About Organic Lifestyle Choices

I Will Try Organic For a Healthy Lifestyle, and a Five Year Old Boy

My interest in organic as a lifestyle choice started and grew on the presumption that eating raw foods and foods without chemicals would be good for me and the environment and good for my grand-kids.

The motivation was a wake up call!

The truth is, I was motivated to change my lifestyle when my doctor told me I had failed my stress test. Prior to that news I had never heard of a stress test. The angioplasty and the stent. and then the lifestyle changes came later.

Some raw food, some exercise, some time with the kids. I would also do my bit for society and grow more of my own food - organic food. The kids would do all the work in the garden and I would sit and watch from the garden bench. Well! Not exactly.

It didn't quite work out that way, but together we did produce a fair amount of fresh fruits and vegetables without the use of harmful fertilizers or weed sprays. As kids are not really that good at digging, most of the hardest work falls to me. It's good to dig with a shovel, pull weeds, make compost. I should be happy to get the extra exercise.

After all, I was part of the generation that did all the damage to the planet, so I should help to pay back and not use dangerous chemicals. Show an example to the kiddies!

I think it was Rachel Carson who said

"If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscover with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in."

Of course Rachel Carson had it right in her book "Silent Spring" when she observed that the world was sliding towards a chemical and pollution related disaster.

So, teaching the kids some planet friendly stuff can't do any harm. Better late than never!

My generation, knew that and we also knew that eating fat causes plugged arteries but thought it didn't matter. We were busy making a living and we were the moral majority. Everybody else was well - nuts!

Of course we were wrong.

Now we get to contemplate the errors of our ways, and wonder where the birds and bees have gone, and why there is a massive great spraying machine next door spewing clouds of toxic chemicals into the fresh country air?

It's amazing how kids catch on. They know there is some sort of problem. After all their older relatives are dying from cancer and heart disease, and the schools are teaching them about global warming, and greening the planet. So why not a little home work in the backyard growing some food without chemicals.

The kids sow a little seed and it grows

You sow a little seed and it grows into this gigantic plant, out onto the lawn with literally dozens of cucumbers attached to it as if by magic.

"What are we going to do with all these cucumbers, Grandpa?" "You take them to the house" Grandpa replies, "where your mother will put some up for winter. She will bring the rest back to the compost bin where they will become more soil in which we will grow more cucumbers next year. You my boy are part of the circle of life - the big picture."

My childhood was different

My childhood, on a good sized cattle and sheep farm in the north of England was different. When I was a child we didn't use inorganic fertilizers, or herbicides and weed spray for that matter, just sheep and cattle manure heaped and composted for a couple of years, "to get the bacteria working." The heat killed the weed seeds.

Later, we modernized and we used sheep dip, which did nothing for the health of the hired help, and very little for the health of the sheep. Later, the government banned the use of sheep dip because it contained DDT. The use of other farm chemicals came later when we were trying hard to compete, by using these 'modern' farming methods.'

It was good economics

I left the farm when I was old enough and joined the air force. Later, I went to the local university where I studied agricultural economics. Spreading inorganic products onto our food supply might be bad and could cause a disaster for human kind, but it was good economics. People didn't get it then, but they get it now!

Ironically one of my profs. was the man who had a lot to do with developing selective weed killers like 24D. We thought he was a genius. This was in the late 50's and 1960's.

I also became editor of a farm magazine, and publisher of a country magazine, and became a full time farmer in Canada, where I live to this very day.

I spent many years spreading the bad stuff; a little ammonium phosphate here a little round-up, atrazine, and the urea, not to mention the other herbicides and insecticides. There is nothing really good about spreading poison across the land and contributing to degenerative diseases. The lifestyle, chemical and pollution related diseases.

Then there are the toxic pathogens in our food, and e-coli or other deadly bacteria in our water. Is it any wonder more people are growing their own food in their backyards or buying certified organic food in their supermarket?

Feeding dead animals to live animals

Feeding dead animals to live animals can hardly be called responsible. I can remember feeding ground up chicken bones and feathers to dairy cows; it was considered an economically viable thing to do. What a concept!

Farmers and everybody else in society have been throwing chemical rubbish around for years. I should know, I did my bit.

As a result of my generation, consumers are now demanding chemical free products in their supermarkets. Imagine that!

Helping You to Go Organic

The simplistic definitions of organic in this web site, pertains to living a healthy lifestyle, as in:

• Involving the use of fertilizers or pesticides, in your garden or farm.
• Products that are strictly of animal or vegetable origin.
• Organic vegetables; organic farming as in raised without the use of drugs, hormones, or synthetic chemicals.
• Serving organic food as in an organic recipe or organic restaurant.
• Simple, healthful,and close to nature; an organic lifestyle.
• Involving or affecting physiology or related to a disease affecting bodily organs as in "organic disease" and "degenerative diseases".

We will explain organic gardening and give you tips on how to grow an organic garden. It's good to start at the beginning by getting back to the soil!

I look forward to hearing from you!

Robert Robson

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