Nature – Page 9 – Kensho Homestead

Homestead Happenings

Spring is in the air! Sort of.

More like, New Normal Yo-Yo Season doesn’t totally fool Mother Nature. Yay! I’m taking that as good news.

So let’s focus on more good news with plenty of happy snaps, and just a few ugly reality snaps, from the wee homestead.

We’ve been busy, Handy Hubby most especially, in long-overdue deconstruction. The only other structure on the property when we bought it about 15 years ago, besides the seasonal-cottage-turned-permanent home where we now live, was this already run-down, trash-filled tractor barn.

Hauling trash out of the cottage before move-in (circa 20o9). Then scrubbing, painting, re-doing the floors, kitchen, siding, roof, insulation, building a deck, etc., etc.
Thank heavens for Handy Hubby!

Then the tornado tore off a chunk of it. And Hubby discovered the posts had rotted in the ground and it was in even worse shape than expected. Little left to be salvaged.

You can see it here in its best shape, in the background of this darling vid of our dear, now deceased, oh so lovable dogs, Tori, and Papi who makes a brief appearance too! The structure on the left is the former duck coop, built by Hubby. The structure finally coming down is the 2-story on the right. While the previous owners were building their future cottage, our current home, they built this and lived on the top loft. It was already a mess when we bought the place, and we’ve been procrastinating the clean-up ever since.

I vowed year after year I’d help Hubby in the deconstruction and clean-up when he found time to prioritize it, yet here it’s now nearly done and I haven’t helped a lick!

Such a gentleman! Thank heavens, because it’s a disgusting, nest and poop infested horror of a project, which is why he was procrastinating so long in the first place!

In more elegant news, I am still getting 1 liter of milk a day from our belligerent herd queen, Summer. While it’s not enough for making big and delicious hard cheeses, like this Pepper Jack I just cut, it is enough for a weekly batch of feta, or mozzarella, or my imitation of Boursin, or kefir, buttermilk, yogurt . . .! YUM!

Pepper Jack, aged 3 months. Quite good, hot, but not over-the-top. Still, needs improvement. Noted, still trying.

Despite the best laid plans of weather terrorists, we still have our first blossoms, our first chicks, our first piglets of the season!

And first chicks!

The daffodils and narcissists are out, and just enough blooms that the bees are again pleased!

I do believe, as chance would have it, I just happened to capture the queen in this quick shot. If you look at the center you see a longer abdomen pressed against the observation window, right next to a worker bee, so it stands out just enough to discern. I can’t be 100% sure, but I think so!

And back to discernment, we have the magic phallus of several posts appearing again! It’s in the same general area as the others, pictured previously, but looks a bit different. Now I’m starting to hope we’ve discovered a morel patch?! Or, maybe not.

What’s new in your neck of the woods?

Ohio Oddities

Steganography and synchromysticism researcher, Stephers, shared a few odd points about the E. Palestine, Ohio train accident and chemical spill that I want to pass along to whoever might be interested.

Stephers: “In this interview, they mention “HAZMAT suits”…and Nathan Izotic mentions “in his industry.” Yet it is NEVER mentioned that he, himself, is a specialist in chemicals (and his wife, Kelly, trained specifically in chemicals and toxicology)…and OSHA HAZMAT certified…Why are they not assisting, given their expertise?”

Me: They also had only moved to the vicinity the previous year, so I’d say they are not exactly ‘locals’ as in they would know the area and people well enough to be the best candidates to interview.

Stephers: “Kelly Izotic (acting as worried local resident) works for Microbac Laboratories. She does not mention that she is an environmental chemical field technician, nor what her company does. If honest, she should be educating the public on air quality and remediation, and supporting on-the-ground hazardous waste analysis.”

https://www.microbac.com/waste-management

Me: Why not interview them as experts in the field, which they clearly are, instead of ‘concerned locals’? And why does she have that insouciant grin the whole time, and he looks like he has to bite his lip to not follow suit and then points to an invisible rash on his face?

They don’t look too concerned to me. Nerves? Bad acting? Or perhaps beaming on the inside with the bank they are about to make on this deal?

Just asking, inquiring minds want to know!

+++++++++

And, even more odd, also received from Stephers:

From the article linked below:

“Ohio resident Ben Ratner was excited when he landed a gig as an extra in a Netflix movie about a toxic disaster in October 2021.

But now the 37-year-old father of four — who lives in East Palestine, Ohio, less than a mile from the site of a train derailment that led to a massive toxic chemical spill and forced residents to evacuate — is living out a real-life version of the movie’s plot that’s continuing to unfold.

“Talk about art imitating life,” Ratner — who plays an evacuee in the film adaptation of Don DeLillo’s novel White Noise about a freight train explosion that releases deadly toxins into the air — tells PEOPLE.

https://people.com/human-interest/ohio-train-derailment-evacuee-living-real-life-version-of-movie-white-noise/

And if that were enough, add another little gem . . .

Ratner’s Star is a 1976 novel by Don DeLillo. It relates the story of a child prodigy mathematician who arrives at a secret installation to work on the problem of deciphering a mysterious message that appears to come from outer space. The novel has been described as “famously impenetrable”.^[1]
Stephers:
I still find it super synchy that Ben Ratner’s mom is named Beth…and *another* Beth Ratner (NOT his mom) just happens to have worked in environmental toxin/hazardous spills clean-up:

Financial Controller

ARROWHEAD ENVIRONMENTAL SERVICES

Sep 2020 – Jun 2022 1 year 10 months

Established financial and human resources policies and procedures for a start-up waste management company.

Well, what do you think about them odd apples?!

Institutional Capture & Socio-Cultural Re-Programming

Just another few pieces of evidence to add to the already vast mountain range of nonsense we are expected to swallow on a daily basis.

3 short-bits follow, plus a bonus. Each is ignoring, or side-stepping the most contentious and necessary topics while exploiting the low-hanging fruit, that of course being the most fruitful recipe of our times.

The Geoengineering question, bypassed in the typical trifecta fashion: Avoid, Smear, Redirect. If that doesn’t work, pretend it’s new and revolutionary. Or, pretend it’s old and therefor safe and reasonable. If all else fails, feign ignorance. Not necessarily in that order.

Here our host lets him get away with it, so typical! (For shame, he instantly dropped in my initial estimation by multiple degrees.) So, in their non-summation Geoengineering is all about Bill Gates covering up the sun, and certainly not about a century of global military industrial complex scheming.

Furthermore, it’s right up there in the Crazy Zone with the Virus-Deniers and Flat Earth theory!

This ‘rabbit hole’ is so old to me now, all that’s left of deep inquiry here is the pondering: Do they really buy their own bullshit? (34:33 minute mark for the Geoengineering ‘question’). This is what’s posing as ‘alternative journalism’ these days. Effective ‘ambush journalism’ has been inverted into staged theater, then morphed into public relations. Not a single toe-to-toe to be expected. It’s like listening to a well-choreographed two-step. I’d prefer watching Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, at least they occasionally ventured into new territory, still choreographed of course, but for the sake of their well-seasoned audience, a welcome escape from the repetition. Professor Steven Starr on Geopolitics and Empire: We Are Already in WWIII

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/geopolitics-empire/id1003465597?i=1000598968822

2. Next we have a Geoengineering documentary, supposedly out in 2008 (that I somehow never heard of? Seems unlikely.) Full of goose-stepping oddness and fear-mongering, narrated by a digital voice, then the famous Alan Watt, and various other voice-overs.

Here is the oddest sentence of the entire 4-hour All-Over-The-Place Everything-Soup Concoction: 03:40:53 “HG Wells talked about the new freemasonry of the air. Policing the skies.” Wait, Whaa?!

And seriously, a 4-hour documentary, who watches those?
Exactly.

Don’t Talk About the Weather (2008)

3. And, never fear, the institutions will continue doing their institutionalizing!

Science™ brought to you by . . .

The modern day worshipping of the imperialist, industrialist and technocrat alike. It’s the current New World Religion.

And, yippie, Arizona State University, my Alma Mater, continues to lead the way, now color me proud! (Don’t miss the sarcasm dripping in computer-augmented Magenta at this point!)

According to their provost and Executive Vice President, Nancy Gonzales of Miami, Arizona, rural folk should not be scorned or pitied, because they can still blossom from their abject poverty working in the mines in order to serve the Corporate State at ever higher levels. So won’t their kinfolk be proud!

“Although many people focus on the disadvantages of a rural upbringing, we didn’t see it that way. Miami was a place where parents sacrificed and families supported one another to lift up the next generation.”

According to their propaganda that well-educated, well-meaning next generation is going to solve all the global desert metropolises’ water worries with more awesome tech solutions.

Confoolery at its finest! Keep climbing that ladder kids!

For our bonus, here’s a rare journalist to whom I still give the benefit of the doubt. Beginning the interview they discuss the new rain water technology that’s just hit the NY stock exchange. I think she honestly doesn’t know (yet) just how deep and long this rabbit hole goes. I look forward to more from her on the topic as she tries to dig though it. And more power to her!

Better get your umbrellas, drought prep and insurance updates, folks!

Corey’s Digs

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20221222005128/en/Rainwater-Tech-

And last, but not forgotten, Happy Valentine’s Day!

And one for the fellas, too!

Random Notes: Understanding False Hierarchies

Digging through my files for content. Make of them what you will. Or won’t. Comments most welcome!

False hierarchies, that is all hierarchies not based in nature, are crippling our civilization. And maybe, that’s just natural.

They are invariably:

~Based on fluffing not rivaling, so that the leader is replaced by a Yes-man rather than an honorable man.

~Confusing true power with temporary status

~Leading a horse to water, noticing he does not drink, and blaming him for being stupid. Rather than questioning if the horse is intuiting more about the contents of the water than you are.

~I’m in charge, you’re responsible. That is not meant to mean you are to act as my scapegoat. It is meant to represent the bond between the care-givers.

~Helping people adjust to their servitude is not actually helping. It’s akin to helping addicts find their next fix, you are opting to make yourself feel better in the moment by helping someone else feel better in the moment, at the expense of long-term solutions. The proverbial thumb in the dike.

~Hardest lesson for an empath (or a yes-man) to learn—stop cleaning up other people’s messes—you are only making it worse for the next generation.

~America has roughly 35 million acres of lawn and 36 million acres housing and feeding recreational horses.

https://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.htm

~The tragic hero is brought down by his virtues, not his vices!

World War I: The Great War Was also the Great Enabler of Progressive Governance

“It was decided to make [the soldiers] help pay for the war, too. So, we gave them the large salary of $30 a month. All they had to do for this munificent sum was to leave their dear ones behind, give up their jobs, lie in swampy trenches, eat canned willy (when they could get it) and kill and kill and kill …and be killed. But wait!

Half of that wage (just a little more than a riveter in a shipyard or a laborer in a munitions factory safe at home made in a day) was promptly taken from him to support his dependents, so that they would not become a charge upon his community. Then we made him pay what amounted to accident insurance—something the employer pays for in an enlightened state—and that cost him $6 a month. He had less than $9 a month left.

Then, the most crowning insolence of all—he was virtually blackjacked into paying for his own ammunition, clothing, and food by being made to buy Liberty Bonds. Most soldiers got no money at all on pay days.
We made them buy Liberty Bonds at $100 and then we bought them back—when they came back from the war and couldn’t find work—at $84 and $86. And the soldiers bought about $2,000,000,000 worth of these bonds!”

Click to access warisaracket.pdf

~As Carroll Quigley writes, its success was partly due to “its ability to present itself to the world as the defender of the freedoms and rights of small nations and of diverse social and religious groups”. (2)

Empire of hypocrisy | winter oak

The Illusion of Abundance

I grew up on fast food, TV dinners, mac & cheese, like most middle class Americans. And I liked it, like most middle class Americans. Because, I didn’t know any better. Like most middle class Americans.

We had a constant supply of chips, cookies, candy, coke, and all things convenience. Our cupboards and fridge were never empty. I never worried I would go hungry.

And yet, I know now, decades later, I was malnourished. I know this in retrospect, like I know now I was also vaccine injured. It is not until you know what real nourishment feels like, what real health feels like, that you can recognize its opposite.

I feel like I was one of the lucky ones. I saw it in time. I traveled, so I saw how different my normal actually was, in the wider context. No other culture ate like we did. Every other culture was healthier than we were. It has since changed in the last decades, as more cultures adapt to Western, particularly the modern American, faux-food diet.

But this realization is far from new or unique. As James Corbett so well documents, and I’m elaborating on now with personal anecdote, food as a weapon is not new or unique.

https://mises.org/library/what-caused-irish-potato-famine

When was food weaponized? Well, let’s just say, it’s been a minute.

My food upbringing was normalized and enhanced— baby formula replacing breast feeding, a dozen vaccines added per decade, cooking from scratch becoming obsolete, supplements becoming de rigeur, pharmaceuticals coming to rule the world of health where food once reigned.

And the conquering continues.

Corbett:
“The answer is simple. We are witnessing a controlled demolition of the food supply chain, one that is intended to result in the destruction of the current industrial farming system as we know it. But this changeover is not intended to return us to truly sustainable farming practices, with local, organic farmers producing crops in accordance with age-old agricultural wisdom. Far from it.
As it turns out, the “solution” to this food crisis being proffered by the billionaires of the corporate-pharmaceutical-medical-industrial-philanthrocapital-military complex is being engineered in laboratories and sold to the public via a bought-and-paid-for mainstream media.
One thing is for certain: the future of food will look very different from anything that we have seen in human history.

Scientists are bioengineering spores that can be inserted into crops and livestock, allowing companies to identify and track food products all the way through the food system, from farm to factory to fork.
DARPA is doling out multi-million-dollar contracts for researchers to find ways “to turn military plastic waste into protein powder” for human consumption.
A company called Amai Proteins is using genetically engineered microbes to create peptides that taste like sugar but are digested like proteins. And the best (read: worst) part is that, “[a]lthough these microbes are technically genetically engineered, the desired products can be purified and legally sold as non-GMO”!”

https://open.substack.com/pub/corbettreport/p/what-is-the-future-of-food?r=apljy&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post

Just as my home cupboards were full, todays grocery stores are full. As we suffer mass malnutrition.

Yes, some claim shortages because they can no longer find cheap cat food. Whatever.

A food supply abundant with non-nourishing food is worse than empty store shelves. Exponentially worse. We are a population lulled into the illusion of abundance for the last six decades plus.

If you think that’s not a deliberate and highly effective conquering strategy, you are a fool.

Those Were The Days

Sometimes it’s the simplest things that invite in the nostalgia for days long gone. Just this morning I was recalling the times of my youth—until just about a decade ago—when during all that time I used to practice the seasonal closet.

I thought this was normal! So silly of me, so childish. I see that now. But, in my defense, it was such a common thing. Everyone in my family did this, and most of my friends, too. Little did I know those were the good ole days, never to be appreciated again. If only I’d known. I definitely would’ve savored those times more, not treating them as just normal life. It is with significant chagrin that I now understand the ephemeral flight of fancy that seasonal world really was.

There was such a pleasant and proper order to it, you know? You’ve got your summer clothes—the shorts and tank tops and swimming suits and sandals—and there’s only so much room in a closet or in a chest of drawers. It made perfect sense that we would pack up our summer things once autumn came to make way for our sweaters and boots and woolens. Those were some good times!

How we used to love to rummage through those boxes again, having been lost for months out of sight, and then just like an impromptu Christmas, you’d find sweaters in there you totally forgot about and it was like having a whole new wardrobe again! Even moving south did not change this quaint habit—summer closet, winter closet—just a smaller shift of degrees and heavier on the summer selections.

Now my summer crocks sit next to winter boots sit next to slippers sit next to flip flops. Oh, the visual chaos! The sweaters are folded awkwardly next to tank tops. Linen being felt up by Fleece. It’s just, wrong. So wrong. The wool socks are in a false embrace with the anklets. Who can even make sense of the accessories?! The scarves, poor things, silk on wool, just imagine their mutual discomfort.

Last week, this week.
Yo-Yo Season, the New Normal

As if the wardrobe malfunctionings are not enough, there’s the critters, domesticated and wild. And the plants. The dogs and goats shed only to shiver the next week. The buds open only to get killed by frost. All season long.

But, progress has it costs, I get it. The future children will adjust to weather whiplash, and be all the stronger for it. That’s so reassuring. The great minds of Bill Gates and David Keith will come together and all will be scientifically managed in perfect harmony. Nature was so terribly cumbersome for the Great Ones. They deserve better. All the children will be so happy when we are watched over eternally by machines of love and grace.

Homestead Happenings: To Be, or Not to Be, That Neighbor

You have to get pretty far out in the boonies to get the most tolerant neighbors. I think that’s a good thing. Usually.

Life has gotten even quieter here in the boonies in the last few years. The popular hype would have it that city folk are moving to the countryside in droves. While that may be so, the evidence is still wanting, at least around here.

It would seem the weekenders have less time, or energy, to practice their Sunday “Guns for God” rituals that used to attract them to these parts at regular intervals, in search of target practice.

In this, and other tolerance-mandatory moments, I have not always been as tolerant as the situation has required, I admit.

One time I recall a pick-up truck of ill-mannered miscreants, rifles in hand, showing up at our gate while Hubby was at work and announcing they would be hunting wild hog at the creek which is our property line, and I should let them come in through our gate for that purpose.

I put on my best ‘down home girl’ accent, which most likely fooled precisely no one, and said, “Ain’t no hogs down there darlin’s, creek’s nearly dry, can’t ya see!”

I so wanted to take that opportune moment to educate my derelict audience in the practice of deliberate drought by weather modification, but in reading the room, I decided against it.

“Best y’all get ya’s further down the Trinity valley,” I offered instead.

I know it wasn’t the fake drawl, and I had no gun on me, so I’m figurin’ it was my no-nonsense demeanor that got to ‘em. Not only did they not get through our gate, but they must’ve moved their shindig to other parts, ‘cause they moseyed on, I expect to more cooperative (aka, tolerant) locales.

Ain’t seen ‘em back since.

And then there’s the dogs, always the dogs. Owners are always losing their hunting dogs, even with them fancy tracking devices on ‘em. One time one frightened cutey found his way here and I trapped him, gave him a nice lavender bath ‘cause the poor dear stunk to high heaven, and waited for the owner to come a callin’, which he did, commenting on the dog’s unwelcome new fragrance.

Some assholes actually drop off the dogs they don’t want on our country roads. Can you believe that?!

And as if that’s not bad enough, sometimes your own neighbors are the problem.

When you lose half your flock of chickens to a sneaky dog your neighbor adores, and you caught him red-handed on candid camera, but the neighbor still insists it’s ‘your problem’, tension tends to develop.

Especially if you are me.

I’m like an angry, barking squirrel when I lose my patience, I get that. I’d try to correct that clear character flaw if it weren’t something I was proud of and have worked at developing so consistently.

But still, I can’t stand by and witness hypocrisy, even, or maybe especially, if it’s my own.

And now, it comes around, as our neighbors, few and quiet as they mostly are, have our livestock guard dogs, who think the entire county is their personal protection zone, annoying them with border barking patrols, all night long.

Let sleeping dogs lie? Hardly! The whole county gets a taste of their actions after midnight!

I want to send them an exasperated message—I’m so sorry—they are not respecting their boundaries! We don’t want to be ‘that’ neighbor, really!

But in our defense, not even the electric fence stops them! We are at our wit’s end trying to solve this issue!

Thank you for your patience!

Thankfully for us, our neighbors are so tolerant they don’t even have the decency to complain.

And as if that wasn’t enough. All my best laid plans of goats and cheeses are dwindling.

Summer, herd queen, always taking the high ground, with Phoebe and Chestnut cowering nearby. A definite love-hate relationship.

The goats have declared mutiny. We already had a misfit crew: Summer the Eldest, herd queen, a belligerent, bossy bitch who terrorizes the rest of the herd with her monster horns, yet who they follow everywhere; Chestnut the Crazy, who is super-skittish and a first-freshener and more moody than a teenage girl; and Phoebe the Squatter, another first-freshener, who is the most stubborn goat on earth, I’m certain.

These horns were meant for knockin’, and that’s just what they’ll do . . .

“But, but, but . . . can’t you see how cute and innocent we are?”

I’ve been watching YouTubes and reading up for months now and I can say that not one goat I’ve seen can match Phoebe in out-right belligerence and deceptive tactics. She’ll jump right up on that stand, give you a singular taste of cooperation, only to . . .BAM . . .lay right down on the job as soon as I get my bucket in position.

And go figure, that is not among the prize characteristics showcased at the 4-H or any other of the breeding clubs.

My goat guru offered the most obvious of advice, “You must be more stubborn than the goat!”

Honestly, I thought my stubbornness to be among my most obvious and enviable characteristics, inherited from my mother. I then deliberately married a very stubborn man, who also inherited his stubbornness from his mother. We’re like five generations of stubborn in one.

And yet, we are like the impetuous novices in comparison to truly goat-level stubborness. I must humbly admit, I’ve been defeated. My cheese-making days are on the wane, maybe for many more months, just when I was really getting into the swing of things.

Alas, the simple life is really not that simple.

Good bye fair cheeses, may we meet again!

Homestead Happenings

Some happy snaps and random updates this post. There’s the alien eggs that come to find out, are not alien eggs after all. Some cute critter pics. Some ill-placed political memes. Some exciting for me, but boring for you, cheese news.

Basically an unorganized hodgepodge of a post that you should probably just skip unless you’re bored.

Totally unrelated to this post, I just like it and haven’t found a better place for it.

The New Normal weather whiplash continues. It seems even the leaves aren’t quite sure what to make of it.

Pretty, but an oddly spring green seems to me.

Two maple trees we planted about 5 years ago. Of 25 total there are 7 still alive.
We’ve had similar results with the pecans and all the orchard trees.

We are getting some yummy mushrooms—the upside of so many dead trees. Mushroom pizza tonight! I’ve also been wanting to try making pickled mushrooms and it looks like there’ll be plenty for that, too.

And the mysterious eggs aren’t alien after all, big surprise. Katherine of EdenUnlocked blog was right, stinkhorns.

And Kath in the UK then followed-up with her friend who is a mushroom expert. He is probably right on the type, phallus hadriani, but we’re not getting full development on them in order to tell for sure.

(Thanks y’all, I so appreciate your help! Isn’t the internet so awesome for such connections?!)

We’re still checking our phallus circle daily and they keep trying! One egg will ‘hatch’ but then it falls over.

Could it be a kind of ‘phallus shrinkage’ due to weather whiplash?? 😂

The goats are gorging on acorns and scarfing down the fresh greens Hubby planted for them in a former garden space. The kids are happy because I put them all back together again. They went right back to nursing even though they are nearly as big as their mamas already. And, I’m still getting a half-gallon of milk a day, so it’s a win-win.

The goat cheeses are coming out great.

Aged chèvre wrapped in maple leaves and one in plastic cheese wrap for taste comparison

The pigs are getting fat and happy again foraging for plenty of acorns.

And ending with another meaningful but ill-placed commentary just because I like it and don’t have another place to put it.

Food Gratitude

My first deep dive down the conspiracy theory trail was not Geoengineering/Weather Modification, though that’s where I find myself most often these days. Rather, it was food, and health.

I was already well down that particular trail for years before attending a very large conference in Washington, DC where one of the hot topics was GMOs.

One of the speakers was an African woman who had some official title in some African country. All the details about her escape me now, except for one thing she said. She was speaking to us ‘anti-GMO’ types in the audience, and there were a lot of us. She was referring to our privilege to be able to take such a stance as Americans when there were people starving all around the globe.

Of course, that wasn’t the first time I’d heard such a claim. But something about her—a very large, dark-skinned woman donned in her traditional dress with quite a commanding presence—made me waffle, for just a moment. In that moment I looked around the room and realized her statement was having a similar effect on others. As she went on in that line of lecturing, they began to nod and look a bit sheepish after having just feverishly applauded the opposing stance.

It was, after all, a mostly Progressive crowd of over-40s who were clearly well-to-do, judging by the cost of the conference and the topics discussed. She was shaming us, and it was working.

Later on, when I was considering her words while not among the approving crowd, I thought, I wonder how many anti-GMO activists she just converted. She was effective, no doubt. But she wasn’t saying anything new, it was the same diplomatic version of—if you don’t feed Africa with GMO crops we will starve, so save your do-goody, anti-science rhetoric for those who can afford to hear it.

What I hear her saying is actually this: We want a quick fix, a short-term solution for a long-term problem. Then when that solution fails, come in with another one. And then another. If you keep selling those solutions, we’ll keep buying them.

“On the Corruption of GM Science,” John stated, “There is no balance in the GM research field or in the peer-review process or in the publication process. For this we have to thank corporate ownership of science, or at least this brand of it . . . Scientific integrity is one loser, and the public interest is another.” Dr. Brian John to GM Science Review, 2003

2003! It’s almost 20 years and it’s only gotten worse.
(I’ve been writing about it since 2009 if you’d like to see some of those old posts with some very telling comments still attached: Starting From Scratch – Kensho Homestead)

Why do we continue to allow our own Food Gratitude to poison the world with Food Idiocracy?

I’m very grateful my better half contributes whole-heartedly in our efforts to maintain food wisdom on the wee homestead and in cyber-discussions on the topic. Here’s a bit of recent data he’s compiled.

Have you heard the latest?
Well, line up folks, the Food Pyramid is back, new and improved!

Welcome to the ‘Food Compass’!*

What will you find in this 200+ page document crafted by top university scientists?

https://static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1038%2Fs43016-021-00381-y/MediaObjects/43016_2021_381_MOESM1_ESM.pdf

Egg substitutes scored high than real eggs!
Over seventy processed breakfast cereals scored higher than a boiled egg. Even one called “Malt-O-Meal Marshmallow Mateys”, cause if its got marshmallows its gotta be good for you. 🤮

Some interesting rankings (the higher the score the ‘better’):
Almond milk, unsweetened, chocolate 91
Soy milk, light 75
Chocolate milk, made from no sugar added dry mix with non‐dairy milk (Nesquik) 73
Hot chocolate / Cocoa, made with no sugar added dry mix and non‐dairy milk 70
Whole milk 46

Frosted Mini-wheats is ranked as healthier than ground beef,
Lucky Charms as healthier than chicken…

TVP (Textured Vegetable Protein)** gets a perfect score of 100
Higher than any red meat, poultry, or seafood except Halibut or Tuna
The best poultry: Braised Chicken Liver 71
Boiled goat head and Cooked beaver 43
The best red meat: Raw Ground Beef 38
Braised Beef steak 23

They also list IMITATION cheese as healthier than 40+ of the “real” cheeses listed. (For example cheddar, Monteray, colby, gouda, feta, etc…..).

*”Food Compass is a nutrient profiling system which ranks foods based on their healthfulness using characteristics that impact health in positive or negative ways. It was developed by the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University.”

The Healthiest Foods You Can Eat, Ranked by Scientists

** “For TVP, first you extract oil from the soybeans using hexane (which leaves about 20 ppm hexane behind in TVP), followed by a sequence of other similarly appetizing processes to degum, bleach, deodorize, and neutralize the taste of the oil. The solids left over are defatted soy flour. That is cooked and extruded through a nozzle into various shapes and sizes, exiting the nozzle while still hot and expanding as it does so. Sometimes some higher-protein concentrate or isolate is also used. The defatted thermoplastic proteins are heated to 300–390 °F, which denatures them into a fibrous, insoluble, porous network that can soak up as much as three times its weight in liquids. As the pressurized molten protein mixture exits the extruder, the sudden drop in pressure causes rapid expansion into a puffy solid that is then dried (it’s basically “shot from guns” like Cocoa Puffs). As much as 50% protein when dry, it is approximately 16%, similar to meat, when rehydrated, and various artificial colors and synthetic flavors can be added during the process to make it imitate different kinds of meat.”

For further reading:

Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation by F. William Engdahl 2007

Altered Genes, Twisted Truth: How the Venture to Genetically Engineer Our Food Has Subverted Science, Corrupted Government, and Systematically Deceived the Public by Steven M. Druker 2015

Foodopoly: The Battle Over The Future Of Food And Farming in America by Wenonah Hauter 2012

Two excellent newer articles at Corey’s Digs:

NEW Controlled Food System Is Now In Place And They Will Stop At Nothing To Accelerate Their Control

New “Food is Medicine” Nutrition Screening, RX, Tracking and Control

Homestead Happenings

Something of an ‘adult-themed’ post for y’all today from the wee homestead: Weather prediction by smoke signal, garlic galore, alien eggs update, and a flying boar. Wow!

Repeat after me: I don’t see a persistent spreading chemtrail. All is cool and normal.
Homo-genitus cirrus clouds. All is cool and normal.

I am full of pride today as I can now successfully predict the 3-5 day forecast based on smoke signals in the sky! I’m not sure who is wanting me to learn this crucial life lesson, but I suspect it is the ghost of an old woman I once knew in Bohemia who could predict the weather based on her rheumatism.

She came from a long line of dousers and knew the frisson of a rain storm from the sky or streams underground with uncanny accuracy based entirely on degree of hip pain.

Of course, she never knew the regular 30-50 degree sudden temperature swings that in these parts come with the manufactured weather. That’s called scientific progress! Something tells me she would not have approved. But then again, being a wise crone, she’d have known that no one of critical influence would give a crap what she knows or how she knows it.

Those top 3 photos are from our wee homestead airspace, the bottom two from some random techie dude in the UK trying to normalize this disgusting spectacle.

The tomato plants themselves look pretty pathetic, no thanks to the temperature swings and the goats who like to nibble on them. But still, it’s a rarity, and it’s kinda fun. A fresh tomato salad and a volunteer watermelon in mid-November, because there’s got to be a silver lining somewhere, right?!

We were lucky enough to be gifted a box of garlic from a generous homesteading friend and Hubby has prepared their beautiful beds, with lots of poop, of course. This friend had also just taken the long road-trip to our best raw milk source in the region, so I could not resist the now quite steep price of $10/gallon in order to make one large cheese of our favorite variety. Think that’s expensive, the farmer said his competitors are now at $12!

Ready to plant (L) and a rare treat and fine gift (R)

The mommas and kids are doing great, though it’s a bit of a pain keeping them separated, especially when it’s cold. I was hoping they might be weaned already, being it’s been over a month. So, we tested it, and no such luck. Those greedy kids got right back on the teets.

But, I’m having too much fun cheesemaking to share, sorry kids!

Both just pressed: Pepper Jack on right, which will be aged for two months; and a cheese made from the leftover whey of the Pepper Jack on left, to be soaked in cider for four days for added flavor and eaten fresh.

We marked the emerging monsters for quick recon

A third has joined the alien eggs (see previous ‘WTF Photo’ post) or more likely, the stinky phalus circle. It’s become my new morning normal, what are the eggs up to today? One tried to emerge recently, only to fall flat.

I’m hoping they become something like this photo from a web search:

Cool, right? Perhaps begging the question: Which came first, the dildo or the mushroom? 🤣

Ahem . . . too much??

So, in other mushroom news . . .

On left, not edible, but a lovely pale yellow and so cute. On right, bland beige, odd smell, edible,delicious, but not so cute. With them I made a mushroom soup and added them to a cheese quesadilla—so tasty.

And wouldn’t you know, pigs really do fly! We woke to find our boar missing. It was quite the melodrama and Hubby was in quite the anguish about it. We’ve had him for many years now and saw no sign what could have become of him. Initially.

Hubby’s schedule was to breed the sows next month, as per usual. Papa Chop decided he couldn’t wait, apparently. We’ve got 4-foot fencing keeping everyone separated, which has worked just fine, until now. After some searching and hollering he eventually showed up at the fence line again, only to jump a second one to get at another sow. Just, Wow!

A+ for determination, old feller.

Share this:

Financial Controller

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: