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Blooming Yarn and Random Musings


Soaking some yarn to make it "bloom" so that The Farmer can knit socks with it. Unwashed (as in straight off the cone) yarn is too crunchy to knit socks with.

The past couple of weeks have been filled with doctors appointments, claim forms, and prescriptions. Man, are there a lot of people sick in my family. Honestly, The Farmer hasn't been truly well since before Thanksgiving. He finally succumbed to a sinus infection about two weeks ago. He still isn't well, even after a round of antibiotics. One of our daughters is dealing with a mild medical condition and another daughter is dealing with a slightly less mild medical condition.

This leads me to wonder aloud why it is okay to take antibiotics when you have an infection, but not okay to give antibiotics to an animal when it gets an infection. Organic standards do not all make sense to me--especially those regarding animal care. Which is why our crops are organic and our animals are not. Would you or your family members pass for "organic"?

Despite the lovely pictures of last week, yesterday's weather catapulted us right back into mud season. Lots of rain melted all that beautiful snow. Both melted snow and rain combined to turned everything nasty. Today the wind and cold fixed that somewhat, but the farm is still brown and barren-looking.

I might just post a lovely picture from LAST week on the blog tomorrow for Wordless Wednesday. After all who wants to look at mud?
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Comments

  1. AnnieJanuary 25, 2012 at 8:33 AM

    Hmmm. Am assuming that I have the less mild medical condition? The competitive side of me is like "YES! I WIN!" but then I am like "NOOOOO!"

    ReplyDelete
  2. Mackin-ArtJanuary 25, 2012 at 9:10 AM

    We lost all our lovely snow too, now we just have sheets of ice waiting to take us down!
    I'm curious - how is an animal with an infection treated organically?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. LonaJanuary 25, 2012 at 9:25 AM

      In many cases, herbal remedies are tried first. If the farmer has to use antibiotics to save the life of the animal, that animal can never be sold as organic. In the instance of dairy cows, a very sick cow will often be treated with antibiotics and then sold to a conventional dairy farm. It's quite a high standard--too high, I think. For more on the organic/antibiotic topic, read this article: http://www.rodaleinstitute.org/when_it_comes_to_animal_health_and_welfare

      Delete
    2. LonaJanuary 25, 2012 at 9:26 AM

      In my more cynical moments I've been known to mutter: "The only organic sheep is a dead sheep." I'm sure it can be done. I just don't see clearly how.

      Delete
  3. KateJanuary 25, 2012 at 10:38 AM

    Herbal remedies do work sometimes. My daughter made a tea with dandelion and another plant that I can't remember for our milk cow to help her recover from milk fever when we couldn't get the calcium supplement that looked like a caulk gun into her. We have also treated our sheep who have had diarhea with comfrey tea. While we have not and hope not to have a serious problem, we have managed some of the small stuff. Not being critical just trying to inform. We are experiencing a devastating illness in our family and are very happy to be able to use modern medicine to recover. Take care!

    ReplyDelete
  4. LonaJanuary 25, 2012 at 11:44 AM

    Kate, no arguments from me on the efficacy of some herbal remedies. I like to have my "tool box" full of many different types of fixes. In fact, my kids are amused at the things I promote--essential oils, etc. But it seems when they need the big guns, organic animal producers are not able to use a whole class of nifty drugs. And it feels like a bit of a double standard that people will use pharmaceuticals themselves, but endeavor to eat only things that are raised without any pharmaceuticals, ever.

    I'm sorry to hear about the illness. May God bless with health...

    ReplyDelete

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