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New CSA for 2017: Yellow Bay Gardens

Tuesday, February 28th, 2017

Yellow Bay Gardens flyer

by Catherine Haug, February 28, 2017; Updated March 2, 2017 (photo, right and below by Niko Jacobs)

A new CSA is in the works for the Bigfork/East Lake Shore area!  is adding a community supported agriculture (CSA) enterprise to their cherry and blueberry orchards. The CSA is owned by Wade and Shelli Riedesel of Yellow Bay Gardens. You may recognize the business name if you bought their blueberries at Bigfork Harvest Foods. They are located at the old Yellow Bay Store property on the East Shore of Flathead Lake (Hwy 35).

Their goal is to provide fresh, local and sustainably grown quality produce. They have added a vast garden and greenhouse for this purpose. While they are not certified Organic, they practice organic and sustainable methods to grow as naturally as possible.

Produce available for 19 weeks beginning mind-May through September.

(more…)

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Posted in Agriculture, Community, Notices-Events, Shop Local | No Comments »

Kitchen Hint: Homemade laundry soap for HE (high-efficiency) washers

Sunday, February 12th, 2017

Kirk’s Castile bar soap

By Catherine Haug, February 12, 2017 (image, right from Amazon (1))

Back in 2013 we had a gathering with Sheree Tompkins on Homemade Laundry Soap. Her recipe can be used in standard or HE (high-efficiency) washers because it is a low-suds recipe. This posting offers another HE option, from Wellness Mamma (2).

Like Sheree’s recipe, this one also requires grating a bar of real soap, such as Kirk’s Castile pictured above, Dr Bronner’s Pure Castile bar soap, homemade soap (see also Gathering Summary: Making Soap at Home, by Kathy Mansfield, January 26, 2011). Fels Naphtha is an old-fashioned option but has some questionable ingredients if you care about the environment.

Also included is Wellness Mamma’s borax-free laundry cleaner (two ingredients added separately to the washer). (more…)

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Posted in Ecology, Home & Ranch, Kitchen Hints | No Comments »

Roundup, Paraquat herbicides lead to liver disease and Parkinson’s

Tuesday, February 7th, 2017

By Catherine Haug, February 7, 2017

If you regularly eat processed foods (boxed, bagged, dried, fried, canned or frozen), or meats, dairy and eggs from livestock not raised Organically, you may have a risk for these diseases: (1)

  •  NAFLD (non-alcoholic fatty liver disease), which can lead to cirrhosis and increases likelihood of diabetes, heart attacks and strokes (from exposure to Roundup, (13))
  • Parkinson’s disease (from exposure to Paraquat, (2)).

This is another reason to avoid GMO foods. Read on for more. (more…)

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Posted in Agriculture, Ecology, Food-Nutrition-Health, GMO, Health | No Comments »

A healthy – and healthful – garden/landscape

Saturday, January 21st, 2017

Veggie Landscape Garden

By Catherine Haug, Jan 21, 2017 (photo, right, from Mercola (2))

I am viewing the online docu-series: The Truth About Cancer, by Ty Bollinger, and I’m picking up on a few of garden/landscape tips that yield healthy plants and a healthier you when you eat them.

One of the things I’ve learned from this series is that cancer cells have more insulin receptors (that initiate take-up of sugar from the blood) than normal cells, and that cancer cells get their energy (life) from only two sources: sugar and glutamine (amino acid). So if you want to protect yourself from cancer or slow tumor growth, avoid sugar.

However, that doesn’t mean to avoid whole-food sources of sugar such as fruits and vegetables, because in whole-food form, the sugar is part of a larger matrix of fiber, antioxidants, and other phytochemicals that protect you. (Caveat #1: fruit juices don’t provide this protection because the matrix is broken, so eat your fruits whole; caveat #2: those fruits and veggies should be organically grown for maximum benefit).

But I digress. The purpose of this posting is to collect gardening and landscaping tips. I will update this posting as I learn more. (more…)

Posted in Agriculture, Ecology, Gardening, Health, Landscaping, Organics | No Comments »

Dietary fish & seafood: Which are/are not healthful – and why

Sunday, January 8th, 2017

Salmon for sale

By Catherine Haug, January 8, 2017 (Photo right, from Wikimedia Commons)

Growing up here in the Flathead, I loved fish – hook to table – from the very beginning. Back then we had landlocked salmon and lots of native cutthroat trout in Flathead Lake, not to mention the huge salmon run up the Swan River every fall. Other than lutefisk, I’d not had much exposure to ocean fish (other than canned tuna). That changed when I went moved to the west coast for college and my career.

Things have changed since my 1950s childhood. Many wild fisheries are now endangered, or gone (like Atlantic salmon). Science has found dangerously high levels of toxic methyl-mercury in the larger game fish. Fish from fish farms are nutritionally deprived and may carry disease. What’s a fish lover to do?

Read on for discussion on which fish are more healthful than others. See also my 2014 posting: Sustainable Seafood in Summertime.

(more…)

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What is a microbiome and why it is important

Monday, December 12th, 2016

Bars of Snowbunny Soap

by Catherine Haug, December 11, 2016 (Photo of handmade soap, right, by Kathy Mansfield from her ESP presentation, Making Soap at Home)

Often when I mention the microbiome in conversation, people ask me what it is. So I figure our readers might like to know more about it. It is an ecological community of microbes – microscopic species – that share climatic or environmental conditions in which they live; a sort-of mini-ecosystem. These species include bacteria, fungi and viruses. (1)

A  hot topic in health news these days is the human microbiome, which usually refers to the microbes in the gut, but all parts of our bodies each have their own microbiome, including our skin and our eyes. These communities include both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ microbes; even the ‘bad’ or pathogenic microbes have beneficial effects for our health, when kept in balance. (1)

The important take-away is that we, as humans, would not survive without our microbiome. They provide our initial immune response, make vital enzymes, play a role in our psychological health and so much more yet to be understood.

See also my 2014 post: The importance of the microbiome (essential microbes in and on our bodies)

(more…)

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