A few choice quotes from Juliette de Bairacli Levy who did not mince words about her views on modern medicine.
This excerpt is from 1952! It’s astounding to me that it’s only gotten worse in the last 70 years. They keep doubling-down, and the public keeps buying it up.
“The present-day farmer has been educated to consider disease as inevitable and the only scientific cure as being in the artificial remedies of the modern veterinary surgeon who through over-rigid orthodox training and himself under the influence of advertisement, is too often a mere vendor of the products of the vast and powerful chemical and serum manufacturers. For the vested interests in modern medicine are stupendous. Businessmen who have never owned an animal fatten like breeding toads upon the ailments of farm stock which need not know sickness at all if they had daily access to the herbs of the fields. The true farmer should cultivate his own medicines in his own fields, and he should not consider himself as being a farmer if he has to resort to outside help for keeping his animals in health, and healing them when in sickness. Science is providing the ruination of true farming; the only thing that I, and countless others, have noted as flourishing alongside science, is disease!—disease of the earth, disease of crops and disease of the animal and people who feed on the diseased produce.”
“Professor Szekely had declared emphatically, that the curing of the ailments of his patients is often a simple task in comparison with the freeing of their bodies from the accumulations of chemical drugs lodged in their tissues — the drugs derived from orthodox medical chemo-therapy, and from the poisons sprayed upon fruits and vegetables by the modern farmer, or placed in tinned and bottled foods as preservatives. Many of his patients are Americans, and in present-day America the chemist seems to be running amok, spraying and poisoning everything edible.” ~Juliette de Bairacli Levy, 1952, The Complete Herbal Handbook For Farm And Stable
The influence of advertisement, you say? Naw, can’t be that!
I’ve been doing lots of research concerning the goats and so appreciate the kind help and suggestions from others.
It really is a quandary just like I went through with the bees. Treatment-free types are the anti-Vaxxers of the animal husbandry world, getting similar treatment from the established voices—that is cursed, mocked, belittled and silenced.
And that’s not the worse part, not for me anyway.
It’s far worse not being able to find honest, untainted information. The goat world, like the bee world, is dominated by the industry standards, which has penetrated into every conceivable space of our reality.
In the U.S. that means public-private partnerships that wholly infiltrate the information and therefor the society through the university system and popular organizations like the 4-H club.
Many of our best and brightest agriculture enthusiasts start very young, showing animals and winning awards based on criteria that then get distributed into general farming life. Very little attention is paid to the actual results of this process, not even the simple stuff—like considering whether purebreds are really the best option when stellar looks and trainability aren’t the owners’ top priorities.
Which got me thinking . . .
Might we make an analogy that it’s kinda like ZaZa Gabor playing a starring role in a film like Deliverance?
In other words, are we trying to raise the equivalent of thousand dollar racehorses in two-bit barns? Is that the problem? Or part of it?
“I get allergic smelling hay! I just adore a penthouse view, darlin’ I love ya, but give me Park Avenue!”
My goats hate the rain (makes for a bad hair day?), and would prefer all their meals to be served to them promptly, 3 meals plus snacks, in their communal space (breakfast in bed), with minimal foraging required (just enough to stretch their legs and ease any boredom) plus they need regular brushing (all natural boars hair brush) and their hooves trimmed (mani-pedi), and routine expensive toxic treatments (Botox).
We get frustrated, obviously, but whose fault is it really?
When I got into this I went for the most popular and trusted source who was calling her style ‘natural’.
That’s for me, I want natural!
The most popular ‘natural’ goat rearing book on the market and she has a YT channel.
I’m not saying this is a bad book, I’ve certainly learned a lot from it, but knowing what I know now, I don’t call it ‘natural’ anymore.
These farmers and breeders may be on the path less traveled, but they are most certainly not off the Big Pharma Ferris wheel. And personally, I find that poor word choice to be deceptive.
For example, they advise breeders to cull rather than to risk populating the community of farmers/homesteaders with genetically inferior animals, which sounds like the wise and conscientious choice to make. Right?
Clearly a diligent and conscientious goat farmer/breeder concerned about good health in humans and animals, yet still considering the most natural methods as including enormous amounts of processed inputs and Big Pharma treatments.
However, they’re advising culling the animals which are not responding to the poisoning protocol, not only the ones who are truly resistant to the parasites. And as for true resistance, could they really know which ones, since they’ve been dosed at birth through the milk or, even more likely, in utero?
Yes, the ‘natural’ methods they espouse still include dosing the goats with drugs, just not so indiscriminately, which they at least recognize has caused a huge issue of drug-resistance in the goat-rearing community. They still rely on highly processed feed, hay that’s been sprayed, and they recommend medicated feed for kids. Many of them also advise vaccination.
This is what passes for ‘natural’ now.
So, for the barber pole worm, the notorious sheep/goat killer, which was the most likely culprit in Bluebonnet’s demise, the issue is said to be that these awful worms cause anemia. But, listed on the side effects of the popular dewormers in use is also anemia.
Hmmm. Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
Ivermectin—the infamous horse dewormer both celebrated and cursed during the Convid—has a shockingly long list of potential side effects. Interestingly, in all the social media arguments back and forth among suggested protocols and what or whom was being censored and why, I don’t recall that list coming up anywhere.
These above-linked articles show studies proving its toxicity, but when it comes to the studies themselves, I don’t have much faith in them either. The kinds of studies I’d like to see are those that are appropriate to their environment, and no one does those kinds of studies. No one in farming is dosing their rabbits every single day with Ivermectin in a lab setting. What we need are multi-generational studies with real control groups in natural settings, as in real nature. Science doesn’t do that, yet somehow we accept they are ‘controlling’ inputs and outcomes, and that those results are remotely relevant to the average user, that is, those of us not living in a lab.
Besides Ivermectin, Safe-guard is another farm favorite in these parts.
The following comment comes from my dear friend Kath, a certified herbalist who was also previously a professional nurse in the UK.
Safe-guard:
“I can’t quite believe how bad this drug is! Taken from this article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9413524/ ‘When fenbendazole was last reviewed (15 years ago), the literature supported the drug’s lack of toxic effects at therapeutic levels, yet various demonstrated physiologic effects have the potential to alter research outcomes. Although more recent reports continue to reflect an overall discordancy of results, several studies support the premise that fenbendazole affects the bone marrow and the immune system.’
‘. . .lengthy and expensive treatment regimens. including the use of fenbendazole and mechanical disinfection, that may fail due to inadequate ovicidal effects.’ (Ie: won’t kill the worm eggs)
So, step one: Kill a few worms. Weaken the animal. Don’t properly kill the worm eggs. Re-emergence of worms when these eggs hatch. Weakened animals can’t fight off new worms. More drugs. Vicious cycle.
So, companies which make & market this drug very conveniently refer to the old research which states no side effects expected & ignore the possibility & reality of new research showing significant risk. Hmm 🤔
Basically use of this drug this means causing ongoing serious depletion in overall resilience & significantly increased susceptibility to further parasite infestation & whatever-it-is that we used to call infections. Worse potential recovery from anything. And all from a drug whose stated purpose may fail!
So, what to do imo is to work to build resilience by nutrition, herbs & healthy living & maybe try to introduce some wild blood when freshening.
I think this drug is an agenda in itself – not only for animals but humans too. Heavily publicised on Google as an amazing off-label cancer cure. I’ve met people who have been persuaded to take it! That’s right – make their own chemo cocktail!
It’s an agenda because I know how heavily ptb come down on any complementary health practitioner making public statements about cancer cure. It’s literally against the law.
And they put it in animal feed too. It’s a very shortsighted & stupid approach.”
Short-sighted, I couldn’t agree more!
Another popular dewormer: Cydectin From Drugs.com
‘Not for use in female dairy cattle 20 months of age or older (including dry dairy cows), veal calves, and calves less than 8 weeks of age.
For Treatment of Infections and Infestations Due to Internal and External Parasites of Cattle.’
Kath: “This ‘who not to give it to’ suggests it’s toxic to humans & cattle/goats – they wouldn’t make a statement about veal calves if it was a safe thing for humans (or animals) to ingest. Funny how they can balance the illogic of ‘don’t give to babies’ & ‘dose babies by mother’s milk’.
The type of nerve receptor that are targeted by this drug are only found in invertebrates – creatures that don’t have a skeleton. So drug companies have jumped to the assumption that it will paralyse (& kill) only parasites/insects. However – & this is important – the target receptor in invertebrates is very similar to the mammalian – human & animal – receptor for glycine – an important neurotransmitter. Chances are that this drug & its family are at least partly responsible for human & animal depletion & neurological problems, perhaps even paralysis, in goats by direct dosing & in humans via eating meat& milk products/drinking milk from dosed animals.”
Seriously! And they have the nerve to call these treatments ‘natural’ and of course, that old reliable, safe and effective!
(Thank you so much Kath for your addition to this post and to Highlander in last post’s comments for your help and advice, I’m very grateful for your efforts and experiences!)
New marketing suggestion for the CDC:
Hey Moms! If your kids get all their shots on schedule, you’ll look just like Za Za!* 😆 *Results may vary. Consult your pediatrician. (Who, by the way, did a hell of a good job dressed as a pig at last year’s luau in Vegas at our promotional conference that counts as continuing education credits and gets billed to the State. Remember Rule #1: What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas!) 😉 1
It’s been a challenging month on the wee homestead. We’ve had some successes and I am still hopeful for more positive outcomes, but I focus on them overly, because I’m being a bit avoidant, because really, I’m still concerned.
The determinate tomatoes are long gone already, but Hubby’s made many delicious jars of puttanesca and salsa for our future enjoyment. Must keep up morale!
So I’ll share about that this post, along with some happy snaps and surpluses, to help the medicine go down. I know it’s part of the lifestyle. Life, that is.
Yes, I’ve gotten better at it. That is, the death part of life. But also, we must understand our own limitations, and for that we must first broach them.
So if there are still any rose-colored glasses sort of readers remaining here, armor up.
Bye, bye Bluebonnet.* (I share more about my observations on her death at the end, for those who choose to go there.)
I’m so sad to say we’ve lost one of our new mamas, and her mama, our herd queen Summer, has also been very ill. Several of the does are too thin and are not producing enough milk. This all happened quite suddenly. I was training them on the milk stand for a month, even getting a bit of milk from one, I had high hopes of daily cheese-making by now.
Summer and her daughter Bluebonnet, who I figured would one day replace her as herd queen.
The learning curve is so very high and I’ve set myself impossible standards. I do understand that, though that understanding changes little.
I want a treatment-free herd, or no herd at all. Like with the bees, which took me years of failures, I simply cannot stand the industry standard. I cannot abide such total reliance on pharmaceuticals and exotic inputs from far-off lands. I cannot trust the science. I refuse to believe the only way to raise healthy pets and livestock is to poison them with vaccines and parasite treatments and feed them full of processed foods.
There has got to be another way! A much better way!
And I aim to find it.
We are not directly poisoning our garden and still have plenty of success despite the manufactured crazy weather.
I truly believe a large part of the problem is the processed foods causing the need for the supplemental treatments. It’s a vicious cycle and I want off, and I want ALL I see around me every day off it also, including the land, the water, and the air and ALL the critters!
Is that so much to ask?!
But I already know the drill, thanks to the bees. Every professional and expert says that’s impossible. Like with the gardening when we first got here. Every farmer, every gardener, every Farm & Ranch professional, repeating—You’ve got to spray. You’ve got to treat.
There’s a swarm up there, can you see it?It came off this hive and we watched it, amazing! The large pine in front of the tractor is where it stopped. Too high up to catch, but I’m happy to report another totally treatment-free colony repopulating the county.
“Here, follow this quarterly poisoning routine, and all will be well.” NO!
Is it any wonder they all readily accept without objection whatever the hell is being sprayed over our heads at regular intervals?
The latest geoengineered filth-filled skies over our property.
We’re not giving up yet. As long as we have irrigation it will be a jungle out there. But without it we’d be screwed, that’s for sure. It hasn’t rained for nearly 3 weeks.
(Photos below Left to Right) The datura is a blessed monster. The sweet potato vines are prolific and a favorite snack of Summer’s. The melons and green beans are thriving. The indeterminate tomatoes and some of the peppers are doing fairly well under the shade cloth and I’ve been succession planting the cucumbers.
From the front: New cucumbers coming up with purslane to help cool the roots and shading from above, old screens protecting some struggling Romaine lettuce, and a growing grove of well-watered elderberries.
We’ve also been lucky to get some wild grapes, which are now fermenting along with the mead and the blackberry and mulberry wines.
He is literally Hubby’s Shadow!
It’s not an easy life, but it’s a life well-lived. Our first figs of the season, along with our last blackberries.
A Czech classic—so simple—Bublanina, made with blackberries or any number of fresh fruits in season. (Comment below if you want the recipe and I’ll post it. )
*The observation which I’ve found most interesting from Bluebonnet’s death, was that her kids adjusted immediately. She died the evening of the full moon last week. She left the corral with the rest of the herd in the morning, she seemed to be improving, I thought. But then in the afternoon she planted herself under a tree on a hill and wouldn’t leave, even when evening came and the rest of the herd returned to the corral. I went and sat with her there at sunset and stroked her neck and she laid her head on my shoulder. I wanted to be hopeful, but I felt she knew, and I felt horribly helpless. I hope that the feeling of helplessness is the worst feeling in the world. The next morning I woke before dawn and I went back to the tree in the dark, the full moon shining on her corpse.
There was a bit of relief for me that her kids adjusted so quickly. I find it odd really, it was like an immediate weaning. While her mama, Summer, is so ill she stopped producing milk, but her kids are still so attached to her their health is also suffering because they won’t go out and eat with the rest of the herd or accept being bottle fed. I’ve been mixing them special feed dosed with milk replacer and they are doing ok, and Summer today joined the herd again to forage, which I’m praying is a good sign. 🙏
“The realization that these diseases declined without the presence of any vaccines is pretty damning in and of itself. However, there is a trick that is regularly utilized in order to create the illusion that the introduction of a vaccine was the reason for any decrease and eventual disappearance of a specific disease and its associated “virus.” This trick is the reclassification and rebranding of the exact same symptoms of disease into many other separate and new diseases. This shuffling of the same symptoms into different categories is another factor, along with better sanitation and nutrition, for a perceived decrease in these diseases. This can be easily demonstrated by looking at both smallpox and polio as, even though these diseases are said to be either “eradicated” or close to it, the same symptoms still persist under various other names. Let’s take a look at both of these situations and see what we can reveal about the magician’s tricks.”
Well worth the read.
What’s the real problem with folks’ health? Hmmmm . . . .
The gorgeous Mimosa tree is considered an undesirable and invasive species by many US experts, if you can believe that!
But to herbalists worldwide it’s a treasure. And to butterflies and bees it’s a feast!
In the ditch, in the garden, or rising above the canopy and full of butterflies, it’s a striking specimen.
Another much maligned and misunderstood plant joins our growing list today. Hard to imagine calling this beauty a ‘trash tree’, but a great many experts call it that, and worse.
The Mimosa tree . . .
“Is another dog. Although beautiful when healthy, it never is. The root system is ravenous and destructive, and the tree is highly vulnerable to insects and disease. Shallow, destructive root system. Not even good for fire wood. Destructive roots, short-lived, crowds out good plants. Not a good tree for Texas,” he resolutely concludes.
Texas Gardening the Natural Way: The Complete Handbook by Howard Garrett “The Dirt Doctor”
Garrett is considered the foremost organic gardening expert in these parts, he has a popular radio show, has published several books and he has his own organic product line. He was the first gardener I learned from when I started gardening here.
And worse, he convinced me! I wanted one from the first moment I gazed upon it, but I resisted, for over a decade.
Luckily in recent years I’ve revisited that poor choice and lazy thinking to discover how wrong these experts can be.
Baby Mimosa growing in the ditch near our house. I dug them up and planted them in our garden. The trick to getting them started is lots of water, but they will become drought tolerant with age. The growth habit is similar to Elderberry in our region.
What a (typical) shame to learn how very wrong they can be! Along with Wikipedia and a great many other popular info hubs.
“In the wild, the tree tends to grow in dry plains, sandy valleys, and uplands. It has become an invasive species in the United States, where it has spread from southern New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, west to Missouri and Illinois, and south to Florida and Texas. It is cultivated in California and Oregon. Its seeds are wind-dispersed and numerous, and they are fertile even over long periods of drought. Each pod, which resembles a flattened bean pod made of paper, holds about 8 seeds on average. The pod bursts in strong winds, and the seeds can carry over surprisingly long distances.”
It is certainly for the ‘mess’ they create with their seed pods that some may not find them suitable for their yard or garden. And naturally, farmers and ranchers malign any plants which dare to interfere with their livestock management preferences.
But, venture away from those slanted sources and the light shines on this ancient medicinal treasure.
Mimosa—The ‘night sleeper’ so nicknamed in Persian thanks to its usefulness as a cure for insomnia, among its many other medicinal and practical uses.
A bit of history: “The stem bark has been used as a sedative for hundreds of years as recorded in the Pharmacopeia of the People’s Republic of China(Nehdi 2011, Zheng 2006, Zheng 2010) and as an anti-inflammatory agent for swelling and pain in the lungs and to treat skin ulcers, wounds, bruises, abscesses, boils, hemorrhoids, and fractures, as well as to remove carbuncles. The dried stem bark is used as a tonic in China and Japan.(Ikeda 1997) Indigenous people living in the southern mountainous region of Korea prepare the root as an infusion for bone diseases.(Kim 2011) In India, a chloroform and methanol seed extract has been used to treat bronchitis, asthma, leprosy, and glands infected by tuberculous.(Gautam 2007) A bark extract to treat insomnia, diuresis, asthenia, and confusion has been used in Asia.(Nehdi 2011) The plant’s flowers have been used to treat symptoms associated with palpitations, anxiety, depression, and insomnia.(Nehdi 2011, Samwald 2010) It’s common name of Shabkhosb (good night’s sleeper) in Iran is indicative of its use to treat insomnia.(Ebrahimzadeh 2017)
Mimosa are used in gardens for ornamental purposes, in sandy areas to prevent erosion, and along roadways.(Chang 2011, Irwin 2003, Nehdi 2011, Pardini 2007)”
A Mimosa tree on a country road in East Texas just after its bloom cycle in late June.
“Albizia belongs to Mimosoideae and are native to Asia and Africa. It is a kind of multifunctional trees and they are always planted as ornamental trees. In addition to using it as foliage, green manure and timber for furniture production, the bark of Albizia is herbal medicine and the seeds are a source of oil. There are about 150 species in the genus and 17 of them can be found in the southern regions of China. Albizia julibrissin and Albizia kalkora are two familiar species, which are planted in China from tropic to temperate zones [69]. Although Albizia spp. are of great importance, little was known about the diversity of their microsymbionts. de Lajudie et al. [15] found that two strains isolated from Albizia falcataria grown in Brazil were Bradyrhizobium; Chen and Chen [5] classified five strains isolated from Albizia julibrissinin China as Bradyrhizobium sp. and Rhizobium sp. These results indicated that Albizia trees nodulated with both fast-growing and slow-growing rhizobia.”
The petals make a delicious and refreshing flavoring for tea or Kombucha— a unique taste reminiscent of nectarines.
Gavin Mounsey, author of Recipes for Reciprocity, recently shared some of his knowledge and links about this amazing tree, which he’s cultivating in his food forest designs all the way up in Canada:
“Another interesting fact about this tree is that it is being investigated for it’s potential in Phytoremediation (for both heavy metal soil remediation and for it’s photocatalytic activity for cleaning up toxins humans put in the air) and a more specialized field in what is called “Phytomining” (it is a nasty industrial process used for profit but it hints at more holistic applications of this species for real time remediating/mitigating of geoengineering heavy metals in the air and soil.” (Read more: Regenerative Agriculture: Solutions Watch at Corbett Report)
The pods are plentiful and can be used for animal feed, according to TCPermaculture.
It’s notable umbrella shape when provided with plenty of space has me wondering if it might be the tree represented on some old gravestones in our area.
Mimosa? Are our ancestors trying to tell us something?
I’ve been working bit by bit on the Herbal Explorationspages and hope to add several more medicinal plants very soon—including the lovely Mimosa tree and the very popular Chasteberry—both which grow wonderfully here, even in the extreme heat and drought.
The mimosa tree and flower, (on the left) rising above the canopy along the road and full of butterflies, which unfortunately were too far up to catch with my camera. In the middle photo a fine specimen from our neighbor’s garden, where I gathered some blossoms for kombucha. They smell delightful, a bit like honeysuckle.
Also in our neighbor’s garden near the mimosa tree—I just love old hodgepodge structures like this!
It’s not giving up yet!
Also coming soon: Above, the chasteberry in our garden, also commonly called monk’s pepper or Vitek, which has a completely different scent, but one I adore so much I’m hoping to make soap with it some day very soon. And the bees love it, too!
Aspiring herbalists (like me!) must find inspiring teachers!
A big motivator for me to learn herbalism has been our critters. They all have special needs! It’s hard not to worry about them, but I’d rather have faith in nature than in Big Pharma.
I am way out of my depth, but I know one thing for sure: the pharmaceutical model of our modern-day veterinarians is not for me. Not for animals, not for people.
Information that eschews this model is not easy to come by, so when I find something or someone special, I hone in.
I’ve found this book helpful, so I looked to see what else I might find from this author, and wow, is she ever fascinating.
From the foreword: “Such ailments as the now prevalent ones of scrapie in sheep and ‘mad cow’ in cattle are not going to find a place in this Herbal Handbook for Farm and Stable, despite the fact that many thousands of cattle in the UK have now been diagnosed as suffering from Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE). My book teaches natural care of animals and totally shuns their exploitation (wherein they are treated as machines, instead of as living, sensitive and loving creatures).
This book wholly condemns the force-feeding of unnatural foods to any creatures. If a diet is unnatural, disease will keep company with those subjected to it: that is a fixed law. I state force-feeding because, when animals through hunger are driven to eat foods entirely unnatural to their species, such as giving meat offal to cows and sheep, that, to me, is force-feeding. . . As I write this, when visiting England, television is showing cats suspected of having a similar disease to BSE in cattle. I do hope this fear proves to be unfounded. In any case, it is terrible that human acceptance and connivance in forcing the unnatural on our domestic animals bring much misery, pain and fear, all of which could be avoided.”
This book was published in 1952, and she has several others about dogs and cats.
I wonder what she would’ve made of our new bird flu?!
She lead quite the unique life, having been born into wealth, but choosing to live a simple life, exploring nature, living as a nomad among gypsies in many countries, and learning their ways.
There’s a documentary about her life and work, and though I haven’t found a full copy yet, here’s a good clip.
I looked for some of her other books as well, seems they are mostly out of print, so I was so pleased to find this one painstakingly retyped by another WP blogger.
Mostly happy snaps this post, plus a few weather woes.
Hubby’s gorgeous melon patch is starting to produce more than just a feast for the eyes. He’s come up with quite an integrated system there and when I expressed how impressed I was with his companion planting scheme (and wondered whether he’d been taking a permaculture course on the sly) he informed me it was all a matter of frugality.
His penny-pincher logic is: the melon mounds have a lot of water run-off and sometimes erosion, so he added a ring of clover at the base of them. It’s just a bonus they are also good for the soil and the bees. The sunflowers are fodder for the goats and the chickens, plus they help shade the melons. The sea of black-eyed Susan’s just turned up there, apparently as impressed as me with the space.
Hopefully the melons don’t go the way of the onions, which has been our worst year yet. Luckily the garlic still did fine, which is from our saved seed, which previously came from a nearby friend’s saved seed. That has become a theme.
Elephant garlic does much better here than anything else, and I’ve tried many others for many years. I think I’ll give up that practice now and stick with what works, avoiding future costs and frustrations.
The success of the tomatoes and peppers so far has also been thanks to saved seed. I bought several varieties of each from the store, just for more variety, and those are the ones suffering more from the rain and high humidity. Several have already died, a few aren’t growing at all, and several of the others have bad issues.
Ours on the left, theirs on the right.
The purchased squash is already full of pests before giving us even a single fruit.
At least we got a few zucchini off our own saved seed before it too is already beginning to succumb to some kind of mold.
But other saved seed, the Trombetta squash and the mystery squash from last year, have proven to be more resilient than the popular varieties.
The filth-filled skies continue and not even the regular rains clear them up for long. I’m sure the sorry state of the skies has nothing to do with the crazy storms, right? The intense lightening, sudden flooding rain bursts, intolerable humidity, hail, tornadoes, and so on, that folks are experiencing across the country?
Just ‘mother nature’ they tell us. OK.
Well, too much ‘mother nature’ is not so good for the garden. It looks plenty green and lush, so that’s nice. But, look a little closer and we find it’s not so pretty below the surface.
But we’ve been relatively fortunate so far this year, just lots of rain and some wind gusts. Others have had far worse.
The yucca didn’t get lucky, but the blossoms are still lovely, even on the ground.
There’s some long-term requirements that fall on Hubby, which I mentioned last update, an upgraded culvert is required now in order to drive to the back half of our property. He’s already gotten started on that, a huge undertaking for sure. After that he can look forward to tackling the pond that’s now washed out.
In better news, there’s been some amazing growth in just one week.
A side by side comparison of 8 days growth.
We’ve prepared for the swelter season by crafting another shading system where these tomatoes and peppers should be much happier into late summer. It’s recycled from another project and a bit awkward to move through, but it should do the trick just fine for supporting the shade cloth.
The asparagus beans, a first timer here, have really taken off in the last week. I’m excited to try them!
In even better news, the mamas and kids are growing well. We’ve started forcing them out of the corral during the day so I was able to give that space a much needed refreshing.
It seems they sometimes prefer following the chickens instead of their mamas. 😆
I’m getting the first fresheners ready for milking by training them on the milk stand. Soon it will be time to start separating them at night so I can milk them in the mornings before putting them back together again during the days. It’s not a happy time for anyone and I’m not looking forward to it.
But, I am looking forward to making lots of cheese again. We’re getting a bit of milk from Chestnut, who rejected her boy, and her girl is only nursing from one side. So, if I weren’t milking her she’d become even more lopsided than she already is.
It’s not a lot of milk, but enough for a little mozzarella now and then. I’ve found another method from my new favorite YT channel which is completely natural and far more tasty than the vast majority of those found online.
Raw milk mozzarella, mmmmm!
Unfortunately, the 2nd time I tried it was a failure. But, 99.9 % of the time a failed cheese can always become another delicious cheese. Some of my best cheeses have been from failures.
Not necessarily the case with failed wine. This cheese ‘failure’ will be soaked for a couple of days in the leftover must of the now fermenting wine, another tip I learned from my new fav YT channel.
This one was mulberry and I’ve also started a blackberry.
The blackberries seem to very much appreciate the extra rain and our harvest has been great, inspiring me to make blackberry wine for the first time. Last year’s harvest was very disappointing after getting some kind of strange disease right after their flowering period. (Not normal development, despite what several folks claimed at the time.)
I’ve decided to try more natural, traditional methods with the wine-making, like with the cheeses. Modern methods require all kinds of chemically-obtained inputs, which most insist are necessary for a fool-proof product.
Yet, last year we had a major failure using that method and ended up with several cases of vinegar. Very disappointing after all that work. We have had great success in the past or we might be too discouraged to try again.
Blackberries, banana peppers and Nigella seed pods
Traditionally, country wines were not made with all those foreign yeasts and I don’t really want my blackberry wine to taste like merlot anyway. While we may not have a decent cultivated grape harvest this year, the wild grapes look promising again. Also the pears are looking good, could be a bumper crop like we get only every few years.
If so, I’m going to do some side-by-side experiments, traditional methods vs. modern methods, and make a real project of it.
Blackberry wine in the making, hopefully
It’s easy to find lots of instruction using the identical modern method. For that I’ll rely on this book.
The wild grapes are looking promising. Our cultivated grapes still uncertain.
It’s not as easy to find good instruction on traditional methods, no surprise there. But this channel has a lot to offer and she uses nothing but a homemade fruit fermentation starter for her wines.
A teetotaler who makes wine, don’t see that everyday!
She also teaches how to make natural sodas and mead on her channel which I’m also very eager to try.
Blackberries fermenting beautifully after 36 hours.
The elderberry is also liking the extra rain. I might even try to make elderberry wine too. The blossoms are excellent in kombucha and will make an effervescent ‘champagne’ like beverage or flavor a cordial. And the goats love it. It’s just an all-around fantastic plant that is popping up everywhere now, so I’m going to create a big grove of them trailing down the hill.
A lot of folks still aren’t grasping this manipulative strategy, so I want to make a glaring point of it this post.
It’s easier for others to recognize classic rudeness, and shrug it off. It’s considered good manners to be tolerant of others’ petty foibles or potential misunderstandings or cultural differences and so on.
But folks aren’t putting a stop to plain old gaslighting, even when it’s obvious. They aren’t calling it out, and naming for it what it is—abusive, highly toxic, anti-social, not only for those who perpetrate, and their victims—but also from those merely viewing or reading.
Abuse radiates much further than those immediately involved in the moment.
This little rant, or welcome observation, depending on your position, was inspired by a small YT channel, another East Texas gardener, which I was curious to view from his title today—Garden Failures: Looks like another bad year.
The kind of title of a seemingly honest person just sharing his experience, not a hustler looking to sell me shit or snare me into another Cult-ur, is one of the nice rare finds still sometimes popping in my social feeds.
I watched only a few minutes before taking a gander at the first comment, and was relieved to find a someone seemingly aware of the enormous amount of weather manipulation going on, and clicked because I saw there was a reply.
But, much to my annoyance and disappointment, it was the typical reply of a Master Gaslighter.
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To be shamed as you seek validation, or understanding, is gaslighting. This ‘rude behavior’ is far more than rude and it is tolerated in our culture far more than bullying. Why?
This behavior is graver than victim-blaming and bullying, it is an aggressive attempt to diminish, deflect, avoid, minimize, and control the perceptions, research, feelings and lived reality of the host.
The host, as in the one who has had the audacity and courage to seek understanding in the first place, in a hostile environment and against the norms of the Cult-ure.
I’d just been listening to Jon Levi discussing it, so it was very fresh in my mind. I’ve experienced it all my life, as ALL have in our Cult-ure.
It’s just that some go along with it, instead of recoil from it.
I have gaslit others before, sometimes knowingly, sometimes quite unconsciously, only realizing it years later. My mindset was at those times to ‘fight fire with fire’ and maybe that’s a good strategy, at times, with those who have breached the boundaries into your personal life and betrayed you.
But the large majority of the time those gaslighting others on social media is ALL about narrative control and social engineering. Sometimes I wonder if these are actual individuals, but I don’t bother to check, because I’ve experienced it enough in real life to know if these are just AI bots replying to one another, well, they have a pretty good idea of the human condition.
Is it because the political world has so infiltrated every aspect of our existence that folks have come to accept a steady supply of gaslighting in their lives?
I’ve stopped fighting fire with fire myself, too much gas out there, I’m too old for that now.
But, I wonder, besides avoidin the gaslighters, which seems quite impossible these days, what other action might one take?
“Oncology at the end of the twentieth century and early 21st century runs unethical trials with inappropriate control arms, poor post protocol care, bad crossover, and many other games, which makes companies rich and people poor. Cancer doctors take payments for these companies and go along with this narrative. The system is so rotten and corrupt and pervasive we can’t even recognize it as such.
History will view these are dark days. Where marginal drugs were given to dying people, government taxing poor people to pay for it, and doctors captured by companies to push these products, and everyone patting themselves on the back and the US bankrupts itself with inappropriate, harmful, useless care.”
“While I do recognize that some of allopathic medicine’s contributions to trauma care are noteworthy and worth preserving in some format, I also see that at it’s heart, the Germ Theory mentality that pervades the medical academic establishment (no matter how well intended by individuals in those systems) is not about healing, but is in fact, antithetical to life.
The machine thinking of Allopathic medicine which treats the human body as a molecular machine in need of being kept sterile and well greased by an array of chemicals and synthetic lab made substances is like the modern government funded environmentalist program that tries to quantify everything down to carbon units, obsessing over limiting them or sequestering them with more machines, while avoiding/ignoring the fact that it is machines that decimated the environment in the first place and continue to (whether they are lithium powered or gas powered) and not even beginning to take into account other variables such as the massive influence that old growth forests (or the lack thereof) have on hydrological cycles as well as carbon cycles.
It is like the machine thinking of the Big Ag Chemical companies and conventional GMO monoculture farmer who, when faced with diminishing returns due to soil erosion, nutrient leaching, desertification, decreasing mineral and nutritional content in crops (due to soil depletion brought about by extractive and exploitative farming practices) and facing herbicide resistant “weeds”, decides to double down and create even more powerful machines to till the soil harder, faster, inculcate the crop plants with an ever more potent array of synthetic chemicals and petroleum based NPK to keep them alive (on the equivalent of a combination of life support and hard drugs) and decides to create and use even more potent biocides and herbicides to kill all life in the soil in order to squeeze increasingly meager returns out of an abused and dying landscape.
Those are systems of machine thinking, treating living complex systems that are defined and only capable of being healthy, stable and resilient by the myriad symbiotic relationships woven within and around them as simple machines. Both involve one dimensional ways of thinking attempting to understand, heal and make whole multi-dimensional entities.
The “trust the science” proclaiming doctor attempting to treat anti-biotic drug resistant bacteria infected wounds with more and more powerful anti-biotic drugs is like the techno-optimist self-proclaimed environmental activist cheering for more machines (perhaps lithium powered machines) to be built which are supposed to solve the problems created by the previous machines.”
There are two replies I generally hear from others when I attempt to talk about geoengineering and weather modification which I also often see in the comments section of others posting about this topic.
So this post I’m going to share some new links and quotes and personal observations in the hope that folks really start to get a better sense of the scope of this issue.
So few folks are even aware of the long history of weather modification, though it’s been well-documented and these days is very easy to research.
This is something I’ve written about many times already, because it sets a precedent. I am no longer going to bother with this vast history in future posts, because now there are plenty of others talking about it online.
I’ve noticed that when someone is aware of the long history of weather modification, they usually reply that it’s just about ‘cloud seeding’ which is no big deal, they say, they’ve been doing it forever, so what’s the problem?
As Agent’s Substack starkly points out, there’s nothing safe & effective about cloud seeding. And if you’d like the ugly truth expressed in some pretty harsh terms, I urge you to read his article. (Some of his work is behind a paywall)
“They’re just cloud seeding, it’s not chemtrails! It’s harmless!”, they tell us. In fact, it’s so harmless that the vast majority of states in the US have some form of seeding program currently taking place. Many of them are funded with our tax dollars, but some are sponsored by corporations you would never expect to be involved in GeoEngineering. Idaho Power currently spends $4 million a year on cloud seeding which results in a 12% increase in snow in some areas. Although the internet assures us Cloud Seeding is super-duper safe, today we are going to look at what chemicals are being spammed into the atmosphere, according to the Manufacturers of the chemicals and a crazy CDC document I unearthed.”
He’s also shared his sky photos in another recent article and has lots more geoengineering materials.
“I had an idea for an experiment: Pick a month and photograph and/or video the sky every day in 2023 then wait a year and do it again in the same month, then compare the GeoEngineering. Would there be anything to learn from this? Let’s find out…
“First, they (meaning, The Powers that Be) claim the suns rays are harmful and causing Climate Change (Global Warming), therefore, to keep the temperature of earth down, they need to block it. This is not a conspiracy theory, it is well documented. I have written a number of articles on the topic. They have been discussing blocking the sun since the 1960s and NASA was doing extensive research in the early 1980s which involved releasing chemicals into the sky and running tests to see how much of the suns rays were blocked. They began planning heavily in the early 1990s. read my piece 1992: Should we Spray Sulfuric Acid or Dust to Block the Sun? In the mid-to-late 1990s, only a few years after the 1992 document, people in the USA began reporting white grids and lines appearing in the sky. These grids and lines blocked the sun.”
A friend in UK driving to her vacation destination recently sent me some pics of the sad state of the skies there. Look familiar?
I wish I had better news. It’s not good. It’s not benevolent. It’s not about saving us from global warming or helping our farmers cope with droughts. It’s not about that AT ALL.
That’s just the cover story, because there always has to be a cover story.
It’s about weaponizing the weather for control purposes of war and power. Now it’s also being used to force populations in myriad ways and fleece everyone with ridiculous carbon schemes. The academic publications which hype on and on about climate change do not talk about geoengineering as an on-going global operation, but as mere proposals, and this is how they’ll lock in their ‘World Governance’.
As the public outcry grows, so the solutions will be put into place.
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Several US states have gotten on this bandwagon to outlaw geoengineering on various levels, which will have zero impact, because it’s a global issue, by design.
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‘To prostitute the elements’ : Weather Control and Weaponization by the US Dept of Defense by R. Pincus 2017 War & Society p. 64-80
“The US military has a long and robust history of scientific research programs, often conducted in conjunction with civilian scientists at non-military governmental agencies as well as universities. These programs flourished in the immediate post-Second World War and the early cold war years, as the field of military science expanded to address the sprawling Soviet threat. One area of growth was in atmospheric science, which had already taken off preceding Second World War in conjunction with the growth of air warfare. Advances in meteorology, cloud science and climatology enabled military interests to align with weather forecasters and also agricultural interests, as old ideas about cloud seeding and weather control were revived in the light of new research. The military, largely through the Air Force, advanced a series of projects investigating the potential of weather and climate control, manipulation, and ultimately weaponisation.”
What we have are Global Public-private partnerships cooperating internationally to manipulate the weather and change the climate as well as fleece the populace with projects that do not help the people.
Like these: the Greenhouse Gas Removal by Enhanced Weathering (GGREW) projects
“One example of a research project on the feasibility of enhanced weathering is the CarbFix project in Iceland.[33][34][35]”
“An Irish company named Silicate has run trials in Ireland and in 2023 is running trials in the USA near Chicago. Using concrete crushed down to dust it is scattered on farmland on the ratio 500 tonnes to 50 hectares, aiming to capture 100 tonnes of CO2 per annum from that area. Claiming it improves soil quality and crop productivity, the company sells carbon removal credits to fund the costs. The initial pilot funding comes from prize money awarded to the startup by the THRIVE/Shell Climate-Smart Agriculture Challenge.[36][37]”
I’ve been documenting some of what’s been happening in our skies for nearly a decade. It is not cooling us, it is not stabilizing our rainfall, it’s the exact opposite. And, they know this!
“In their own words from one of their reports, the Royal Aeronautical Society (based in London): “the current overall effect of contrails and contrail cirrus is a net warming – about 1.5 times that of aviation’s C02”. This is a smoking gun because it affirms that what they are doing is actually having the opposite effect of what they claim to be doing. It’s warming things, not cooling it.”
But what do academics concern themselves with? Issues of governance, because, warmer temperatures might increase small arms purchases. And other GLOBAL concerns about the control of the ornery plebs.
In my last post I included a recent photo from our area. These are the among the ‘new cloud species’ which some will actually tell you have always been there, we just never noticed them before Smartphones. Yes, I’ve actually heard this ridiculous answer on multiple annoying occasions.
“Mammatus clouds” they call them, because to name them is to normalize them. And the kids grow up “knowing” and are diligently taught to accept anything that has a name. That’s Science!
The official sites, the academic sites ALWAYS normalize, that’s their job. The rest of us are just all crazy conspiracy theorists. See, totally normal, because it’s right there in the International Cloud Atlas!
Thanks for reading folks, please research and pass along information!
