“A high-sugar diet is particularly damaging for children as it displaces nutrient-dense foods like meat, butter, eggs and cheese, which children need for optimum growth. High sugar consumption during childhood sets children up for serious diseases in adulthood, such as diabetes, heart disease, cancer and depression.”

Getting off white sugar can be difficult, because it’s in almost everything, including many organic products, (organic white sugar is better, but it’s still highly processed). White sugar is cheap, fun, highly addictive, and hard to avoid, but the great news is that we have healthy alternatives that we can use to replace white sugar, and make delicious healthy creations for our family that they will love. Sometimes change is hard, but our taste buds adjust, and we start loving how we feel and wonder why we ever consumed so much white sugar. I write this to encourage you to keep going. It’s worth the extra effort!

Our two feel-good, very satisfying, favorite natural sweeteners are raw honey and maple syrup. Do you have a favorite?

You can find the quote I mentioned above on the Sugar Alert brochure. You can find that helpful brochure here.

Have you ever tried a pasture raised, naturally cured, smoked ham? It’s phenomenal compared to what you get in the store. What’s more exciting is how many people have reported to me that conventional pork upsets their stomach, but they can have ours. Since these hams are naturally cured, maybe it will be a good option for you. I read a research study done by the Weston Price Foundation that suggested that pork that was naturally cured or fermented was easier to digest (according to some blood work they observed in participants). I found that very interesting! I have had several requests to share how we make our naturally cured ham, and I’m always happy to share what we are doing.

If you are struggling to digest raw, pastured, organic, or even cultured milk you might have a beta A1 casein allergy. Traditionally all cows were A2, but at some point, there was a switch in the genetics of many of our cows. Most of the milk for sale today is actually A1. If a cow is A1, it is said to have mutated genes and some people believe this milk is harder to digest. Many people have found that switching to A2 milk helps them to nourish themselves with dairy (especially raw milk) without any issues. It is interesting to note that human breast milk is A2.

Until today I always assumed that Valentine’s Day was a holiday made up by the candy industry to sell more white sugar/high fructose corn syrup laden, artificially colored (from petroleum or crude oil), unnaturally flavored, and harmfully preserved candy that has little or no nutritional value. We heard this today on the World View in 5 Minutes below, and it completely transformed the way I think about Valentine’s Day. I hope you enjoy this as much as we did!

Emperor Claudius II, called Claudius the Cruel, ruled the Roman Empire with an iron fist during the third century.  He was having difficulty recruiting soldiers and believed Roman men were unwilling to leave their loved ones because soldiers were required to fight for at least 25 years.  Therefore, Claudius banned all marriages and engagements.

Kailey tanned another hide recently (which meant buying some store eggs). She suggested that we take a picture and compare our eggs from the chickens in the hoop house to the eggs she bought. I was surprised to see that our eggs were much more yellow than the store bought eggs, despite the fact that our chickens are protected in our hoop house and not on grass at this time. The picture of the eggs before cooking doesn’t seem to contrast the difference that we saw, but the cooked egg picture was a little better.

The honking of the goose can be heard from far away. The goose in this picture is a male, White Chinese goose which is a descendant of the swan goose. They are prolific egg layers and have a great personality. They are great at weeding and they are perfect for alarming when they feel threatened. We used a male goose because males are better at protecting their friends, in this case our female chickens. It doesn’t matter what anyone says or does to him, when he feels threatened by vicious intruders, he just won’t stop HONKING! We need more protectors like this!

Truly loving someone means loving them even when I don’t “feel” like loving them. This can be a struggle, because my flesh tells me that it’s all about me.

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant ⁵ or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;^[a] 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

1 Corinthians 13: 4-7 ESV

Many consumers are waking up to the fact that animals on grass produce healthier meat, eggs, and milk, but there is a problem that not everyone is aware of. There is a lot of fraud in this industry. Pastured milk has become very popular in the last few years, but what many people don’t realize is that a lot of the cows producing this milk aren’t actually on grass. The only way to truly know if you are getting what you are paying for is to visit the farm where you are sourcing your products.

“An important study published in 2015 confirms what many mothers have observed—children on raw milk don’t get sick as often. Published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, the study compared health outcomes in almost one thousand European infants consuming raw milk, pasteurized milk or ultra-high temperature pasteurized milk with the occurrence of respiratory tract infections, rhinitis (runny nose), otitis (ear infections) and fever.”

If you visit the Doctor and they send you home without a medication, give thanks.

When our older children were younger, I often took them to the doctor right away when there was a problem. Because of some confusion, one of our kids was given a very strong antibiotic for something I have learned to easily treat at home with little suffering. After completing this antibiotic my child started to develop yeast on her skin. I had never witnessed anything like this before. When we returned to the doctor, he wasn’t concerned, and we started applying an antifungal cream. As soon as the treatment was finished the yeast went away, but returned again shortly after.