Wisconsin Judge Ruling: No Right to Raise, Grow or Consume Food of Your Choice

(Another thought-provoking post from my dear husband. --Janice)


Earlier this month, Wisconsin Judge Patrick J. Fiedler issued a response to the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund regarding the Constitutionality of food rights. In his response, Judge Fiedler stated “Plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to consume the milk from their own cow.” He then went further stating, “Plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to produce and consume the foods of their choice.”

So, what does this mean? You have NO right (according to Judge Fiedler) to raise animals, crops or even an orchard or backyard garden. You have NO right to choose what food you eat. The government has the right to mandate or prohibit the consumption of any food.

What would motivate Judge Fiedler to issue such a shocking ruling against food rights? Well, a quick Internet search reveals some clues. Within days of his ruling against food rights, Judge Fiedler announced he has decided to retire and will resign his position as judge September 30. He will go into private practice, as an attorney for the Axel Brynelson Law Firm.

I did some research on the Axel Brynelson Law Firm and found that in May 2010, the firm represented Monsanto in a lawsuit concerning a DNA patent. So, within days of ruling that Americans have no right to produce and consume the foods of their choice, Judge Fiedler is hired by a law firm that represents Monsanto. What a coincidence!

We Had An Earthquake Here!

Yesterday was an exciting day. Around 6:30 last night I was in the living room folding laundry and talking to Shawn. Shawn was holding David. All of a sudden we heard a loud sonic boom. I said, "What was that?" Immediately the house started to shake. I started screaming at the children to "Come here!" (They were playing in Sam's bedroom.) Shawn started yelling, "This is it! This is it!" (He thought the New Madrid fault was finally going.)

Then it was over. It really only lasted a matter of seconds, but that was plenty for me. Sarah's little heart was racing when we all congregated in the kitchen.

Shawn immediately called my parents (who live closer to the New Madrid fault) to see if they were all right. They said they hadn't felt anything. Then I called a girlfriend to see if she had felt it. She hadn't felt anything either. Then we started second-guessing ourselves..Could something have crashed out in the pasture? Why didn't anyone else seem to feel this thing that was so very, very noticeable to us?!?

We finally discovered that we did, in fact, have a 3.6 magnitude earthquake. The epicenter was only about 8 miles away from us.

When Shawn went outside last night to put up the animals he noticed a few things that were out of place in the barn. The previous homeowner had used the barn's rafters as a place to store old plastic pipe and boards. Shawn noticed that some plastic pipe had been shaken out of the rafters. He also noticed that some firewood and a stack of plastic buckets had been knocked over. The only evidence that we found inside the house was that one picture frame had fallen over in our bedroom.

Exciting, scary times. One good thing though...it does force Shawn and I to revisit our earthquake preparedness. What do we need to improve upon? Are we adequately prepared if this quake had been larger and more damaging? Are you adequately prepared if your area starts shaking?

20 Incredible Colleges for Special Needs Students

College is still a long way off for our children, but I've been asked to place a link here about "20 Incredible Colleges for Special Needs Students." I hope this is helpful for some that read my blog.

http://www.bestcollegesonline.com/blog/2011/09/21/20-incredible-colleges-for-special-needs-students/

The Great Sunflower Seed Incident

So...yesterday Andrew was at an event with other children. Of course I took a GAPS-friendly snack for him to eat, but the other children there had their snack of apples and sunflower seeds. Immediately after snacktime, Andrew started breaking out in a rash and his left ear started swelling up. His behavior was fine and he wasn't having any difficulty breathing..he just looked awful.







My first thought was, "Oh no, what did he eat?!?!" However, I was assured that he didn't put anything in his mouth other than the food that I had brought. So, next I started to wonder if he had possibly been stung by something on the ear. However, he was indoors the entire time and not one of the many adults there had noticed him crying out at any point as if he had been stung. I even asked him if a bug bit him and he told me no.

So, this is what we've finally decided is the most likely explanation...

Even though the other children were eating a healthy snack of apples and sunflower seeds, the sunflower seeds were store-bought and processed. This means that the ingredients included a lot more than just sunflower seeds. I found this list of common ingredients online:

SUNFLOWER KERNELS, SALT, SUGAR, CORNSTARCH, MONOSODIUM GLUTAMATE (FLAVOR ENHANCER), DRIED YEAST, GELATIN, CORN SYRUP SOLIDS, PAPRIKA, ONION AND GARLIC POWDERS, SPICES, NATURAL FLAVOR

Anyhow, the theory is that some of the artificial ingredients/oil were transferred to a toy by another child. Andrew must have somehow picked up the residue on his hands. Then he proceeded to scratch his ear, which immediately began to swell, turn red/purple, and get hot. Shortly after that exposure his face, neck, and torso began breaking out in whelps.

I took these photos about 2 hours after the exposure. The rash had actually improved a bit on his face and neck. At 5 hours after exposure his ear was still just as hot and red and swollen as before and the rash had continued to spread to his feet. He was obviously itchy, but otherwise acted normal. This morning, however, everything is fine. His ear and body look absolutely normal.

Sometimes I get so focused on making sure that the children don't consume processed foods. It's easy to forget that these foods can still harm sensitive children in other ways. I'm glad it wasn't any more serious, but it was a good reminder as to why we are doing what we are doing. There are very valid reasons why we avoid processed foods.

SAHM earning $165 to use at Amazon.com via SwagBucks

I may not be out in the workforce earning an income, but this is my stay-at-home mom way of helping to support our family. Likewise, I think that SwagBucks would be helpful to many of those that read my blog.



I've been using SwagBucks for 10 months now and in that time I've accumulated $165 in Amazon gift cards. I've been able to purchase books, food, and gifts with that money. It's really come in handy. I wanted to take some time today to show you how I did this so you can see if it's something you might utilize. I started off slowly..only getting $5-$10 per month, but the past few months I've been getting $25 in gift cards each month.

When I first started using SwagBucks I installed their toolbar into my internet browser. It's just a thin little strip at the top of my screen that provides a search engine and shows my current SwagBucks total. Now, each morning when I open up my internet browser I automatically get 1 Swagbuck just for having the toolbar installed.

I utilize the toolbar's search engine as I'm on the internet throughout the day. For instance, if I want to check my email I will use SwagBuck's toolbar to search hotmail.com instead of directly typing it in. Several times throughout the day I'll receive SwagBucks for utilizing their search engine. I've gotten anywhere from 7-29 SwagBucks just for searching the internet. Also, you don't just get this reward once a day. If you search often enough, you can get SwagBucks for searching numerous times throughout the day.

Every day they have a different Daily Poll available. I place my vote in the poll and get 1 SwagBuck each day.

Each day I visit their No Obligation Special Offers page (NOSO). It gives a couple pages of offers and I always hit "Skip" because I'm not interested in any of the offers. After I've looked at all the offers and "skipped" them I receive 2 SwagBucks. Looking at the offers takes less than a minute...it's not very time consuming at all.

Then I go to their Trusted Surveys page. They usually have several surveys available. I usually don't meet the demographic that they're looking for so I don't qualify for most of the surveys. However I do receive 1 SwagBuck for each survey I attempt to qualify for. A time or two each week I will usually qualify for one of the surveys and I will receive anywhere from 50-200 SwagBucks for completing the survey.

SwagBucks has internet-printable coupons available as well. If you print off their coupons and redeem them at a store, you will get 10 SwagBucks for each coupon you redeem. I don't use this all that often since we don't use many of the commercial products. I have however used the coupons for things like toilet paper and facial tissue. I like it because I save money and get SwagBucks at the same time.

Finally, they have an area on their site called SwagBucks TV. It's an area that has short little (approximately 1 minute) video clips preceded by an advertisement. I get 3 SwagBucks for every 10 videos that I watch. I keep our laptop on the kitchen counter and, throughout the day as I'm working, I will keep the little video clips running. There are all kinds of different types of videos: entertainment, news, food, health, etc. I always run the Pets & Nature videos because I don't mind if the children see videos of animals on the computer.

There are other ways to acquire SwagBucks, but I don't utilize them. You can check into those yourself and see if they'd be beneficial to you.

Here's their official site on how to use SwagBucks:
http://www.swagbucks.com/g/how-it-works

Anyhow, for every 450 SwagBucks you accumulate you can redeem it for $5 to use towards a purchase at Amazon. Of course, there are other places you can redeem your SwagBucks (Barnes & Noble, Home Depot, Paypal, CVS, etc), but I've found that Amazon is the best value for us. You can get just about anything on Amazon and the credit doesn't expire in case you want to keep accumulating credit for a more expensive item. You also receive free shipping if your order is over $25. Free merchandise (using SwagBucks credit) and free shipping is a great deal for us.

So, now I'm going to shamelessly ask that, if you are interested in joining SwagBucks, you use my name as a reference. You see, I acquire SwagBucks by referring people to the site and having them utilize it. If you are interested, please use this link to sign up:

http://www.swagbucks.com/refer/SAHMville

Also, if this is confusing to you, please don't hesitate to ask me to clarify.

A Walk on the Property

Friday evening we went on a family walk around the property. We did this a lot last year, but haven't been as good about doing it since David came along. It was really nice to get back out there.

The first thing we discovered was a young buck that was dead out by our pond. It was still fresh enough to be stinky. That gave the children a lot to talk about for the next day or two.

Remember my last post about making elderberry tincture? Well, I'm not 100% certain, but I'm thinking that we just might have elderberries growing on our property. I need to research this some more, but I suspect that this might be elderberry. If anyone can shed some light on this, I'd appreciate the input!


Walking back to the Forbidden Meadow was especially pretty because the entire pasture there was full of these pretty yellow flowers.


I'm still really excited about having Passionfruit (Maypops) on our property. However, I have yet to actually harvest any for our own use. It seems that the deer have taken possession of them so all I ever get to see are small green fruits.



Out in the woods we were surprised to see that a tree had fallen right in the middle of the path we normally walk.

It couldn't have happened too long ago because the leaves are still green. Looks like God is providing next year's firewood!

Making Elderberry Tincture

This was my first time attempting to make elderberry tincture. It was really easy and I wanted to share it with you.

Elderberry tincture is said to be effective in treating colds and flu. There are even commercial drugs, like Sambucol, made with elderberry. However, since we try to avoid commercially-sold drugs, I made my own medicine using God's provision..the elderberry.

First, I purchased a big bottle of vodka and 1 pound of dried elderberries. The instructions I had said to split the pound of elderberries between three quart jars. Then fill the jars with vodka. (Of course, I ended up not buying enough vodka, so I could only fill two jars until we went back to the store to buy more.)



Then you place the jars in a cool, dark area and let it sit for 7-10 days, shaking the jars every day or so. Now, I found lots of different sources that say lots of different things on the amount of time the mixture should sit. I've read everywhere from 7 days to 6 weeks. I chose to let mine soak for a little over 2 weeks. Really the only reason I let it go that long was because my third jar was started at a later time and I wanted to finish all three jars at the same time. (Remember, I had to go buy more vodka...) So, my first two jars actually soaked for 16 days and that third jar only soaked for 10 days.

I kept my jars in my cabinet with our drinking glasses. It was dark and cool in that cabinet, and I opened it often enough that I would remember to shake the jars whenever I went to get glasses out of the cabinet. So, yesterday I finished the elderberry tincture. (I guess my camera date is wrong because I know that I took these next pictures yesterday, Thursday the 8th.)

Anyhow, first I put my colander over a bowl and poured out the contents of the three jars. Then I placed the strained liquid into clean jars. The strained liquid only filled up two jars since the berries were no longer taking up space.


Finally, I added labels to my jars and put them in our medicine cabinet.


If I need to use this for the children I intend to place the recommended dosage in a glass of water and maybe even add a little honey to it if the children don't want to take it.

We're very rarely ever sick so these two jars of elderberry tincture should last us a while. The vodka will keep it useful for years.

I encourage you to do some research on elderberry tincture and see if it's something you'd be interested in providing for your family.