Chicks-Day 11

Quick summary of our first week with the chicks:

1. We didn't read the instructions correctly on the "chick starter" and added way too much to the water! (You try reducing this fraction: 4oz/55 gallons!) Yeah....we know now, it's less than 1/2 t. per gallon!) We're not sure, but this may be why we lost 8 out of 56 chicks in the first 48 hours!

2. Had to travel to Lincoln to find chick feed without antibiotics. Can't get "organic" feed shipped in until March 11th!

3. Gracie and Gemma have done a fantastic job of keeping the area clean and providing fresh water and food every day.

4. The kids convinced me to buy 16 more chicks to replace the 8 that died. Not sure how that math works out but we now have a total of 64 chickens.

5. The kids have spent hours just sitting and watching the chicks. I sneak down there every now and then too and must admit, it is very relaxing.

6. We've had lots of visitors to see the chicks but they are growing fast so if you want to get a glimpse before they get ugly, come soon!

7. Overall things have gone very smoothly so far but the chicks will be able to fly over their 12 inch containment wall in just a fews days, so it's time to build the taller cardboard walls!

Seems like their little wings sprouted overnight!

That's "Longshot" on the right. She's one of the new girls.

She's a smaller breed of chicken but the kids fell in love with her.

Don't write her off just yet. These chicks were trying to intimidate her.....

....but Longshot stood tall and backed them up!

The Chicken Adventure Begins!

After nearly 10 years of buying eggs directly from farmers who raise all natural, free range, pastured laying hens in mobile chicken coops, we've decided to try it for ourselves! Not because we want to become farmers, but because we want to give our children an opportunity to own their own small business, learn responsiblity that comes from caring for the animals and to teach them the connection between our soil, the animals and our health. We are excited to raise these laying hens with no antibiotics and no hormones in the most natural environment we can possibly offer them. If you've never tasted an egg from this kind of chicken, get in touch with us in July! You're in for a real treat!

We will brood the chicks in our basement (then garage) until construction on our new mobile coop is complete and it becomes warm enough to move them outside. The mobile coop is being built on a flatbed trailer which we will move around Grandma and Grandpa's farm every week with a 4 wheeler. It will look something like this (ours will be a little cuter of course!):

To see all the photos from our morning click HERE!

With chicks on the way, the children were very eager to get started on the brooder pen!

Gracie, in her jammies, is speading wood chips over the plastic.

We got a call at 6:30am this morning from the post office to inform us that our 50 baby chicks had arrived by mail from the hatchery. I don't know if the children were this excited on Christmas morning! We piled into the van and headed straight over to pick them up! I warned the kids that one or two might not have survived the trip but they were all in excellent condition.

At the back door of the post office.

Our friendly US postal worker presents the chicks to the kids!

The adventure officially begins!

We can't believe there are 50 chicks in that little box!

Ready!!

Get set!

Open!! All 50 have made it safely!

Six different breeds and 3 different roosters. Should be a colorful bunch!

It's so hard not to handle them but they are very fragile this first day.

And so the chores begin!!

Kids are little late to school but chicks are happy and the principal says they had a "GREAT" excuse!

Is the tide turning in favor of saturated fat?

Is the tide turning in favor of saturated fat?

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Do Cold Temperatures Improve Sleep?

I guess my husband is going to win the battle over our night time temperature settings. Also, while I love my window candles, step lighting and Christmas night lights.....I think we are going to need to turn things off at night! :<( Do Cold Temperatures Improve Sleep?

So What Is The Weston A. Price Foundation Anyway?

This is great summary of what the Weston A. Price Foundation (of which we've been members for almost 9 years) is all about! You may find this hard to believe but it has NOTHING to do with a home-based business and there is no "product" for sale!

Six Minutes of the Price-Pottenger Story

Vitamin D Results

We just had all our Vitamin D Levels checked and unfortunately, based on the latest research, we are all too low! We ordered the test through http://www.lef.org/ and had our blood drawn at LabCor. Since we have such high health insurance deductibles, it was cheaper for me to pay the $47 to LEF than to have the test done through our doctor's office! Although I still plan to go over these results with our Dr. and give her a copy for our medical records. Your doctor should be able to recommend how much D3 to take on a daily basis to get your blood serum levels into the optimal range. If they can't, I encourage you to research this yourself because the information is easily accessible!

The Vitamin D Council recommends maintaining a blood serum level of 50-80 ng/ml and Dr. Joe Mercola recommends maintaining levels between 50-65 ng/ml for optimal health in ALL AGES. Both of these sites give very specific dosage guidelines. These are two sources I trust but again, I encourage you to do your own research!

My level was 32.7. Down from 38 on 6/5 of this year!
Gracie 43.2
Gemma 38.1
Luke 29
Marshall 29.9
Scott is having his bloodwork done next week.

Now that we know our levels, we can increase our supplementation of Vitamin D3 for the next 2-3 months, at which time we will have levels re-checked. We had already begun supplementing with D3 about a month before having this test so I would hate to see what our levels were before!

So what's the big deal about Vitamin D anyway?? Well people think of the most common risk of Vit. D deficiency as being soft bones or rickets in children, but research is linking low blood serum levels of vitamin D to a whole lot more! Osteoporosis, muscle weakness, fractures, common cancers, autoimmune disease, cardiovascular disease, depression, childhood asthma and eczema, frequent colds, flu and respiratory infections, multiple sclerosis, diabetes and more.......all now being linked to low levels of Vit. D.

With my history of asthma and allergies and poor immune function I have taken a special interest in this topic; not just for my health, but for the sake of my family's health. Scott was the only one in our family not supplementing with vitamin D when he recently came down with a terrible case of the flu. Although he didn't get checked for H1N1, it was possibly the sickest I've ever seen him. I was more than braced for the worst but after more than two weeks have passed and no one else in our family has come down with the flu, I can't help but wonder if the vitamin D has something to do with it!? I will continue to blog about this as we progress through the winter.

Vitamin D-More Important Info

Some of you may be tired of hearing me "preach" about Vitamin D but after reading this article this morning, I realized that not only do I need to pass along the information, I need to get busy increasing the levels of my own family's Vitamin D levels. We simply aren't taking enough! Please take the time to read the ENTIRE article HERE. It could make a huge difference in your family's health this winter!
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/10/10/Vitamin-D-Experts-Reveal-the-Truth.aspx

Wondering how you could ever get this much Vitamin D into your body?? You can find a link to the very inexpensive, high dose, liquid Vitamin D3 product we use HERE.

If you have your blood tested and find you are seriously deficient, you may want an even higher dose product which you can find HERE.

Swine Flu is NOT the Problem -- It is the Vaccine that May Harm or Kill You

As the hype begins to escalate....please be aware that there is another side to this issue. Don't get sucked in by the hype!!
Swine Flu is NOT the Problem -- It is the Vaccine that May Harm or Kill You

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Buy Fresh Buy Local In Nebraska

Got "Raw" Milk?

With the recent release of the movie Food Inc., I'm feeling good about our efforts to consume locally produced, fresh, unprocessed foods. Many of you already know that our family consumes fresh, unpasteurized milk straight from cows raised on organic pastures and fed their natural diet of green grass. We've been drinking this type of milk for about 8 years after being introduced to its health benefits by the Weston A. Price Foundation. In fact, all of our children were weaned from the breast straight on to raw cow's milk shortly after their first birthdays!

This might sound crazy to some of you and that's understandable because most people are not aware of the fact that there are two types of raw milk produced by farmers. One type is "raw milk intended for pasteurization" and those cows are normally found in larger numbers in confinement dairies and rarely have access to fresh green pastures. The animals are given antibiotics and hormones and live a short and stressful life being pushed to produce as much milk as they possibly can. Their milk is collected by a milk processor and taken to a pasteurization plant where it is cooked to very high temperatures (which is absolutely necessary to make it "safe") before being bottled and delivered to your grocery store shelf.

The problem raw milk advocates have with pasteurization and ultra pasteurization is that cooking milk to such high temperatures kills off not only the bad bacteria which may or may not be present, but it also kills off the beneficial bacteria, protein and enzymes. There is also a lot of controversy over just how many vitamins and minerals are destroyed by pasteurization but the very fact they they have to "add back" to the milk ("vit. D enriched") should tell you something.

The type of milk we drink is "raw milk intended for human consumption." This type of milk is carefully collected from cows consuming their natural diet of green grass, grazing freely on organic pastures, never given any sort of antibiotic or hormone, and enjoying a stress-free, long life, often only being milked once a day. Grass-fed cows are also much less likely to contain harmful pathogens in their gut compared to grain-fed cows. A Google search on "grain-fed cows and e coli" will reveal solid science on how the corn-based diet acidifies the cow’s digestive tract. Under normal circumstances E. coli O157:H7 is killed by stomach acids. But the increased acidity in the cow’s stomach allows for the more acid resistant E. coli bacteria to survive and thrive. When these acid resistant E. coli enter the food supply, it is especially dangerous because a person’s primary defense against E. coli, stomach acid, is now useless.

After thoroughly researching the safety and health benefits of fresh, unprocessed, unadulterated milk, we decided this type of milk was clearly the better choice for our family. The next step was to identify a "safe" raw milk producer. Using criteria provided by the Weston A. Price Foundation and Raw USA Standards, we set out to find safe, raw milk in Nebraska!  RealMilk.com has a listing of raw milk producers in our area and we choose to buy milk from the Branched Oak Farm in Raymond.

Lessons On Real Food From 100 Years Ago

Lessons On Real Food From 100 Years Ago

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"Suicide By Sugar"

I would like to highly recommend the book "Suicide by Sugar"
– A Startling Look at Our #1 National Addiction
Nancy Appleton, PhD &amp;amp; G. N. Jacobs

Sugar may be worse for kids than it is for adults because kids react so strongly and with much wilder swings of body chemistry. The immune system is still developing the acquired immunity to fight off infections, and the digestive system must learn to handle the variety of foods in our diet. A child's body is learning and working continually, and sugar just causes it to work harder. These body chemistry changes not only cause physical ailments, such as allergies and asthma, but have also, in many studies put children on a roller coaster of emotional effects that include hyperactivity, aggressiveness, sadness, low self-esteem, mania, sleeplessness, and many more.

Suicide by Sugar – A Startling Look at Our #1 National Addiction
Nancy Appleton, PhD &amp;amp; G. N. Jacobs

It is a dangerous, addictive white powder that can be found in abundance throughout this country. It is not illegal. In fact, it is available in or near playgrounds, schools, workplaces, homes, and vacation spots. It is in practically everything we eat and drink, and once we’re hooked on it, the cravings can be overwhelming. This white substance of abuse is sugar. Once associated only with cavities and simple weight gain, it is now linked to a host of devastating health conditions including cancer, epilepsy, dementia, hypoglycemia, obesity, and more. In this book, sugar addiction expert Dr. Nancy Appleton and health writer G. N. Jacobs not only expose the exorbitant levels of sugar we ingest, but also document the connection between our current health crisis and our sweet tooth.

Suicide by Sugar begins with the story of Dr. Appleton’s battle with her own sugar addiction. Next, the authors examine all the frightening (and unknown) things that can go wrong when people consume too much sugar—from increased susceptibility to disease to imbalanced body chemistry. They go on to discuss the various ways scientists measure sugar’s impact on blood glucose, and explain why these statistics cannot be solely relied on when choosing foods. The authors provide shocking information about the amount of sugar found in many popular foods and beverages, and an in-depth discussion of the ailments now associated with excessive sugar consumption. Finally, Dr. Appleton’s easy-to-follow, effective lifestyle plan—complete with recipes—guides you in eliminating sugar from your life.

As children, we fall under the spell of ads that lure us to indulge in all things sweet. Is it any wonder that as adults so few of us can see the dark side of sugar? Suicide by Sugar shines a bright light on our nation’s addiction and helps us begin the journey toward health.

School Lunch Trends-SNA Food Show

Our Blog : 07/07/09 - Tray Trends: Bubble-Gum-Flavored Apples, and Other Sights at the SNA Food Show : Slow Food USA

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Chipotle's Fast Food Facelift

Most people think McDonald's owns Chipotle but they were just an investor for the first seven years. McDonald's sold out their shares in 2006. Good riddens! GO CHIPOTLE!! Check out this video for some great reasons to make Chipotle your next "no guilt" fast food stop!

Chipotle's Fast Food Facelift

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Food Inc.-The Movie Starts Today!

Synopsis
In Food, Inc., filmmaker Robert Kenner lifts the veil on our nation's food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that's been hidden from the American consumer with the consent of our government's regulatory agencies, USDA and FDA. Our nation's food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment. We have bigger-breasted chickens, the perfect pork chop, insecticide-resistant soybean seeds, even tomatoes that won't go bad, but we also have new strains of e coli--the harmful bacteria that causes illness for an estimated 73,000 Americans annually. We are riddled with widespread obesity, particularly among children, and an epidemic level of diabetes among adults.Featuring interviews with such experts as Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation), Michael Pollan (The Omnivore's Dilemma) along with forward thinking social entrepreneurs like Stonyfield Farm's Gary Hirshberg and Polyface Farms' Joe Salatin, Food, Inc. reveals surprising -- and often shocking truths -- about what we eat, how it's produced, who we have become as a nation and where we are going from here.

Coming Soon to a Theatre Near You

For show listings in your area click HERE.

The Movie You Need to See this Year

The Movie You Need to See this Year

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The Future of Food -- You NEED to Watch This Video!!!

The Future of Food -- You NEED to Watch This Video!!!

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Do You Really Know Where Your Food Comes From?

Do You Really Know Where Your Food Comes From?

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Swine Flu

Before you panic, please read this article about the Swine Flu:http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/04/29/Swine-Flu.aspx

Just as a point of reference this is from the CDC: Each flu season is unique, but it is estimated that, on average, approximately 5% to 20% of U.S. residents get the flu, and more than 200,000 persons are hospitalized for flu-related complications each year. About 36,000 Americans die on average per year from the complications of flu.

"40 million Americans signed up for vaccination in 1976 after a hysterical advertising campaign. The final US death toll from swine flu? One. The number of people killed or seriously injured by the inoculation? Several hundred..." TG Daily.
http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/42246/181/

Another example of the media creating hysteria so the red carpet can roll out for big pharma to create a new vaccine!!!