duckminifarm.com Blog

Stephen and I have started on the South Beach Diet. We might as well diet now, or we’re going to “have” to diet later. Diabetes runs in Stephen’s family, although I seem to have more blood-sugar problems than he does.

We’re doing the South Beach Diet. I didn’t think it would be hard. I never thought of myself as eating “too much” carbs or sugars. I guess I was fooling myself. I’ve been having serious withdrawal symptoms. It’s been miserable.

If you don’t know about the South Beach Diet, the first 2 weeks are the hardest: no bread, no fruit, no pasta, of course nothing with sugar in it. Not even any potatoes, corn, or carrots.

I’ve been hard-pressed to just find something to eat around here. I never realized how much I depended on potatoes, rice, and other carbs as “sides” for meals. And breakfast…that was 99% carbs.

The South Beach diet is as much a life-style change as a diet. You really have to rethink the way you eat. I think it’s especially hard if you’re the “cook” in the family, because it means assembling a mostly-new repertoire of cuisine. Thankfully, there are lots of recipes online.

How do I feel after 3 1/2 days? Miserable sometimes: dizzy, sick, light-headed. At other times, great!

What do I eat? Lean beef & roast chicken so far. Salads with meat strips and different cheeses. Beans. Squash. Peas. Eggs. And a little bacon (no, it’s not on the list, but it’s filling and keeps me going.) Milk. Right now I’m baking some Flax Seed “bread” that I can’t wait to try. I’ve also tried some of the “desserts” ricotta cheese with sugar substitute, cocoa powder and almonds.

When I’m feeling really bad, I have a teaspoon of cream. It helps me get through the low spells.

Ares the Clydesdale had his first “job” today. We’d put the harness on him a few times. Today I put it on him and had him pull a singletree and then a gate that I needed move.

He did a GREAT job.

Possum, my beloved tortie cat (1994-2009) passed away this morning at the Wright Veterinary Clinic in Gilmer, Tx. Possum was one of 4 orphaned kittens that I raised on a bottle after they were found abandoned in a hollow tree. She was preceded in death by her 3 brothers: Softy, Simba, and T.R.

Over her life, Possum had several homes: the farm in Athens, my apartment in Bossier City, our house on Heather Lane and the farm in Bettie. I will always remember Possum for bringing in a bird and letting it loose in the house.

Possum lived a full and healthy life, yet she had begun to fail physically and finally refused to even eat. She could no longer walk, and seemed in pain. At her advanced age, there was little that could be done to stop the inevitable.

Our thanks to the Wright Veterinary Clinic for making her passing as peaceful as possible. She is buried on our farm in Bettie.

We should have seen it coming when Mattel bought out Pleasant Company, the small company that produced the high quality and high priced American Girl Dolls. We should have known that quality and focus on history would soon be sacrificed to quantity and marketing.

I’ve loved what the American Girl dolls stood for since they first came out. They weren’t perfect, even with their nearly-$100 price tag, but they DID come with some really good emphasis on history and high-quality accessories.

Then Mattel took over, and of course money means more than education or anything else to them. They’re slowly getting rid of the core dolls and putting more emphasis on the “modern” dolls of the year (which change and the kids will want to buy every year, of course.)

It’s sad, really.

American Girls will still be expensive, I’m sure, but now they’re more and more being marketed to reflect current events.

No, this isn’t a workout commentary. A few weeks ago we added some calves to our menagerie. They’re little Jersey-Holstein crosses, cute as buttons. The girl is Lena and the boy is David. Sarah’s having a great time bottle-feeding them, although they’ll almost knock you down when they butt for more milk.

Crazy as it sounds, if all works out well I’d like to try to train David to be an ox.
We’d looked at some longhorns, beautiful animals, for that purpose. They were really VERY gentle, but the horns just aren’t child-friendly.

On a somber note, we record the deaths a few weeks ago of two of our avian friends: the female duck and Buster the Canary. I really miss Buster.

We have since bought a male parakeet as a companion for Celeste (our female parakeet, who was Buster’s “mate”)…but Celeste is still upset and attacks her new “boyfriend” when she gets the chance. The drake however lost no time in courting his new sweetheart.

We have one Silkie sitting on eggs right now (not her own eggs); the hens are still laying pretty good for winter-time.

In home-school, Sarah has been studying about Jamestown. We’ve woven a 2-week or so study around this subject, including crafts, readings and simple science lessons.

Have you ever thought about how rare truth is today? It’s almost like it’s gone out of fashion. And I don’t mean just by con artists and other professional liars.

Advertisers stretch the truth, manipulate statistics and out-right LIE to sell products.

Artists “touch up” photos of movie stars and models to make them look better.

News agencies purposefully put spin on subjects and events to influence the public.

People create and send around fake emails so much that most people immediately suspect any “canned” email they receive.

Politicians promise what they know they cannot accomplish just to win votes from the ignorant.

Yet we still try to teach our children to tell the truth. It’s really an uphill battle.

If George Washington’s “cherry tree” incident happened today, I suppose the tot would lisp “Father, I cannot tell a lie….but I can certainly put a positive spin on it.”

Then again, the whole cherry-tree thing may not be the truth, either. You can’t win for losing.

Home-schooling ISN’T easy. It’s not for the faint-of-heart. Today has been a good example.

Then I get on the computer and read about a 6 y.o. boy scout who brings a fork, spoon, knife combo to school and is sentenced to alternative education.

No mercy…no common-sense.

I find myself wondering how many teachers and workers at that school system haven’t accidentally come to school with a pocket knife or otherwise broken the rules.

This is what our country has come to. People can tear unborn babies limb from limb, murderers can go free with good counsel, and our schools are preoccupied with asinine rules that target 6 year-old boy scouts.

Okay everyone, pick out a white male explorer (all are fair game) and let’s bash him!

To be fair, I’m sure that lots of people-groups have rankled a long time while some none-too-virtuous explorers were almost deified in the public image…..but this current politically correct bashing isn’t right, either.

Neither way offers a balanced view. It’s not good history and it’s not fair, either.

For myself, I’m so tired of hearing about Europeans bringing diseases to the New World, without anyone mentioning that some of those diseases CAME from ASIA and first wiped out lots of Europeans.

Let’s look at smallpox. Some history programs would have you think that Europeans created the disease and purposefully brought it to the New World just to loose it on unsuspecting Natives.  This isn’t true at all…WHO suggests it may have come from India; the article below suggests Africa.

“The human disease may have originated from a rodent-borne virus in Africa. The evolutionary analysis suggests that smallpox disease slowly spread westward from East Asia, which would agree with the oldest smallpox-like descriptions from ancient China as far back as 1122 BC. It is unclear when it first reached the New World – some evidence suggests an ancestral virus arrived with early humans and diversified into a mild version there.” www.sciencecodex.com

Smallpox apparently hit Europe pretty hard, too.  It wasn’t as if Europeans didn’t suffer from cross-cultural infections.

The schools-wikipedia tells us that  “The disease killed an estimated 400,000 Europeans each year during the 18th century (including five reigning monarchs), and was responsible for a third of all blindness. Between 20 and 60% of all those infected—and over 80% of infected children—died from the disease.”

This disease was horrible on everyone….not just Native Americans.   Maybe we should all gang up and blame the Africans or East Indians or Asians for sending these diseases to Europe in the first place!  I am being sarcastic here….the fact is that diseases spread.  They’re part of this fallen world, and it doesn’t really make much sense to blame other cultures for them….especially when those cultures didn’t even realize what they were doing.

Now later, there are some episodes where people DID realize that they were putting others in contact with contaminated clothing or textiles….this is deplorable and the person(s) involved should have a holiday similar to Guy Fawkes day in England….where the person is burned in effigy.

Then we hear how horrible the almost-demonic explorers were: coming and conquering out of greed; killing and enslaving Native Peoples …..forcing some of those very same Natives to take time of out their OWN schedule of  conquering, killing and enslaving (sometimes sacrificing and eating)  their neighbors to fight the Europeans.

Sorry, folks, not all the native peoples were innocent lambs.  Human nature doesn’t work that way.  If the Europeans are open to any castigation, it should be that, as at least nominal Christians, they should have had more compassion and known better.

To me, some of the worst abuse to U.S. Native Americans came from broken treaties and overt dishonesty later in history.  For many of the Peoples it was an honor to them and their family to die fighting in battle, but the long years of inactivity, dishonor, lies and oppression left a bruise on their souls and bitterness in their hearts.

In the liberal school system, Europeans coming to the New World and killing Natives is anathema and demonic, but Sherman’s “total war” and march to the sea during the Civil War, burning and pillaging, and causing women and children to literally die of starvation……well that was for a good cause and completely understandable!

Truely wisdom is justified by her children.

Leave it to a homeschool family to have an interesting assortment of critters. Today we added another (temporarily, I hope) to our menagerie: a leech. Andrew (who helps us) found it in the pond. It really is a very interesting animal, a good science lesson and very pretty…..but……

Freshwater Leech found in our pond 9/09

Like most home-school moms, I’ve had to be creative when it comes to teaching. I’m thinking about putting some of my ideas on our website so that they won’t go to waste. I spent too much time creating them.