7/13/2022 First, a little background.
All my life I have craved good, clean food but as an athlete in my younger years, I adapted bad habits of eating whatever would give me energy. A swimmer is all about speed, as it softball, basketball, to name a few sports I enjoys. You needed energy for golf, tennis, EVERYTHING, so sugar was a friend. Fast food became a thing, first with Bob’s Hamburgers then McDonalds and Taco Bell. Dry jello was a staple on race day while swimming and burgers from the grill at the end of the day. It seemed like it continued into adulthood with family activities, everyone too tired to cook. . . OF COURSE WE WERE TOO TIRED! We lived on Sugar and Crap.
Along came Burger King one day and it enticed you with “2 ALL BEEF patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese,” tomato, onions “on a sesame seed bun.” It was supposed to be “The healthier choice.” Ummmm no. Processed is processed, sugar is sugar and white bread is a whole other issue. Flimsy lettuce, pre-frozen tomato, over ripe onions and patties that were NOT good beef. I do have to say that they use really good tasting pickles. Hard to screw up a pickle when it’s basically, cucumber, vinegar, dill, salt. In my opinion, the pickle was the healthiest part of the whole burger. So where did all this lead? I’ll get to that later. Some background first.
When my first two children were born, my in-laws had a farm and we grew, butchered and ground, canned, made and dehydrated EVERYTHING we put in our mouths. From meat to herbs. Truly Farm to Table before it was a thing. I think my grocery bill for the month was around $20 dollars. . . maybe. That ended when my then husband and I decided to part ways and although I had a small garden, I was beyond dirt poor and thought spending $1.39 on a Fish Sandwich meal from McD’s was a better deal than going to the store, buying a carrot, potato and an onion for that same amount. . . don’t know what I was thinking! I would make sure that the kids had food but I would go without. At the time I thought I was being a good mom but what ended up happening was I became Anorexic and food was not the enemy. I felt I didn’t deserve to eat but the kids did.
I would take the occasional bite of a carrot then ply myself with laxatives to get rid of said carrot as punishment for eating something that should have gone to the children. At this point I was working and had money for all the bills and food but my mindset was so unhealthy that it didn’t matter. I had also added booze into the mix so I was a complete embodiment of disaster!
Fast forward several years, new hubby, two more children with the last one being a premie. My mindset flipped and now I needed to eat for his life. Because my ‘little’ was in Neonatal for so long, I was at the hospital up to 16 hours a day. My bonus mom was watching the other kids and the husband had to work. My focus was the newest little. We started out at Good Sam in Portland where he was born and then after 10 days, they transferred us to Emanual. . . LOVE THAT HOSPITAL. Anyway, my diet consisted of hospital food - mainly high protein salads but occasionally my Mom, mom and sister would bring me a burger with fries or a big fat sandwich. I devoured it all as now I was panic eating. I HAD to save my baby.
I had to dump good nutrition into him through breast milk being tube fed to him. That breast milk? yeah, I was pumping so much out that I could have fed 100 newborns at each feeding. I was panic pumping. Panic Eating and Panic Pumping of Breast Milk is not good. I forced my body to hang onto every bite and produce more than the amount of milk my baby needed. I was causing my body to have a meltdown but instead of falling apart, it was over doing everything. Weight gain was a result. Depression was a result. Anxiety was a result. Vitamin deficiency was a result. All of this lasted for years. I couldn’t balance or regulate anything and I couldn’t figure out why.
Fast forward to five years ago. As an Energy Practitioner/Medicine woman by trade and in Life, I knew that working on myself was of the utmost importance. I was really sick 5 years ago with pneumonia when a friend called and said she was coming over. She, herself is an Energy Medicine Practitioner who arrived 20 minutes later spoon and tiny little healing stones in hand. My energy moves fast and it was hungry for healing as I was at a literal dead end. I couldn’t walk to the door, I sat in a chair, I coughed so hard I peed my pants but within a week, I was better and I kept getting better. All the work for others I had been doing since I was a child, finally had a name and I wanted to know more and put names to ‘protocols’ I had been doing innately for years. Thus began my journey to adding in eating clean.
With my energy journey came the desire to have a garden that provided better food than what we were still putting into our bodies. We would make great choices to eat - what we thought was good food, but then we would get busy and it was more convenient to grab a premade breakfast croissant then actually make breakfast. Cheese, crackers and various processed meats would be the easy dinner. Red wine was as staple to unwind by the fire pit. Then COVID hit and there was nothing to do but process and navigate which eats at a person. Loads of wine was consumed and we stocked up on CRAP along with good foods. The good foods were hard to get due to the shortage of everything and the fresh foods rotted faster than ever before. We weren’t getting any better, we were getting fatter and more unhealthy even though we didn’t have that mindset.
We have always had a garden and it always grew well but my knowledge on what to do with the abundance of veggies was limited. I didn’t know even an fraction of what I do now about gardening. Always kind of winged it. One day at a gathering of healers, my teacher had a friend in from another state and she spoke to us about her garden, the ecosystems of the plant roots, the dirt, the importance of companion gardening. The conversation was brief but man! It resonated with me in the most delicious way! Thank gawd for computers and phones as I put both of them to work seeking out knowledge about trees and plants, natures breath. I was so connected to this mission of mine that at times I felt absorbed into the very dirt I had my hands in.
I have to admit, some information and knowledge I thought I had about gardening and food was NOTHING compared to what’s out there so I started digging and picking the brains of successful gardeners that I knew. I wanted a garden that thrived so I spent days, weeks and months pouring through books as well as the internet. I didn’t want just a run of the mill garden. I wanted a garden that was chemical free and produced enough to feed others as well as ourselves. I researched equipment and how to’s for the highest quality of preservation of said foods. I also googled recipes and read cookbooks, even researched how to get your family to change from craving processed foods to fresh food cravings. THAT was a hard sell but a successful one!
Something to know about me: When I am passionate about a goal, I don’t want to wait. I have to gather as much good knowledge as I can immediately and continue gathering said information until I am well educated on the subject and ready to take action. Thus became the garden we have today. We use our own compost, we save seeds, we encourage little bees and pollinators to visit and we NEVER use chemicals. As our garden evolved, so has our good food supply, sharing when we can. Our health depends on the good foods we eat.
