a little egg

All of our hens have been broody. All of them. It's ridiculous. I throw them off the nest (or lock them out of the hen house), but no eggs. How very odd that broodies don't even lay eggs to sit on..... or maybe they did way back and we took them. Anyway, finally we had an egg this morning. Had an egg. Esmé insisted on carrying it (read insisted as: screech loudly at me until I capitulated and gave her it). Put it in your pocket Esmé, keep it safe, I tell her. No! Esmé carry it! she yells, fog horn loudness at me. And she doesn't just carry it, but dance with it too, whereby it slips from fat fingers. Oh no, poor egg, breathlessly whispered.







And then, she declares with a flourish, leaving it to it's fate, never mind! And I suppose she's right.

sliding days

The days slide by sometimes with not much to show for them other than dirt grimed hands (well that would be me) and a mess inside and out for me to clean up at the end of the day. I looked at Isaac this morning and remembered when he was in the kitchen wanting to help that not too far of he'll be a teen not much interested in spending his time with me (maybe). These are the days I have with them all. My Grandma once said these were the best days of my life, only you don't realise until everyone has left and you have a moment to think about it. But I do know it. I do. Or at least in as much as I can without retrospect.



Play dough, juicing, gardening, chalk play, and outsideness. We have had little bike rides and walks and gymnastics, tennis, dancing and bouncing on the trampoline. Muffin making and beating away on the drums (oh god, I had to tell Isaac to take them to the garage rather than hallway. There's only so much my ears can take). We threw pots ouside in the garden-sun on my friend's wheel (thanks Sian!) and I recieved reiki (very calming).



















And that's how the days go by.

some truths

~ maca and goji berries make me feel ill. But maca is a now know TH1 stimulant so that could be why.

~ I make this (my new chocolate) every day and eat all of it myself every day (100g cacao butter, 50g coconut oil, lucuma, mesquite, lots of raw carob, buckwheaties and coconut, teeny pinch of purple corn extract).

~ I think super foods are over rated. Seriously. I think they place a strain on the body, they are super concentrates, or super powerful and unusual for the body to assimilate. I think they should be used very moderately, sparingly and experimented with carefully. Not used by the cup full willy-nilly in every recipe. I have had all sorts of weird reactions to various things (from thumping pounding heart and hyper maniac speed-effects from cacao to upset tummy when using goji's). I use them pretty much like condiments now (a dash of pollen and so on in smoothies). Erm, except of course the above carob chocolate, but it's well tested ;)



~ Plopping various combinations of children in the bath is something I love doing, they are occupied, soothed and entertained and I can sew in the next room or sort out beds and clothes and such upstairs jobs without 'helpers'.

~ I am eating eggs again. Day Two. Feeling pretty good with them. Supposedly it can take 72 hrs for any adverse effects to be seen when re-introducing an eliminated food so I shall be interested to see. I am pretty keen to try yogurt. It has been a year of no dairy and no grains, no sugar pretty much for me. I just ordered some of this to try... although I think making kefir with raw goats milk would be superior. I think when it arrives I will still dither over whether or not to try it.



~ Just made this Raspberry Cheese for the three little ones, they utterly adored it and it was super easy: mix a pot of yogurt (we used sheep bio live) with a tub of raspberries and a couple of big spoonfuls of honey (I melted ours a bit to get it runny). Mix well and turn into a colander lined with an old clean tea towel or cheesecloth over a bowl, overnight (the whey drips out). Next morning plop into a bowl and mix up until it turns wonderfully pink. The boys spread this over some 'chocolate crunch cake' I made, it was a yummy breakfast. (Chocolate crunch: melted goat butter mixed with oats, branflakes, cocoa powder, raisins, spelt flour, honey, brown rice syrup; cooked for a 20 mins, med heat). This raspberry cheese would be a fab raw cheesecake topping (Isaac told me). Felix said it was 'better than ice cream'. Esmé licked the bowl clean and asked for 'more. High praise.

~ Sometimes I get this solid urge to fling myself on the ground and lie there, communing with nature. I feel the same sometimes staring at the stream; that I'd love to just lie there letting the water flow over me. But I don't ever act upon this impulse. Why not? Cos' my clothes would get muddy from the grass, or wet. That's the truth. The clothes that I will toss at the end of the day onto the mountain-laundry heap. Ok. I'll do it. The next time I feel the urge I'll just do it. See what happens. I'm really hoping the postman doesn't choose that time to show up and send for the strait jacket people to cart me off.

~ I am desperate for some sort of guided meditation CD's. My TCM practitioner said my overactive mind is generating much heat which isn't helping my inflammation one bit. He said straight meditation can make things worse as you constantly tell your mind to shut up. But guided meditation can be good.



~ My kitchen seems to resemble a laundry room most of the time. I only ever put clothes away when I know people are coming over. Or at least more than one person, just the one, and it stays.

~ I started a yoga class again :) It's fab. Years and years and years since. 90 minutes just for me. It's not the wonderful Ashtanga, it's Hatha but I couldn't care less, it's still wonderful. I need some time just for me, I really really do. My head spins with too much mama-children only time. That's the truth. I don't function at my best, I get snippy-snappy.

~ It has been nearly a year since this auto immune diagnosis of mine. Some days I feel as well as can be, better than I have ever been actually, others I am so tired and I have chest pains, or maybe a sore red ear on and off. It's very discouraging. What I feel is that diet and lifestyle changes are wonderful and necessary but sometimes an inflammatory condition can be self perpetuating and minor triggers (mood, a suspect food) can set it off. I think something needs to interfere with the inflammatory response enough to shake it up and stop it, change the disease pattern. For some I imagine this might be immune suppressing meds, for others it could well be other things, changing gut flora that may well be supporting inflammation for example. Making sure that diet is not contributing to inflammation is then ideal as once the perpetuating source of inflammation is tackled there will be no cause for further inflammation. But yeah... finding the additional *something* to change things feels very uphill sometimes.

Still..... This is probably one of those major life-lessons that I truly *need* to learn. Already in many ways this has been a blessing, I am being forced to evaluate my whole life and decide if this is the life I want to be living. What can I do to feel more *me* more authentic, my god isn't everyone's blog just awash these days with folks saying they want to be 'authentic'? Usually I find it pretty hilarious, yes, you're an individual.... just like everyone else. There's a lot of letting go involved in this. Letting go of the need for drama in my life, letting go of the need to be *special* (did I really once adore hospitals as child? Thinking only super special people got to go there? *shudder*) I totally release that, I let go of that false image. I will be happy indeed to be one of life's smiley-happy people, quiet (ha!) and without the need to *be* something. Quite a quest.

~ I hardly ever go out. In truth I am such a home body.



~ I love my babies in hand-knits.

~ I have vivid dreams nearly every night, sometimes very good, other times not so.

~ The other day I hit and killed a badger on the road. It lurched out of the dark like a big sloth or mini polar bear and I didn't even have time to swerve. It thumped under me and I had to drive on, shaking and anxious. Unbelievable, I've never hit so much as a butterfly before and now a huge badger! I was so shocked and worried and sorry, I would have pulled over to recover if The Beauty had not been almost in meltdown mode.. By the time I was home though (20 minutes) I had totally forgotten all about it. My dh asked me the following day, er Claire, you haven't hit anything lately with your car have you, come and look at the bumper....? I was all, OMG yes! I can't believe I forgot! Terrible, terrible ......



~ I always wish we had two big tables instead of one (greedy self), only because clearing it for a meal is a HUGE effort on my part. Though now we can eat more outdoors, on steps on knees, on grass..... much better.

polly dolly

Time for a doll for The Beauty. She likes to take clothes on and off a tiny little cloth doll that I bought in Ikea a million years ago. I was awake in the night and kept on thinking about how she might like a limbed doll, like Purple Haired Tom, but much smaller. So I made one. It was pretty easy. The body pieces are just cut and sew and stuff (with carded sheep wool). The head only a teeny bit more to it, I used the book Making Waldorf Dolls as my guide. I used the Crafty Sheep hair tutorial again, it has some good links in the sidebar resource guide for more handy tips and so on.



I did the whole thing in bits and pieces (how can anyone do crafty things any other way with children in every corner of the house and garden waiting to pop out at you and ask for something every time you sit down?). So there was lots of sewing up the odd limb in between making smoothies, or wiping someones butt, or chasing a stray chicken, or drying someones eyes and applying liberal amounts of magic cream to a much realer limb.....

The headless chook doll, a tiny bit scary.



Polly Dolly. Ready for, and then having some adventures. She's not perfect in any sense but she's a fine first doll for a little girl who will probably drown her in a muddy puddle.







I think she likes her



I whipped this up double quick for The Beauty's wee cousin while I was in the sewing room.

cooling inflammation and de-calcification

I have recently become enamoured with David Wolfe's online persona (and yes he is also a great salesman :) I notice....). His nutritional research is pretty front line. I particularly like the look of his Longevity Now programme, but lack available funds to purchase such a necessity for healthful living. However, a bit of online digging unearthed some good videos which I think covers most of the stuff on his programme. If you type in 'David Wolfe and 'calcium' on YouTube there's a series of videos describing what is a culmination of about 20 years of research: that aging and degenerative diseases are a process of calcification. Oh here's a link starting with video two (the first is just welcome babble). He also has a great little video on enhancing immune function, here.

In order to reverse this process and breakdown the coral like calcification cells that silt up and cause in the heart: heart attack, in the brain: stroke, in the gallbladder: stones, in the eyes: cataracts, in the joints: arthritis.... and so on. When we reach a peak of how much calcium we can store it overflows and we have inflammation, the reduced ability for blood flow in ares of high calcification leads to inflammation.

Calcification detox lifestyle would include:

To break down:

~ MSM, DMSO, Zeolites, EDTA 9with garlic, alone it doesn't work)

To fry the calcium gunk:

~ your basic anti parasite anti fungal herbs: garlic, wormwood, black walnut, blue mangosteen, cats claw....

To restore and clean up debris and inflammation:

~ enzymes (digestive) and adaptogenic herbs (ginseng etc0

A basic alkaline diet is required (veg based).

High vitamin C, the body prefers whole food vitamin C such as camu camu berry or acerola cherry.

High Vitamin D

High omega 3 - yes David Wolfe the raw foodist recommends krill oil over any plant based omega 3's available.

Good calcium sources are those converted from silicon and magnesium:

~ Silicon: hemp leaf, oat straw, nettle, horsetail, bamboo leaf and sap
~ Magnesium: cacao

------------------------------------------

Interesting stuff. I use most of these things and adapt, say lacto fermented veggies as being a good way to increase enzymes and are super easy to maintain a cheap supply of. I don't have the anti fungal stuff under my belt yet, I doubt a half to a full bulb of garlic a week counts towards that.

I have been using Omega Zen as a source of omega 3's since dong this vegan kick. But I am going to switch back to Krill. No matter what I read it's far more superior in terms of healing and bioavailability. I have noticed no difference in my own levels of inflammation since being vegan, I think even that the increase in seeds I have been consuming to keep hunger at bay is decidedly pro inflammatory with the bulk of omega 6's tipping the balance. So I look forward to including fish and fish oils and perhaps eggs again (heck I can see the source of those right back to origin). This omega 3 stuff does however lead me to speculate more on the exclusion of all animal based products and long term health.

I think at a basic level one could be veg based and use say high levels of Krill oil. At a maintenance level. For someone needing more anti inflammatory agents at work I think actual fish is a good addition too. Plus the more I get deeper into my own research and others I see that saturated fats are a *good* thing. This guy has some great top notch info on cooling inflammation and personally has given me info to help tweak my diet.

So I'm not going as far as animal flesh but fish I think so.

If one *needs* omega 3's for basic and higher immune regulation then to deprive it so for ideals and morals seems rather churlish. And to depend on capsule form (ie, Omega zen) as the sole source seems neither 'natural' nor sustainable. Krill Oil seems to meet these standards (of both sustainability and maximum superior health benefits), Mercola has some fab info and sells the best stuff IMO.

Also a high note, raw milk, delivered anywhere in the country! My boys had raw cow milk from a bio dynamic farm then we moved to Wales and scored raw goat milk, moving here I have not found a single supplier of either and so the boys and now Esmé have pasteurised goat milk. I am not so keen on it, but they all loathe seed and nut or oat milks and I don't touch soy with a barge pole. I am hesitant to introduce cow dairy but we shall experiment over the next couple of weeks. The good thing about diet is that you *can* keep on changing and adapting. The foolishness of theory and the human necessity to identify with one means we can end up believing one way of eating is correct forever, for all.. It's just not true. In times of illness a veg juice based diet may be great, or a sole diet of bone broth, but in times of growth or healing, esp for children the inclusion of high quality animal products supplying plenty of fat soluble vitamins A and D is is a necessity. Even UK raw foodist Shazzie feeds her dd eggs and raw goat cheese, for good teeth and bones these vitamins are essential. Also, of course my little pet need: anti inflammatory.

I am seeing a Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) practitioner who is giving me acupuncture to draw out heat and also does regular pulse diagnosis to pinpoint areas of weakness in the body that need strengthening. I am taking a course of bentonite clay to bind toxins in my intestines as supposedly I am inflamed there too and reabsorbing the toxins my body is dumping there. It's an odd thing to drink this clay water, but I am game. I am starting a course of cooling herbs too so am excited to get going with them (hurry up Mr Postman). I'll report back on how I find them.

Anyway.... I shall put my foodie soap box away, tucked here under my desk.

Side note: Anyone out there with an inflammatory condition - have you checked out LDN (Low Dose Naltrexone) as a therapy option? Non toxic and very beneficial. I am looking into it for myself but coming upfront with much NHS resistance (it's a generic drug and so pharm. companies don't have a patent on it, thus individual practices must fund it alone, tho at £15 a month it's hardly costly, and one could sub it them selves). Pippa, if you read this have you heard of it for MS? It seems to have great coverage for that. How it works: It is an opiate antagonist and blocks the production of endorphins for a couple of hours in the middle of the night (you take it before bed), the body's rebound response is to prodcue more endorphins than normal. Immune function supposedly can be regulate by an increase in endorphins, particularly T-reg cells. Also this is a good option of treatment for anything requiring pain relief or speedy healing.

socks!

I have been doing a few online swaps with other mama's and have received these lovely lovely hand knitted socks for The Beauty. Thank you so much Alice's Mum, they are wonderful and worn daily. Here they are hanging up to air off ready for another wearing :)



The pair on the far left were a pair I knitted for Felix many moons ago and in a dash of inspiration I unearthed them from an overflowing old bag of outgrown stuff. Fabulous, another pair to go with the two new pairs.

paper boats and chooks

Nanny visits and shows everyone how to make paper boats, much racing forthwith and many many tens of boats are made and sailed.









The newest chooks are sometimes out to roam and sometimes in their big pen, it all depends on whether I am feeling fox-anxious and whether or not I am in or outside..... today they were out and glorying in fresher grass, worms and unfortunately for me, the ill timed sowing of grass seed to cover up areas of high use by the boys. I never for one moment envisioned one sowing to be enough anyway though so I don't mind.







The boss man cockerel is quite a wimp really and scares easily by a blowing sheet on the line. His crowing makes everyone laugh (affectionately, not maliciously) as it's decidedly both boyish and feminine rather than manly. Here's hoping it's due to his immaturity rather than odd voice box as years of giggling at him may make him lurch at us with his deathly spurs.



Fairy Girl and her Nanny spread more treasure hunt clues.



Are we the only ones with a constant pile of wellies by the front door? Certainly they put a halt to any aspirations of gracious living as we stumble-trip through the threshold and gusts of April wind send dried mud into powdered dust to decorate the hall. Hey ho, though, a small price to pay for the pleasures of mud and stream.



Nettles for my juice and pea shoots and chives for Isaac, he asked for a salad at lunch and I refused to make him one (I know I know... I was tired, what can I say?) so I made up for it at dinner time.

garlicky garden with ducks

We had lots of rain over Easter weekend that turned the garden into a temping slick of slidy mud. Everything seemed a bit forlorn, despite gaudy coloured eggs being rolled downhill, smashed and then foiled ones found and eaten.



But then today, yesterday (tomorrow?) was magically like this:







I much prefer the bare legs of today. Just glorious. There is no where on earth I'd rather be on a day like this than in my garden with my children.





The seedlings seem to like both sorts of weather tho, so we must suffer the rain cheerfully on their part and everything starts to shoot up to show us it's a good thing.





We have a pair of ducks, mating and picking their nesting spot right under our nose (or bridge). This is the only time of year we ever see ducks on our stream so it's pretty special. Every year this pair (we think it's the same pair, I mean how can we tell) come back to this same spot and then weeks later their chicks are led away at the crack of dawn one fair morning as we all slumber. Now it's mild I can sleep with my window open and I hear them up early quacking. With the cockerel crowing and the woodpeckers chipping away it's hard not to to be woken early here (or with the perpetually early rising two year old latched to my breast around the clock, it could be that too), we live in the land of birds (we have a pair of majestically cawing buzzards up in a tree right now too).





You need socks off to look at ducks properly.









The boys and a girl helper get busy making fires and dens. Fires and dens are the highlight of warm weather. Isaac is a total pyromaniac, always has been. But is careful and in control (he likes to tell me). He's used matches since he first spotted them, both boys are pretty fire savvy. As for Esmé... well, she wants to be, but generally ends up sitting with smoke blowing in her eyes and crying about it. She moves... and then the smoke follws her.... The boys insist that chanting 'white rabbit' three times changes the direction of smoke in your favour so it's all I hear.





(note Esmé and her big girl pants; she's so proud of them they must be on show whenever possible)

I am yumming up the spring goodies coming my way.





Isaac doing the honours and collecting the wild garlic. Every inch of land in our dank damp stream area is just carpeted with the green jewels of wild garlic, it's so magical. My favourite style of eating them this week is this: leeks and sweet potatoes and red lentils simmered in stock and coconut oil to a nice squish, the wild garlic and crushed bulb garlic added at the very end. Divine mush to spoon up or spread later, cold, on crackers.