Where have I come from….where will I go?

That is the question I tell myself often…although it’s quite unintentional. I never really put it down in words at all but, looking back at my life, the thought of it comes up regularly. I know that that the education I had in college was pushing me forward, but not necessarily in the way I thought I wanted it to. I learned things that developed into something much greater. But every which way I go, when I plant my heels into what I think may be good for me (like a decent job), an ax comes along and chops me down right into the dirt.

But looking back at all the things I have down so far, opportunities that have crossed my path, I feel its all for something greater. Some may say that it’s all in my head and I may have said that about others as well. But I have learned to reject what the status quo of our culture says and refuse believe that their idea is the only way. It’s not. And history has def proven that time and time again. We are in a time of massive change now and what has originally knocked me down from my perceived path keeps transforming me onto something better. At times it drives me nuts that I cannot settle for something for an extended period but what I am grateful for, now that I have seen it develop deeper, is that there is definitely a theme.  I am following a path. That’s for certain.

So here I am, packing for a year-long trip across this planet to explore the depths of my soul and the depths of this planet on a very non-traditional route. I have seen and read many backpackers’ blogs while they stop at various cities and hostels and experience that backpacker culture… but what about those blogs that want to actively participate within the community. The people. The culture. The earth. The plants. The food. The spirit of this planet. And to make change. I want to be able to provide that side of the story of those blogs because there is not enough.

I hope I can inspire you to see that there are other options out there. That you, too, can do what I am doing if you choose to. To realize that we do not have to live in a capitalist & materialistic world. Or you can learn from what I am doing to make change in your own community. Take a look around and I am sure that you will find a transition town meeting in your area. Or a CSA you can be a member of.

‘Be the change that you want to be’ Ghandi had said. And I take that to heart because we are only here for a short time and we need to make it as meaningful as possible.

Onto my next adventure…..

Selling, donating, and getting rid of a vast amount of the things I own as I prepare to travel to South America. Starting in Iquitos, Peru.

But now, after a visit to an organic dairy farm I learned from the vet about something entirely off my radar… a thing called A1 and A2 milk.

What the heck is this? A secret formula that ‘Big Dairy’ has come up with as a new marketing tool to sell more milk as a heath food? Which, by the way, countries who drink large amounts of dairy have osteoporosis that is off the charts compared to countries who don’t drink milk….they have virtually no cases. And as you think about it, who tells you that you should drink milk anyway? The Dairy Association whose main goal is profit? The government whose interests are to sell milk because of research made BY the dairy association and who lobbies tenfold? I’m sorry, but major corporations for me put up a large red flag and ESPECIALLY if their ‘research’ is not able to be looked at from outside 3rd party sources. I will almost call bullshit on that immediately. But this A2 stuff…. where is it coming from? And why was the vet talking about it so highly? And then what the heck was he talking about as A1 being a major source of Type 1 diabetes, heart disease, autism, and schizophrenia? Red flag immediately popped up.

Listening to him talk to the group, I learned that he got this information from research from a New Zealand Professor named Keith Woodford. Since then, he has been informing his dairy farmers, that he works this, about this information (local and organic..not with major ‘Big Dairy’). I was quite curious on who this prof. was and who he worked for…New Zealand’s ‘Big Dairy’? Or with the university getting funds from them? That, I found out, was not the case. And is quite the opposite.

Keith Woodford is a professor of farm management and agribusiness at Lincoln University in New Zealand. They do not get funding from any dairy corporations ( Like New Zealand’s Fonterra [which stars a major role in the A2 battle]) and when academics speak about an issue they are representing themselves and not the university that employs them (unless that is a paper that is being published); which is quite different from the situation of scientists who work for commercial organizations or for non-university gov. research organizations. He believes that A2 needs to be told in lamen’s term to the general public and wrote a book called ‘The Devil in Milk‘ (which can only be bought on Amazon in the US) and has research from various fields that are all from peer-reviewed journals. He also has written his own peer reviewed article. I believe that this man has a lot of credibility. Plus, If our milk really is screwed up….. then why not switch over? The research shows that there is not any harm anyway. So…there is not much to fight about.

But anyway, here is the general synopsis of the issues at hand in ‘The Devil in Milk‘:

-The interest in the book is with Type 1 Diabetes. But, other issues come up as well and correlate with it such as heart disease, allergies, intolerance, auto-immunity, autism, and schizophrenia.

-A1 bovine: gene found only in cattle in the western world (Bos Taurus). This would include North America, Australia, New Zealand, and Northern Europe.

-A2 bovine: (Bos Indicus) Asian cattle that do not produce A1 beta-casein. African cattle (mainly Bos taurus, also do not produce A1 beta-casein.

-A2 is the original. The mutation occurred about 8,000 years ago in that the proline (strong bond) at position 67 was replaced by histidine (weak bond).

-A1 is only found in bovine. A2 is in everything else that includes sheep, goat, camel, and humans.

-Science has shown that any and all problems only occur in A1 dairy.

-To give a brief history on A1 vs. A2 fight: Corran McLachlan (along with Bob Elliott) was the scientist who found this discrepancy. They presented it and eventually founded A2 Cooperation. Fonterra (who is the largest dairy exporter in the world and is based in New Zealand) fought tooth and nail against this. The only main reason that they fought was that “A2 milk would need to be marketed in a way that did not cast doubts on A1 milk. This would be a challenge.” Fonterra is in the business to make money and they cannot just stop producing milk. It takes 10 years ( 2 generations of cows) to switch a herd to A2. Eventually, Fonterra started switching silently but not without a major fight with A2 corporation first.

-In the scientific world, 4 important peer-reviewed journals came out:

1. strong relationship across countries between level of A1 beta-casein consumption and heart disease (no relation with A2 beta- casein and heart disease).  The data showed that the correlations were so high that they were extremely unlikely to be due to chance.

2. Looking at relationship between milk & heart disease, milk & diabetes, as well as other factors such as fish, meat, vegetables, alcohol, and tobacco, therewas no obvious dietary factor that could provide anywhere neat the association that existed for A1 beta-casein in milk.

3. Trial work on rabbits (and other animals) were fed a diet containing high amounts of either A1 or A2 milk and concuded that Beta-casein A1 ia atherogenic compared with Beta-casein A2. (Atherogenic means that is causes heart disease.

4. The last was a series of papers that showed the link between BCM7 and the symptoms of autism.

Now this was just some of the information provided in this book. It goes into greater detail with the trials, more research, and how they are all interconnected.

To then give you a quick rundown as to what this beta-casein and BCM7 is….

-Bovine milk is made with about 87% water and 13% solids (depending on the breed of animal).Solids broken into: lactose, fat, minerals, and proteins. In proteins it’s broken into whey and casein. The casein protein has 3 parts: alpha-, beta-, and kappa-casein. The beta-casein protein has a chain on 209 amino acids.

-Beta-casein THEN has 3 types: A1, A2, and A3. A3 and A2 act the same and are the originals. A1 is the mutant.

-At position 67 in the amino acids, A1 is a histidine (weak bond) and A2 (and A3) are a proline (strong bond).

-Beta-casomorphone-7 (BCM7) is a chain of 7 amino acids that break from position 67 in A1 dairy. Casomorphins are derived from casein and they have opioid (narcotic) properties (this was first reported in 1979 by German scientists).

-Scientists in other countries could not get BCM7 to break from A2 beta-casein (dairy association in NZ found this as well).

-BCM7 (in what he calls ‘Devils Milk’) is the major problem because of it’s ease to get into our system. Once in the bloodstream, it quickly goes across the bloodstream and attaches to opioid receptors..which have shown to be a link to autism and schizophrenia. It also causes apnoea (breathing dysfunction) which leads to sudden infant death syndrome. BCM7 is a strong oxidant of low-density lipoprotein (‘bad’ cholesterol) which, because LDL is the foundation of fatty plaques, lead to heart disease.

So, what else must I say on this topic? Well….if you are more interested, I would suggest reading the book. The information is quite compelling and really….what is the harm to switch over anyway? Looks like none. So for me personally, I am going to stop drinking milk (butter is OK because it is fat, and cheeses act differently as well) unless I can get a hand on some A2 milk. Oh, and having it raw/unpasteurized makes no difference. Remember, it’s the chemical make-up of this.

I woke up knowing that our chickens have never seen snow before. This is their first time to be in this weather and what it all is. Although, I could just tell that they seemed to be preparing for it in some way by the way they have acted. But what I found most humorous  was the way they acted to ICE! Sure my dog loved to run on it (even though he is deathly afraid to walk on hardwood and laminated floors) but the chickens would attack each other over this. Just so they could……eat it. Yes, they would jump over one another, peck each other, and rush over the minute they saw some ice particles. I have never seen my chickens fight like this before and don’t quite understand what is so great about ice. Even the silkies who can’t see the large black dog running over them would shove the others out of the way knowing, instinctively, what there was. Unbelievable.

So this morning as I was laying in bed I looked out the window and saw all the snow I wondered how the chickens would act with this new phenomenon. Now, I want to let you know that we have two coops: 1 for the family of bantams (4 of them) and 1 for all the other chickens (11 plus one bantam). We had to separate it because of pecking order and size containment issues. The dog rushed out immediately and started frolicking in the snow like a dolphin jumping in and out of the water. He is a born winter lover like me. Of course, he then has to bring the ball for me to throw so he can search and dig through the snow to find it (temp. does not seem to affect him in any way).

But the chickens….. oh those chickens are funny little girls….

I walked into the run to find all of them linedup just looking down (when I took the pict they started moving about more). They didn’t know what to make of this stuff. All were apprehensive to go even near it and it didn’t matter that both their food and their water was over the snow and they had to go out to get it. Oh no. Not even ice particles did it even though they stared with great interest. Pacing back and forth, they just didn’t know what to do with this new situation. Beka, my roommate, gets up around 6ish to let the chickens out and I am pretty sure that they just stood there staring the entire time.

3 hours of just staring at the snow.

Now you may think chickens are unintelligent creatures but I assure you that they are not. They know exactly what is going on is are on par with many other intelligent creatures in the world. They have their likes, dislikes, curiosities, and such but like all of us when a new problem comes across our path, they try to work it out. But right now, I had to help guide them…

And really…it was a simple solution to work out on how to get them down: throw some straw on the ground and run away as they all fly down at me.

Lesson learned.

I never really imagined that urban homesteading would be this fun or entertaining.

Now, I think that my apple topped pumpkin spice cake is calling me name on this cold winter day…