Oldest's Story

In our family's war on gluten, the members are represented by two distinct but equally important sides, the mother who makes the food and the boys who eat it.  Here are their stories.

We dropped oldest off at a week long sleep-away camp this past weekend - hard to believe our squishy little baby is already over half-grown and has no issue with going off for fun and games away from home for a whole week.  I'm not adjusting nearly so well.  We're really thankful the camp we send him to works really hard with us to be sure he's provided with wholesome gf food while he's there.  He was sort of their test case last year, and now this year there are at least 4 other campers with food allergies or sensitivities.  Plus, in a bit of irony, the camp chef was diagnosed with gluten intolerance so now she's a pro at fixing gf fare.  Woohoo!

Unfortunately for oldest, we didn't catch his gluten sensitivity until after we figured out youngest had an issue.  (I know, bad bad parents!)  As a baby and young child, he had relatively few issues that would raise red flags and being relatively uneducated about food allergies at this point, we didn't clue in to a possible food link.  Probably the biggest problem we dealt with was constipation, sometimes boarding on severe.  The year we lived in Slovakia saw this as a fairly major issue, probably because his diet, while high in fiber, was based on a lot of bread and wheat products as was part of the culture.  He would literally go up to a week, sometimes longer, between bowel movements and only after using large doses of fiber.  He also had sleep issues, often waking multiple times in the night.  We treated the symptoms but never found a root cause.

After we discovered youngest's severe gluten allergy and the whole family went gluten-free, oldest's issues cleared up almost immediately.  It was a big head-slap, light bulb moment for us.  Over time and a little experimentation we've found oldest can tolerate small amounts of gluten once in a great while - so for example if he stays at his grandparent's house or goes out of eat, he can choose to have a sandwich with gluten-full bread or one of his grandma's famous chocolate chip cookies.  His sensitivity seems to be more cumulative so if he eats gluten on a daily basis over a period of time he will experience stomach virus type symptoms such as throwing up or diarrhea (no fun).  As a result, he prefers to not eat gluten and save those little indulgences for special occasions.



Oldest's  symptoms:

• Seemed mild in nature, almost "sleeper" symptoms
• Severe constipation
• Multiple night-wakings

The dark side of eating gluten-free

In the past couple of days I've read a couple of thought-provoking blog entries on what we might consider "the dark side" of gluten-free eating.  Since gf eating has become the new eating fad of the moment, many people just assume because something is labeled gluten-free it must be good for you.  Unfortunately, just because that sugar cereal or candy bar or bag of chips says gluten-free doesn't make it any more healthy for you, regardless of what the maker of said product wants you to think.  In addition, many purveyors of food in their rush to jump on the gluten-free bandwagon have taken shortcuts or are not as educated as you, the consumer, are about their ingredients.  It's worth asking, who should you ultimately trust before putting that supposed morsel of gluten-free food in your mouth?

Elana at Elana's Pantry explores the idea of whether gluten-free labeled food is really healthy.  Nicole at Gluten-Free on a Shoestring looks at the marketing strategies of companies in relation to gluten-free food.  I think these blogs are worth a read and so offer them up for your (pun intended) consumption.

Gluten Free Is Not Healthy  (Elana's Pantry)

9 Lies Companies Tell You About Gluten-Free Food  (Gluten-Free on a Shoestring)

Chickens, the recap

We're so pleased with how the great chicken raising experiment turned out.  Overall, a very enjoyable experience and since the butchering wasn't too bad we'll be doing it again, maybe as early as the end of this summer. 

Here's our list of things to remember and thoughts for next time:

• We loved Jenks Hatchery and would definitely order from them again.  Their service was outstanding, the chicks arrived in amazing shape and the mortality rate of our mob was very low.  At butchering time we found our birds to be robust with very thick and healthy feathers.  They breed a good product.
• We were satisfied with the Cornish Rock Cross and would choose this bird again.  We got a straight run and while the hens were on average a little smaller, it was not enough to be noticeable.  Jenks also offers monthly hatches of the visually stunning Red Ranger and the Heritage White breeds which would be interesting to try since they are both good foragers and have good feed conversion.  After another flock of Cornish Rock X, my vote would be for the Heritage White.
• The deep liter method for chicks worked really well.  Also loved using a hover brooder as it kept our electrical usage down and provided a very warm and protected environment for the chicks.  It might be worth considering going without warming bulbs if we do another flock at the end of summer, depending on temperature.
• Need to purchase at least one chick feeder and chick waterer bases.
• Remember to use the leftover electrolyte mix with the next flock of chicks, especially if the weather is warm.
• It's been reported that Cornish Rock X do not make good foragers; we did not find this to be the case probably because we trained them to look for food on the ground by scattering feed while they were in nursery (do this again).
• Since we have 30+ birds in the freezer, see if someone would like to go in with us on a chicken order in August.
• The chicken feed we got from Patriot Farm was outstanding.  Next time, we need to actually buy enough.  Our chickens definitely preferred it to the big name pressed crumble-style feed from the local feed store.  Plan at least 10-15 pounds of feed per bird.
• In terms of feeding, next time we'll feed on demand for the first week or so and then go a 12 hours on, 12 hours off feeding cycle.  We fed this first mob way too much to begin with and went through more food then we needed to in the beginning.  It didn't translate into more meat, though it did produce more (expensive) fertilizer. 
• When we set up the chicken tractor next time, it might be good to pull it between the vibrant green tracks from the past flock in an effort to make our lawn less "stripe-y" looking.
• As butchering nears, plan the tractor route to end closer to the proposed butchering site.  Rearrange the butchering stations so they are closer together.  Be sure to have a first aid station available.
• More ice at butchering.  Start setting aside ice early.

Gardening, the lazy way

I'll admit it, I'm a lazy gardener.  I pretty much stick the seeds in the ground once the temperature warms up and then besides an occasionally watering, pretty much ignore them until they're bearing fruit.  This year especially it was tough for me to get over the May doldrums and actually put some effort into getting the whole process going.  You see, here in the Pacific "North-wet" the past few years we've experienced this lovely new weather phenomenon meteorologists affectionately coined as June-uary.  Simply smashing weather for gardening or any outdoor activity, let me tell you.  And being as we tend toward wetter cooler summers anyway, unseasonably low temps and extra rain in June does not help the backyard gardener get too enthusiastic.  Last year, summer never really showed up so pretty much no tomatoes, few cucumbers and even a sour zucchini crop.  So couple the cool weather with my tendency towards inherently lazy gardening plus the hyper-focus on being a chicken farmer, it took me a bit to actually get going this year.

Tomatoes under their quasi-green house

This year we're sticking to the basics:  peas, carrots, swiss chard, leaf lettuce, spinach, cucumbers, cauliflower, pumpkins, zucchini, garlic and tomatoes.  We also have a couple of rhubarb plants and two strawberries gardens.  Fingers crossed, so far so good with everything up and growing heartily except zucchini (zucchini!  who in the NW fails at growing zucchini??!?!).  I didn't plant until the end of May, following the wisdom of my father who swears there is no point in putting anything in the ground until Memorial Day.  The ironic thing is he was sowing his garden by the beginning of May and had most of it in before Mother's Day.  Go figure.  Usually I'm the one putting in cold weather crops as early as March, but he's the one who jumped the gun this year (and quite successfully too as my parents munch happily away on peas already).  Even with the late start we've been eating a large crop of juicy strawberries - they didn't mind the extra rain and seemed to have gotten just enough sun to ripen to plump perfection.  I also expect we'll harvest spinach and baby lettuce this week and potentially have peas by the end of next. 

Garden - I'm spoiled, the husband built some rocking raised beds