A medical miracle - I think . . .

Three years ago come July, I gifted myself with a new mower - a Bad Boy with 60" blade, zero degree turns.   I love it.  It is ideal for mowing pastures, and I have mowed plenty of them.

Fast forward to Labor Day Weekend, same year.  I was working in my flower bed in front of the atrium - 40' long bed with lots of perennials in it, and I was thinning them, weeding, getting the flower bed ready for the winter.  There are a lot of errant stinging nettle plants in there, and suddenly I felt intense stinging on my left ankle as well as my left wrist and hand.  I had on gloves, but they were light gardening gloves, and the stingers went right through.  Then I looked down and saw that the two aforementioned body parts were covered with bees!

I had inadvertently disturbed a nest of ground bees.  I moved fast, shook them off, got into the garage and ditched the gloves as well as my socks.  I found a couple more clinging to my socks and gloves.

It hurt!  I had over 20 stings.  I have never shown any allergic reaction to bee stings, but I was a bit nervous, being home alone and getting so many of them all at once.  I felt a bit nauseated, but I think it was just from the pain.  A little research on the internet led me to take a couple of Benedryl and drive to a local hospital.  The reason I know it was Labor Day weekend was that the waiting room was full of people with heat exhaustion and stomach aches and whatever else shows up on a 90º day at the largest 4-day festival in Indiana - The Blueberry Festival.  The woman at the desk told me that it would be quite a while before they could see me, about 20 people ahead of me, and anyway if I truly was allergic to bee stings I would be dead by then.  So I went home.

Fast forward to my next mowing day.  It was hot and dry, and when I came in the house, I was covered with chaff from mowing.  I started itching about an hour later, spending the evening playing cards with my friends and scratching my forehead. 

It got worse and worse.  Of course, I put some of my homemade yarrow cream on my face, but it didn't help, even seemed to get worse.  I finally went to a dermatologist.  She said it appeared to be an allergy.  She prescribed cortisone cream, and it cleared up.

I wish that was the end of the story, but it kept popping up.  My hands got very bad!  I went back to dermatologist, and again she prescribed a slightly different cortisone cream and told me to wear gloves at all times.  Hah!  That's a joke!  She told me I had to quit beating up my hands, but I'm saving that for retirement.

The rashes would come and go.  Over time, they got worse when I used my Lemon Skin Renew face cream, so I quit using it.  Hello, wrinkles.  :(   Then I started reacting to my Triple Rose Indulgence.  I would use my creams only two or three times a week, and then use the cortisone cream on alternate nights to get rid of the rash.  My lips were very dry and flaking, too.

I removed the Borax from my formulas.  My emulsifier of choice, the most natural, is a combination of beeswax and Borax.  The formula emulsified pretty well without the Borax, but it didn't make any difference - I still broke out.

I started making deodorant, and everyone who tried it loved it.  So did I - until I saw a ring of red around my underarms.  So I went back to the horrid store-bought deodorant, and started to suspicion that it might be the beeswax, since that seemed to be the only ingredient that was common to everything that was making me break out.

Saturday at the market, I was staring at my terrible dry hands and grabbed a lotion bar off the shelf -- something I rarely use.  They are very heavy on beeswax, but I didn't even think about it.  I applied it several times throughout the day.  That night when I went to bed, my hands started to itch.  It was terrible - welts, even the beginning of cracks forming between my fingers.  My face itched, my back itched, places that had never seen a drop of any of my lotions itched!  This stuff seemed to be in my system, not just a topical reaction.

Duh, I know I should have figured it out sooner, but the light bulb finally went off.  I threw away every last thing with beeswax in it.  A friend was visiting the next day and saw the pile of stuff to be put in the trash, and she was happy to take it all.  My research tells me that only 4% to 6% of people have an allergy to beeswax, so she is probably safe.  Did the stings on Labor Day set off my allergic reaction?  The rashes started after the stings.  Might I now be allergic to bee stings?  Probably time for an EpiPen.

The results were fast - the next morning my face didn't itch and now on Day Four the red is receding at last.  My hands have quit itching, although there are still dry patches.  I know from experience that it will take quite some time to get past all of this.  My face is better, but cheeks are still a little red and I don't leave the house without foundation.

So why is there an "I think . . ." behind the title of this blog?  Because there is another part of this story.  I am thankful for very good health for my age.  Aside from the skin rashes, though, I have had another complaint which I have just attributed to age.  My joints ache.  After I have been sitting a while, the first ten steps I take are painful.  I am the only one in my family who doesn't suffer from arthritis, so I just figured it finally caught up with me.  Sigh . . .

I can't use my homemade Pain Relief Cream anymore because, of course, it has beeswax in it.  Back to the ibuprofen.  Last night, I didn't need any pain relief to make it through the night.  When I got up this morning, I was (at least relatively) pain free. I am wondering / hoping / guessing that the allergy may have been affecting my joints as well.  If eliminating beeswax from my life takes care of the joint pain, well, THAT is the miracle.

As for my creams, I have ordered a natural non-petroleum and certified organic wax to use in place of beeswax, one for one.  I want my Lemon Skin Renew!!!  If you want to see more about what products I sell, you can go here.   Ceres & Co. on-line store

Kim and I just finished planting our first seeds of the season - about 760 seeds give or take a few.  Hot peppers and sweet peppers.  We plant by the biodynamic calendar (see more here), peppers are "fruit," next fruit day will be the 23rd, when we will get first planting of tomato seeds done.  It is always fun to work out there, but it is brutally cold! 

I wonder how many records we have broken this year.  It isn't just the cold, it is the INCESSANT cold that is getting to me.  Our first calf is living in the barn.  We never keep the calves in when they are born.  It is healthier for them to be outside.  But not this year.  We are expecting two more calves this week, a beef calf and a dairy calf.  Where will be put them all?  Their little lean-to in the calf pen is just not enough for them.

Looking at the 10 day forecast, there are only three days when the temperature does not dip below zero in the nighttime.  This is just not right!

We have to crank the greenhouse temp up now that the seeds are in.  They are in seedling trays on a heat mat, but the 35º temperature that we maintain for the winter greens out there is just not good enough any longer.  Thermostat has been moved up to 55º, and furnace is running pretty often to maintain that.  Ca-ching, ca-ching. $$$$$$$$$$$$$

Well, spring officially begins on Thursday.  Perhaps things will get better in a week or two.  Or not.  Sigh . . .

I may not be crowing tomorrow, but . . .

My trusty Canon MP640 is a real workhorse.  For a little and fairly inexpensive printer, it does a lot a things.  It is a little slow, but it prints on two sides - without having to remove the finished prints and flipping them.  Imagine my consternation when I got my Epson and found out that "prints on two sides" meant that instructions for how to flip the paper popped up when you were done with the first side!

My mighty Canon can be filled with 25 lb. paper, the printing for 30 of my two sided flyers for the Walkerton Dairy Herd Association  (see more here) or my skin care products (more about that here) programmed, and then I really don't care how slow it is, because I can shower, or make a batch of soap, or load the dishwasher while it is doing its thing - it prints two sides without any further input from the operator.  It even senses when you have new ink cartridges and it lets the ink dry a little longer before it does the second side.  Good machine!

Today my color was off -- I use a lot of brown in my printed material, and it was lavender/pink instead of brown -- and even though it hadn't said to clean the print heads, I did it anyway; but the yellow just didn't work.   Then I got a printer error message.  I have already changed the print head once.  They are expensive!  I went out to the internet to see if I could find a good cleaning kit so I could save $75.  One site said to remove the print head and reinstall and sometimes that would clear it.  I did.  Oops!  Now it wouldn't print at all!!  Perfectly blank paper, even after it made all the sounds of printing.  I reinstalled it three times, figured I had damaged something and would have to buy a new one.

I found another site that showed you how to clean the head by putting it under warm running water.  Say what?  Would that really work?  Well, what did I have to lose?  I rinsed it until the water ran clear, dried the contacts thoroughly, reinstalled it, and voila! it printed again.  Yellow still wasn't good, so I ran a cleaning cycle, and all is well!!  Who'd of thunk it?  $75 for a print head, $8 plus shipping for a cleaning kit, and this cost me a couple of paper towels.  :)

Go to this site (video on how to clean a Canon print head) to see it done if you have a Canon with a sticky print head.

I can only hope it is still printing tomorrow morning.  Soon I'll be printing greenhouse labels, can't do without it.

Baking day

Biggest day ever for baking.  I will be very thankful to get into my river house and have a stove with two ovens!  Here's what I did last week for Purple Porch.  Nineteen loaves, plus five bunny rolls!

Back to front: Honey Oatmeal Walnut braids, Einkorn baguettes, sourdough rye, bunny rolls, rising baguettes

Baguettes rising

Honey Oatmeal Walnut braid

These are from Einkorn, an ancient grain.

Baguettes ready for the oven

Sourdough Rye

Bunny rolls

Egg eating rooster

I had three young roosters that were hatched out here mid-summer.  I haven't had much luck with what hatches here, because they seem to be about seventy-five percent roosters, not good when you have chickens so that you can get eggs!

I have this problem with butchering my chickens, as in "I have never butchered one of them."  They get taken by the wild animals, a couple of them have gotten sick or died from old age, but that's it.  Kim has urged me to butcher the young roosters, although by now they are too old to use as fryers.  They have to be under three months to go in the frying pan, or so he said.

I let him take three young roosters.  One of them had been eating eggs, so he definitely had to go.  Kim was not allowed to touch Buster, Tiny or Ricky Ricardo.  They are all too, too old anyway.

Kim said the meat was very dark, and I should get chickens with white feathers, because the meat is lighter and more appealing to people.  Well, these are for me, so I didn't really care.  I put two of them in the freezer and took the other one to the house.

Contrary to what Kim said (I am pretty adventurous in the kitchen), I decided to give the whole breast a go in one of my favorite recipes.  It's based on a recipe from MOMMYTO2BOYS on www.Allrecipes.com with some slight modifications.  If you want to look it up, search on Chicken Breasts in Caper Cream Sauce.  Mine is adapted for one whole large bone-in breast, from an older bird.  The cooking method has to change a bit to keep the finished product tender.  So here goes.

Mix 1 tsp. each lemon pepper, salt, dried dill weed and garlic powder until well blended.  Dredge a large whole chicken breast, bone in, in the mixture and sauté in 2 tbsp. of butter.  Do not overcook.  Just cook until the last of the pink is gone.  In fact, if there is a tiny bit of pink left, that is all the better, as you are going to set the sautéed breast in a 200º oven while you finish the sauce.  It will continue to cook a bit.  In the same sauté pan, scrape up the browned bits and add a cup of heavy cream to the pan.  Over medium heat, reduce the cream by about half, stirring often.  I like to keep simmering until it forms a nice brown sauce.  Then add 2 tbsp. of capers, drained.  Remove the chicken breast from the oven and cut away from the bone.  You will have two nice pieces of breast meat.  Now slice each half across the grain into several thin slices and lay the slices back into the pan of sauce.  If you see any pink, make sure those get into the sauce first, and give them a minute or so to cook through completely.  The trick for getting juicy and tender meat, even from an older bird, is not to overcook.

Place the cooked breast slices on each of two plates and top with sauce.  I love cabbage sautéed in coconut oil for a side dish.  It is a great and tasty low carb meal.

So what did I do with the rest of the bird?  Well, those dark farm raised birds make a magnificent and tasty broth.  No need to add any canned stock.  I used the broth for vegetable soup, with a few pieces of drumstick meat floating in the broth.  Yum!  Then I took the remaining meat off the bone, chopped it fine, added finely chopped onion, dill pickle and yellow peppers, topped it all with a generous amount of real mayonnaise and served it on flax meal bread - also very low carb, and very tasty indeed!

I have enough of the chicken salad for at least two more meals.  That rooster served me well!  Let me know if you try the recipe, and how it turns out for you.  Bon appétit.

I am really sick of winter!

January blizzard - you can see some wisps of grass, but not any more!

The lane to the river - January blizzard

View to the greenhouse & dairy barn, January blizzard

Sleeping garden

February 9, 5" of new snow followed by the sun

February 9, new snow on garden and lane to river

What a year!  It is beautiful out, I will say that.  Every time the snow gets a little gray, Mother Nature dumps another few inches on us.  That is about its only redeeming quality.

It isn't so much that it is cold - it has actually been colder here one winter, with my trusty little weather station's screen going blank.  When I went to the manual to do some troubleshooting, I found that it quits at -22º.  Oh, my!  My neighbor claimed that our low was -26º on his old-fashioned nailed-to-the-barn-wall thermometer.  Now that's cold!  But we suffered for two days and then it was gone.  What is so bad is that there doesn't seem to be any end to it this winter.

On a Monday a few weeks ago, my low was -18.3º F.  And the high that day was -11.1º.  Yup, that was the HIGH!  And this time, while we did have one day in the following week that hit around 40º, it dived again, and two weeks later I had -18.8º F. on my weather station.  However, we did reach the balmy temperature of 2º that day.

Has that been the end of it?  No, indeed!  I had -7.7º the other day, and I am starting to look at a day when we don't dip below zero as tolerably pleasant.

The Farmers Market just seems to get colder and colder, as if the cold weather has soaked into its very bones, and there is no heating it up to a decent temperature no matter how hard the overhead heaters are churning.  No insulation in the walls, and people going in and out the doors continually.  My fingers and toes are numb by the time I leave each day.

But let's get back to the snow.  I have lived on this farm for nearly 12 years now.  In that period of time, I have been snowed in exactly twice and had to hire a snow plow to get down my half mile lane.  Being east of Lake Michigan, most of our snow here is lake effect snow.  I can plow through that stuff even when it is pretty deep with my little Prius.  (Gotta love my Prius -- it's a truck in greenhouse season and a snow plow in winter!)  So snow for the most part has not been an issue.  Then there is THIS winter, with its wet heavy snow measured in feet, not inches.  I have had to have the snow plow here four times in as many weeks!  Thank goodness the new 5" of snow I got last night is light and fluffy, or I would have to be calling for help again!

We haven't even played cards for three weeks, because Richard's lane is still packed full of snow.  The best I can hope for right now is that I will get to see my card playing friends tonight, and that the Weather Underground  is correct.  It does not have even one minus sign in front of the predicted highs and lows for the 10-day forecast.  We can only hope.

Spring cleaning a little early . . .

It drives me nuts how I can put stuff off.  Yesterday I put together a list of rooms and closets, numbered them, and I am cleaning the junk out of them one at a time.  The deal is that I do it first thing, BEFORE I check email or do yoga or anything else at all.  Well, I do make a pot of coffee!  :0)

I started with my laundry room this morning, threw out dried out shoe polish, poured together two containers of the same cleaner that were both three-quarters gone, found bits of laundry detergent that I stacked by the washer so that I will use them up and can go back to using my homemade laundry soap, gloves and mittens that I only had one of.  (I may be short of cash, but I refuse to wear mismatched gloves!  There are plenty of pairs that I was able to mate when I looked in corners.)  Took me about an hour, and I filled a garbage bag about half full.  Oh, and I found a device I bought for the housekeeper, to clean the blades on my overhead fans.  Only he never uses it.  So I did that this morning.  I still need to get up on the dining room table and do some scrubbing on the tips of the blades, but the fluffy gray dirt is GONE. 

Tomorrow morning is cupboard tops in kitchen.  I will do inside the cupboards another day - they get their own day, small wonder that.

Last thing on the list is the garage.  Ugh.

UPDATE:  It was really kind of fun.  I've decided to do the counter tops  today, especially since I found two different kinds of granite cleaner in the laundry room - but that will not excuse me from moving on to the next thing on the list tomorrow morning!  I have a mission!!!

Now I get to put an "X" in the box behind #1.

Room by room cleanup – Laundry room

X

And #2.

Room by room cleanup – Kitchen counters

X

Then on to yoga, email and income tax.  I am in a good mood already.  

Laundry room after cleaning.

Only working shoe polish left on shelf

 Cleaning supplies organized

Oh, so pretty!  Granite polished and sparkling!

Sourdough bread in the works, on a sparkling counter!

A window seat you can sit down on.  :)