-
An inspection tour…
…the new management took me around to check on our cows the other day. With my usual impeccable timing, we were right in the middle of a blizzard. Carolyn and Church got a close look but I stayed in the car, which promptly got stuck in the snow. But the main herd looked great…featuring a beautiful calf crop staring a Tulip youngster from England who is going to make a major impact soon. It is personally rewarding to see the farm, which was founded almost 75 years ago, doing so well under the next generations. PS: they sent a 4-wheel for me and a tractor for the car! David
-
Let’s call this before….
Christmas weekend opened splendidly with sunrise reflected off the Blue Ridge..captured by our designated early riser, daughter Carolyn. But if there’s a before there must be an after. At the moment Carolyn took the before picture a passing motorist was also admiring the sunrise over Thistle Hill. At least that’s what he told the investigating state trooper. In any event the motorist lost control and we lost four sections of four-board fence. Fortunately a neighbor saw the accident and moved our cows to a nearby pasture with intact fencing. Thank you Kathy Hartz! Rebuilding fencing wasn’t the way we planned to spend Christmas but the job is done! Thanks to…
-
Did you know that grass-fed beef is one of the top ten sources of tryptophan?
I have to confess that I didn’t know that grass fed beef is on the top ten list for sources of tryptophan…I always think of turkey. Tryptophan is the amino acid that goes on to become serotonin, the “feel-good” hormone which is low in depression, and melatonin, which helps us sleep at night. Other sources besides grass fed beef and turkey: lamb, chicken, tuna, pumpkin seeds, eggs, crab, cheese, and spirulina. In addition to getting enough tryptophan in your diet, it is important to pursue lifestyle strategies to minimize inflammation, because when inflammatory pathways are turned on, the tryptophan gets hijacked down an inflammatory pathway to make kynurenine and quinolinic…
-
Remember, the answer lies in the soil….
When we first moved to Dallas, we had an English gardener, Patrick Butterworth, who ended every letter, birthday card, and bill with the above phrase. Over time I have come to appreciate how incredibly apt this phrase describes so many systems, from the human body and how well it heals, to the garden, to the pasture and the animals on it. Diversity has been shown to be an important part of any ecosystem, whether one is looking at the boardroom, the gut flora, or the soil. For our gut flora, we want a diverse population of bacteria, archaea, viruses, and fungi that together shape our physiology, guide our immune system,…
-
At the end of the day….
….the sun sets over the Blue Ridge mountains. Photo by our daughter, Carolyn Matthews.
-
Why we’re so fat….
Dad’s note: what follows is a post from our daughter, Carolyn. At the Baylor Medical Center in Dallas, they call her Dr. Matthews. She is a cancer surgeon who has shifted some of her attention recently to creating a center for integrative medicine at Baylor. Carolyn is a frequent writer and lecturer, the mother of two, and a partner in Thistle Hill Devon. Here’s her post: In our lifetime we are experiencing never before seen rates of obesity, with a 60% rate of overweight in adults. In my field of gynecologic oncology, our surgical cases have become tremendously challenging due to the large size of our patients. When I was…