Day 5

I am having this delicious juice right now. It's exactly what I wanted for a break from sweet. It's tomatoes, celery, cilantro, jalapeno, garlic with a little salt and cumin. Mmm I love Mexican food and this is my substitute. I don't think there is any way to juice avocado though. It's a pity. The tomatoes and jalapenos are from our garden too.

I feel good. A little tired off and on. But still light and full of energy most of the time.

I had really wanted to go to the Dekalb Farmer's Market today after Liturgy but can't. We can't even make it to Liturgy. We have no gas. Well we have some but only enough to get around to places immediate to us. When my Dad picked us up at the airport last Monday he had to siphon gas out of his boat and added a little ethanol to it and put that in our van. It sounds like our town is one of the worst affected from gas shortages in our area. There is one gas station in town open right now and the line is backed up down the highway. Each day someone else has a little gas and they sell out in a few hours.

David get's to work because he drives a different car to and from work and people are supposed to return the tank full when they return a car. Lately they have had some people not returning it full and not bothered by the idea that they will be charged $5.50 a gallon to refill it. Why not? That's only a dollar more a gallon than the going rate right now in our town and they don't have to hunt down a gas station and wait in line to fill it either. No, David had to do that Saturday morning so someone would even be able to rent one of the cars. It just hard to believe that when David moved here about 10 years ago that gas was UNDER a dollar a gallon!

So I guess we are lazy. Neither of us has any interest in him going out and spending the morning waiting in line for gas hoping to get some. We will refill the van when it gets easier. In the meantime he can get to and from work. My Dad has a job down in Atlanta right now so he can fill up his own tank down there when he goes. And he is going right by the Dekalb Farmer's Market and I can give him our grocery list and he can get some stuff this week. Here come the bushel of apples and 25 lb bag of juicing carrots! It's the cheapest place to buy any of this stuff. The problem is there is no where to really store large bags and boxes of bulk food. I have a 50 lb bag of potatoes and a 50 lb bag of onions on the kitchen floor right now, right next to a 6 gallon bucket of brown rice.

Day 3

We still have 27 chickens. Yay! I am amazed they all survived.

I felt like I was getting mastitis yesterday. I had breast pain, aches and chills and a low grade fever but it only lasted about 8 hours. (I initially wrote 8 years. *snort*) I am so relieved I am ok now. I was not going to quit the juice feast because of that but wasn't looking forward to doing it while sick either. I wonder if it had anything to do with whatever I had being so short lived.

I went and weeded in the garden today. I haven't done much out there in a few weeks. I hope to get some fall vegetables planted this weekend. I really really appreciate the areas that were totally mulched. I have so little weeding to do there. It's really great for lazy gardeners.

Day 2 and the chickens

I feel grrreat! I got up this morning with plenty of energy but some sinus yuck. I went ahead and juiced 3 quarts of juice for the day first thing this morning. It took like 55 min. I am surprised. Maybe I timed it wrong? I was just grateful I had time to make it and drink a quart before anyone woke up. I won't try drinking a whole quart at once again though.

I had at least a gallon of juice yesterday and 2 glasses of beet kvass. This morning I juiced 3 quarts of juice and that was several pounds of apples and carrots, a whole thing of celery (what is that called?), 2 large cucumbers, a bunch of parsley and half a cabbage. I plan on having more kvass. I love the sour taste in contrast to the sweet of the juice. I just love beet kvass though. I also did some exercise and dry brushing this morning as well. I like how good the dry brushing makes my skin feel. So far I am not really hungry. I do notice when I go too long before drinking some more juice. I get cranky. That's typical for me.

I am going to see about making some juice and lactofermenting it for a couple of days before drinking it. Some people on a list I am on have done that. I want to check out the recommendations for how to do it though. I really like sour drinks. All greens without sweets like apple and carrot are just gag worthy and impossible to get down. It feels awful in the back of your throat. I think maybe fermenting it will change that.

The boys left the side doors off two chicken tractors last night. There is a pile of feathers next to one. We need to count them and see who survived. There are still a ton of them out of there of course. I don't think too many can be missing. These were large openings so that gave them more of an opportunity to run off into the woods at night rather than be cornered in the tractor. At least we still have both our Buff Orpingtons. Of course the tractor that got closed fully is the bachelor pad full of roosters!

Starting a Juice Fast/Feast

I am starting a juice feast today. I have juiced before and felt so good. The longest I have ever juice fasted before was 10 days. I remember feeling great but just the idea that I hadn't had solid foods in that long a period of time made me nervous and I was afraid to continue. I have done some reading though of people going much longer periods of time and I feel far less concerned knowing others have done it and not just survived but thrived.

I really need to turn around my diet fully and lose weight. The more unhealthy food I eat the more I crave it. I did some reading a while back and learned that celiacs is one of the main causes of the hyperparathyroidism I had. I have known I am sensitive to gluten for probably about 7 years now. But I still struggle to fully cut gluten out of my diet. And recently I started having these disconcerting stomach pains. It was in my upper left abdomen. It wasn't too painful just a constant feeling of being swollen, sore and uncomfortable and then at times uncomfortable enough that I couldn't bend or lean forward and just needed to lay down and rest. When I was laying on my stomach or side it felt almost like I was laying on something. I found that being as strict as possible about cutting all gluten out eliminated the pain and discomfort.

So I am an all or nothing kind of person. The better I eat the better I feel. And right now I feel really motivated to do this. I ate all raw yesterday till I had some cooked vegetables and tortilla chips for dinner. I got up about 6:30 am today and started my coffee and checked my email. I felt good though. I didn't feel like I just couldn't function till I had my coffee. I ended up just not drinking any. I made myself a pint of juice at 8:30 am and decided to just stick with that.

I hope posting this will keep me motivated. I am not sure how long I plan to go though. I'll decide later. My goal is at least a gallon of juice every day and a tbsp or so of coconut oil. I wouldn't worry about 1,500 calories of junk so I don't know why the idea of 1,500 calories or thereabouts in the form of fresh juice seems so odd. I guess because it's so different. But a gallon of carrot juice is 1,510 calories. I think I'll survive.

First day of school AND liturgical year!

Today was our first day of school for St John Chrysostom Academy and the start of the liturgical year. Unfortunately when I got up I heard Isaac crying at 5:30 this morning. He had a fever and had had a "..sad dream. No, a terrible dream!" He is mostly on bed rest today but has done some school regardless.



The day has gone really well. After we finished school and lunch the children did a procession around the house and garden and we sang the Troparia of the Cross. The kids were up late last night making the processional cross and had so much fun. "bang bang bang bang bang bang bang" Then we came inside and had a first day of school cake. It was so good! You would never have guessed it was gluten free with a Splenda sweetened frosting.




I learned that I can do this just fine. All I need is one extra person around to help cook, clean and watch the little ones. Reassuring huh? David was home of course because it's Labor Day. It made it all go so smoothly. I kept thinking about how differently what we were doing would be going if David hadn't take the screaming Emmeline off. She did come in handy though. We used her as an example of the flesh today while reading the Prologue as she threw herself down on the floor and wailed over something.