Tangible Connections to our Hunter-Gatherer Ancestors

As a kid I enjoyed searching for and finding arrowheads.  Directly across the street from my boyhood home was a farm field that was plowed every spring.  After a hard rain the dust would be washed off any overturned rocks making it easy to find the ones altered by humans. 

The arrowheads I found there were fairly recent (in the grand scheme of things), having come from the Woodland period (about 1000-2000 years ago).  These people were in the process of losing their hunter-gatherer ways and adopting permanent settlements as well as agriculture.

Fashioning a Farm: Converting a Destroyed Pine Forest into Cultivated Land

Over the next few days I will prepare the soil on our farm for the 2011 growing season.  This means spreading and tilling in 50,000 lbs of composted horse manure, laying out beds, and doing some early season planting.  Thankfully I have this handy John Deere tractor to handle the heavy tasks. 

I am beginning the year with a decent base of topsoil; however this wasn’t always the case.  In fact the land that I now farm used to look like quite a bit different.

The Ice Storm

In early 2002 we moved from Raleigh to just outside of Chapel Hill to a house built on an all-wooded, ten acre lot.  We certainly had no intention of farming at that time.  Within that ten acres, four acres were in a dense pine forest (we cleared one acre for our house).

Things I have Been Reading

In preparing posts for my blog, I spend a good amount of time reading and researching around the internet.  Rather than write about everything I read, I plan to occasionally provide links to posts that catch my eye.  Below are a few from the past week that you may find interesting:

1. I highly recommend Dr. Kurt Harris’s blog covering all aspects of paleo nutrition.  Here is an overview post for Getting Started. 
2. Dan Matesz at Primal Wisdom has a great post about Primal Diet on a Shoestring: a Nutritionally Complete, Inexpensive, Low Carbohydrate Meal Plan.
3. Mark Sisson, author of The Primal BluePrint, has a post about how more-and-more people are using mail-order blood tests.  Take a look at Doctors as Middlemen?
4. For those of you that want to get a better understanding of the science of obesity, check out How Does a Cell Avoid Obesity? at Perfect Health Diet.
5. Finally, I found Ned Kock’s post on Compensatory Adaptationto be very enlightening.

Experiments with Blood Glucose Control – Part Two

Details of Modifications

In my previous post, Experiments with Blood Glucose Control – Part One, I provided an overview of my plans to modify my diet and add some strength training.  Here are the specifics of those changes and the resulting improvements I noticed during the months of November and December 2010.

Dietary Changes

Recall from these previous posts, My So Called Healthy Diet – Part One, Part Two, and Part Three, I do not eat a lot of processed or fast foods; however, I was eating pasta regularly, bread frequently, and adding a “heaping tablespoon” of honey every morning to my oatmeal.

I have continued to eat oatmeal, but completely eliminated the honey.  And instead of eating oatmeal every morning, I am now eating it only 2 or 3 times per week.  On other days, I eat several scrambled eggs and about 6 pieces of bacon (or a few pieces of sausage).  I also initially eliminated coffee as it can raise blood glucose (but it tended to not have much impact on me).

Experiments with Blood Glucose Control – Part One

Imagine walking up a single flight of stairs, each step harder than the last, perspiration dripping down your face, not being able to catch your breath.  In that situation, it would be hard to ignore the fact that something was wrong with your health.  Similarly, what if every time you ate a meal, your blood sugar surged and stayed elevated for hours?  Would you be equally concerned?

The answer is that you most definitely should be concerned!

Blood Glucose Overview

When you eat, your digestive system converts most of the carbohydrates (sugars, breads, pastas, cereals, fruits, etc.) into glucose, a fuel that can easily be used to power your daily energy needs.  Your body attempts to maintain two or three days of energy reserves in the form of modified glucose or glycogen in the muscles and liver.  Think of the muscles and liver storing glycogen as your primary fuel tank, albeit a small tank.  If your primary tank is full (two or three days worth of glycogen), the excess glucose gets converted into fat and stored in your body tissues (a secondary fuel tank).

Starting Vegetables in a Cold Frame

A few days ago, I planted cipollini onions, my first crop for the coming season.  Based on the remnants of the last snowfall, it would seem that my timing might be a bit early; however I have a simple, inexpensive solution that lets me start vegetables when the weather is less than ideal:  the answer is a cold frame.