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Friday, March 24, 2006

Lettuce and Antibiotics (A Rant)

I just finished making many soil blocks and "pricking" 4 kinds of lettuce into those soil blocks. Than I put them under lights where they will spend the next 10 days or so growing bigger and bigger before being put in a cold frame to harden off for a week or so. After being hardened off they will be ready to transplant into the garden. the first batch of lettuces is out in the cold frame going through their hardening phase and next week (weather permitting) will be ready to be transplanted into the garden. In another 30 days after that they should be ready to cut and sell. It felt good to go and do something garden related.

I have been remiss in posting much this week. It's not that there has not been a lot going on here on the farm it is mostly because I have had an ear infection. I decided to go to see a doctor about it last week and was prescribed antibiotics that caused several side effects (I did not think I was allergic to all classes of penicillin but it looks like I am). So I went back on Tuesday and got sulfa based antibiotics and ear drops. I also had my ear irrigated to remove the plug of pus that was interfering with my hearing (What?). It was nice to be able to hear out of my left ear again and the ear drops seem to be working but the new antibiotics caused me to feel like death warmed over after taking them for 36 hours. I was tired, listless and full of pain-your basic flu symptoms but without a fever. And than on top of it all I got a yeast infection. If you have never had one you are lucky, if you have you know what I am going through. A burning itch in my nether regions that I would not wish on anyone I liked.

Fortunately Eugene had just made some yogurt out of the fresh raw milk we bought at the farmers' market on Saturday and yogurt is the best remedy for a yeast infection. And this yogurt because it was made with clean milk from healthy cows is powerful stuff. So along with eating yogurt to keep my intestinal flora alive despite the onslaught of antibiotics (as of yesterday evening it is a former onslaught but it will take a few days to get things close to normal in my gut) I am now using the stuff topically as well.

I gotta say I do not do well on antibiotics and I do not plan on taking them ever again. they are a truly evil drug. The last time I had to take them for an infected finger the damn things almost gave me a heart attack and cause some wild mood swings that were hard on Eugene

And yet most Americans take them incessantly. They take them for viral infections (which is a useless thing to do as antibiotics are not antiviral drugs and will do zero for a virus). They get a lot of antibiotics in their meat and milk if they eat anything other than organic or pastured meat and milk. I suppose this is why so many Americans are so unhealthy and must have health insurance. They consume way too many toxic drugs, most unknowingly. Of course the industrial food people will tell us that the drugs fed to livestock are okay, even good for us. The Pharmaceutical folks will tell us we cannot possibly be healthy without their drugs (Of course, if everyone was truly healthy big Pharma would wither and die. It is in their best interests to have as many sick people as possible because sick people take drugs and healthy people do not). But what do expect from an industry run by former drug pushers, you know the rich white frat guys who supplied their brothers with all kinds of recreational wonders like LSD, MDA, Cocaine back in the 1960's and 70's. Than they graduated went on to take over the family pharmaceutical business. And now they have more power than perhaps someone who has taken acid numerous times should.

The good news is despite my drug problems my ear seems to be on the mend and the drugs are leaving my body and things are getting back to normal.

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