Quitting my TV news career has come with many benefits but perhaps none as important as how it has affected my ability to parent. My relationship with the Producer would have consisted of about an hour in the morning (stressed about what I’d cover that day) and an hour at night (still stressed about what went wrong with my report that day). I’ve started “Hold On to Your Kids” by Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Maté and I highly recommend it. They describe the era since World War II as one where peers have taken over the role of parenting, calling it “peer orientation”. They write, “Orientation, the drive to get one’s bearings and become acquainted with one’s surroundings, is a fundamental human instinct and need. Disorientation is one of the least bearable of all psychological experiences. Attachment and orientation are inextricably intertwined. Humans and other creatures automatically orient themselves by seeking cues from those to whom they are attached.” This has also got me thinking about my pressing question about why so many journalists prefer group think over curiosity. Are we adults also suffering from “peer orientation”?
It’s more like Carla walks us, but she is getting the hang of it! It’s great to live in a neighborhood where you can walk your chicken down the road on a leash and no one says a thing.
Training a chicken to walk on leash requires patience and energy, which comes from solid nutrition and a regular practice of stillness. I have been taking the fermented cod liver/concentrated butter oil from Green Pasture for 15 years. It’s packed with anti-inflammatory brain-fueling omega 3s as well as vitamins A, D & K. Ditch the cheap fish oil and try it out. If you use promo code “ALISON” at check out, you get 10% off. https://greenpasture.org/
We made chèvre with our goat milk for the first time and it was so incredibly easy, I cannot believe I have been buying soft goat cheese for so long. You may remember that our mini Nubian, Sundae, had kids who would not drink off her left teat, so we had to milk it out ourselves. She produced way more milk than they needed even with bottle feeding one of them. We had a surplus of milk that just did not taste right because the first couple weeks, there is still colostrum in it, and it is somewhat bitter. We tried making pancakes with it and pudding, but really needed to use up quite a bit. Our friend suggested making cheese. We went to her house to learn how. We got so much cheese from what was probably a couple gallons of milk, it likely would have cost us over $100 at least to buy it. And it is delicious!
One of the reasons we love fresh goat milk from our goats who are out on pasture all day is the amount of vitamin K2 in it. It is such an important nutrient to help calcium into your...
Hei Hei is the strong willed child of the chicken coop. He’s bullied by our barred rock rooster (who is actually quite nice to us) so he avoids going back in the coop at night. He also takes out his repressed anger on us so he may be stew someday in the new future.
I keep my bones healthy for chasing Hei Hei by taking the fermented cod liver/concentrated butter oil from Green Pasture which is my go-to source of food-based vitamins A, D & K. The cod liver oil is fermented - not high heat processed - which protects the nutritional value. It saved my teeth from chronic cavities 15 years ago. Make sure to use promo code “ALISON” at check out for 10% off. https://greenpasture.org
