new grass.

Noah assessed the situation, and made the smart decision to move our truck into a position to block the escape hatch so Caramel and Truffle couldn’t get out and then he had a talk with Oreo! He said Oreo didn’t like what he had to say!

Shortly after this, Jeff arrived, and even with the two of them working together, Oreo didn’t want to cooperate. He didn’t want to leave the lush grass for the dry patch of ground he has been confined to as we allow the pasture to grow. Looking at it from his perspective, who can blame him?  Choice: dry hay or lush green spring grass!  Thankfully, they worked together and eventually Jeff was able to get the lead rope on him and lead him back through the break in the fence.

I am so thankful that our neighbor was home and cared enough to call us! I am so thankful that Noah headed over and did what he could to minimize the danger or we could have had three ornery beasts devouring the neighbor’s pasture. And to top it all off, I am so thankful that while all of this was going on, Micah had a great game of baseball and his team beat a D-1 school team!

Exciting Announcement about Upcoming Guest Post

I am very pleased to let you know of an upcoming guest post by Dr. Keith Lewis of Healthy Life Doctors in Upper Arlington. I have asked Dr. Lewis, who many of you will remember is the one responsible for me being able to keep my gall bladder when my symptoms were misdiagnosed by my family practitioner, to write about the effects of eating refined sugar on our bodies. He is so very knowledgable and I am eager to be able to share with you what he knows about this important topic.  So be watching!

http://www.healthylifedoctors.com

 

For the Love of the Game

For a girl who begrudgingly endured baseball games (one right after the other) as I was watching next to my dad or grandpa, it sometimes amazes me how much I love baseball.  I used to think it was just some grown men, batting around a small white ball and running around the bases, but now after being married since the new millenia to a baseball fanatic (aka enthusiast) and now raising my favorite baseball player, who from very young had an understanding of the strategy of the game far beyond his years (me: what? there is a strategy to batting that little ball around the green grass?), I have grown  into a somewhat aware fan.

When our youngest son was little, I remember standing in the check-out line at Aldi with him and his big brother. He, of course, had Cleveland Indians garb on and someone commented on it.  His response was something like “if you don’t like the Indians, you can’t live in our house!”  Oh my!  I suspect he was more right than I was willing to admit that day!

So, spring not only brings the excitement of the Indians’ new season, it brings the joy of watching my favorite player play ball.  He has come a long way from the little guy who used to set up a baseball diamond in the living room in front of the television and duplicate and emulate what he saw the Indians doing, including pitching, batting and running the bases! This is the boy who at two-and-a-half years of age played t-ball at the “Y” in town and was disappointed when he learned that there were no balls and strikes and that they had set up little  individual  diamonds on each base so that the coaches could teach the game on small scale to the other kids.  He was trying to turn double plays when there weren’t even any outs. It was an outrage to him that everyone got to bat every inning whether or not we had exceeded three outs.

So fast forward through 14 years of recreational baseball teams, coaches and games to one and-a half  years ago when at the end of the rec league scheduled games he said he needed and wanted to play more baseball games. So we did some investigating and he started last year playing for the local high school. It was just what he needed, even though it wore him out.  After homeschooling for so long, I wasn’t prepared for being on someone else’s schedule and it was a tough adjustment but so worth the sacrifices as I watched him thrive under better training and the love of playing more games.

Now we are halfway through the schedule for high school baseball and it is going too fast.  He has improved so much in strength and skill.  Watching this young man play what he loves is so thrilling. So, our lives revolve around the schedule of games dictated by coaches we know and those we don’t know, by the weather – both spring and winter like it’s been this year, and it is so worth it.  I absolutely LOVE watching him do what he loves and what he seems to have a real talent for doing.

 

It’s hard to believe that in another short three weeks, he will have another high school baseball season under his belt and he will be heading to play with his friends on the rec league where he admits there is less pressure. I am well aware that there won’t be very many more seasons before this part of the journey is over and I admit that I dread it.  What fun it is watching your child thrive at something they excel at doing. So, as crazy as it is, I am hanging on for the ride!  So, see you at the ball park, whether local or Columbus Clippers or Cleveland Indians.  It’s for the love of the game!

 

Spring has finally sprung…

…and with it comes a somewhat easier time for this “Jersey girl” to do what needs to be done:  trips to the barn to milk, trying to dress warmly enough so that I’m not frozen by the time I get back into the house, breaking up ice in the outside water troughs (thankfully my very helpful son does that most of the time), and more. Walking to the barn is a pleasure instead of a race to get out of the winter wind.

However, there are some real dangers for my cows as spring emerges from the frozen tundra. The most glaring danger is a condition called “grass tetany”, from which cows can die! I first became aware of spring dangers, when Mocha’s sister, Coco, after being out in the spring grass just for a few hours on spring afternoon, was found deceased the next morning when her farmer went out to milk her. Grass tetany,  also sometimes called “grass staggers” or hypomagnesemia”, a metabolic disorder of cattle related to a deficiency of magnesium. It usually occurs when animals are grazing lush pastures in the spring, but it can occur during the fall and winter as well. The rapidly growing, lush grasses create the greatest problem after cool, cloudy and rainy weather is followed by a warm period.

Another danger is “pasture bloat” which is a digestive disorder caused by an accumulation of gas in the first two compartments of a ruminant’s stomach. Production of gas is a normal result of rumen fermentation and these gases are normally discharged by belching, but if the animal’s ability to release these gases is impaired in some way, pressure builds in the reticulum and rumen and bloat occurs. Pasture or “frothy” bloat, results from the production of a stable foam and if not relieved, the pressure created by the unreleased rumen fermented gas in the foam can lead to death by suffocation in as little as one hour or less, but there can be a lag of 24-48 hours before bloating occurs in cattle that have been placed on a bloat-producing pasture for the first time.Bloat can occur on any lush forage that is low in fiber but is most common on immature legume pastures.

There are some ways I try to guard against these dangers.  First, we introduce the cows to the spring grasses gradually, beginning with just 30 minutes to an hour at a time.  They are typically not happy about their pasture time being cut so short, especially after the long winter, but it is important to me to protect them if I can. After a few days on the pasture for this length of time, we gradually increase their exposure to the new grasses. After a few weeks, they can be in the pasture full-time.

There are several other ways that I try to protect them from these dangers. One way is to make sure they are not hungry when they are turned out to pasture.  If they have full bellies, they will not be as likely to gorge themselves on the delicious new grasses. I also wait until after the morning frost has dissipated and dried and I do not turn them out after a rain until the grasses have dried.

Another thing that we must protect our cows from, even in spring weather is heat stroke.  Cattle have high body temperatures, especially dairy cows as their bodies are extremely efficient machines for producing milk. They could have adverse reactions to warm weather, even to the potential of having a heat stroke in 70 degree weather.  Making sure they have shelter and plenty of fresh water is vital to their well-being.

If you have followed my blog for very long, you realize that our cattle are more than just “milk machines” to me. They are animals that I truly love and enjoy. I want to make sure I am doing everything I can to take the best care of them possible and that can mean protecting them from something that they love when they can’t understand the dangers.

NOTE: Thank you to Ron Lemenager, Allen Bridges, Matt Claeys and neither Johnson at Purdue University Departments of Animal Sciences and Agronomy for the precise descriptions of these conditions of which cattle farmers need to be aware.

Sugar, Ah, Honey, Honey

I love to cook and bake!  I guess I always have.  However, when I developed the digestive issues that prompted me to give up all grains and refined sugars (see my post on my history), I had to learn a new way to cook and bake which included eliminating ingredients that were inflammatory and processed with ingredients that were harmful to my healing. The first of these ingredients I will deal with is refined sugars.

Even though I don’t normally have a “sweet tooth”, giving up refined sugar was difficult for the baker and the mom in me.  If you are unsure how much sugar you and your family intake, just take a walk through the grocery store and read the labels of your “go-to” processed food items.

Let’s start with breakfast cereals. Check out the sugar content on processed breakfast cereals and let’s start with a one-cup serving of Special K Cereal, the cereal that many people eat if they are trying to lose weight. Special K has 4 grams of sugar per one cup of cereal.  Four grams is approximately equal to one teaspoon.   Now let’s compare a “kid” cereal.  Trix has 12 grams of sugar per one cup serving. That is equal to three teaspoons of sugar.

Now let’s look at an old classic cereal: Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes. Let’s also consider the difference between a serving (3/4 cup as listed on the box) as opposed to a bowl of cereal.  If the man in your house eats a bowl of cereal like my husband does (when I have it in the house), he is eating far more than a one-cup serving; maybe more than double, depending on the size of the bowl.  One serving of the Frosted Flakes has 10 grams of refined sugar…that doesn’t sound bad until you figure out that a bowl is more than double that serving amount. If your bowl is perhaps 75 grams, that puts the sugar intake up to 25 grams per bowl and that 25 grams equals more than six teaspoons of sugar.

Ok, so let’s say you just “grab a bar” on  your way out the door.  A Nutrigrain Cereal Bar (sounds healthy, right?) has 13 grams of sugar, more than three teaspoons.  If you start adding up the sugar you are consuming just from processed foods and then add it to the sugar you add to your foods, you will start to see why some studies estimate that the average American consumes approximately  19.5 teaspoons (82 grams) of sugar each day which translates into about 66 pounds of added sugar each year, per person!

Reading the labels and educating yourself about what is in the processed foods you buy is the first step to lessening the sugar in your diet.  You will also need to educate yourself on the many aliases that sugar goes by: dextrose, fructose, dextrin, fructose, glucose, high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), lactose, maltose, maltodextrin, mall, mannose, panocha, and many more.  As you begin the process of reading labels, you will be surprised how many of your staple items contain sugar: ketchup, pickles, pasta and other meat sauces, mayonnaise, and salad dressings, just to name a few.

Now, I do not have a medical degree, so feel free to do your own research and draw your own conclusions.  However, I found that from the day I stopped eating refined sugar, it took my body about two weeks to get through what seemed like a “detox” period and for the sugar cravings to stop.  I discovered that once I was past that time period, food began to taste different…better.  I did not crave sweets and foods tasted sweeter to me without sweetener and typically “sweet” foods were too sweet for me. I also had more energy and definitely fewer “highs and lows”.

natural sweeteners of choice

That was 2013, and to this day, I do not eat refined sugar. Occasionally, someone will beg me to “taste” something…and if I do, I wish I hadn’t. My sweeteners of choice are natural and/or organic maple syrup (NOT pancake syrup), local raw honey (I use it sparingly,  mostly just in my cup of green tea in the morning, because although it IS natural and has many wonderfully healing properties, it does have a high glycemic index), organic stevia powder (use sparingly due to extremely sweet taste) and organic coconut sugar (I use this in place of brown sugar in baking).

Hope you have found this post thought-provoking as well as helpful as your journey to a healthier you!  Till next time, when I talk about flour: the good, the bad and the choices you have.

 

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