{"id":261,"date":"2021-04-30T15:29:26","date_gmt":"2021-04-30T15:29:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blessedfeed.com\/?p=261"},"modified":"2021-06-24T14:43:01","modified_gmt":"2021-06-24T14:43:01","slug":"the-all-natural-drink","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blessedfeed.com\/?p=261","title":{"rendered":"The All Natural Drink"},"content":{"rendered":"

My\u00a0 daughter occasionally writes an editorial column for our local newspaper.\u00a0 The column is called “through the eyes of a 4th grader”. All my kids spend much of their waking hours in the outdoors of Northern Michigan.\u00a0 In one article she wrote how the season’s impact our life, both the chores and play we do daily.\u00a0\u00a0 She described the summer and fall as busy months.\u00a0 We have a large garden and produce much of our own food during these months. \u00a0 Harvesting and food processing are timely endeavors to say the least. \u00a0 They keep us off social media, outside and active.\u00a0 We also heat our home with locally grown dead-fall wood and spend a lot of energy cutting, hauling and stacking that wood.\u00a0\u00a0 She explains that our winter is a time of play.\u00a0\u00a0 Outside is where we play.\u00a0 This includes snowshoeing, skiing, sledding, snowball fights, ice skating and fort building.\u00a0 The snow always arrives, sometimes sooner than later.\u00a0\u00a0 The snow quiets the land and rejuvenates it.\u00a0 It does the same for us.\u00a0 We focus on what falls from the heavens rather than the toils of the soil.<\/p>\n

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Spring by far can be the busiest.\u00a0 First with maple syrup season, then with seedlings and finally planting.\u00a0 Living by the seasons, requires an ability to adapt.\u00a0 Nature dictates your schedule rather than any human contrived mechanism.\u00a0 This year it has been a mild winter.\u00a0 Spring came fast and then slowed down, regressed a little.\u00a0 Although without warning it will be summer.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Child-rearing is like the spring.\u00a0 It happens fast, never predictable and as soon as you feel caught up, the season changes.\u00a0 I always wish I’d planted one more row of seeds or another fruiting bush or tree.\u00a0 When one is raising children it helps to stay in-tune to natural processes, rather than always trying to stay on schedule.\u00a0\u00a0 Yes, sometimes opportunities are missed.\u00a0 However, the natural process will dictate the schedule. \u00a0 Kids develop when the conditions are right.\u00a0 Just like the first wild leeks popping up through the decaying leaves.\u00a0 Just like the maple sap starting to run.\u00a0 It will happen, but not always exactly when you expect.\u00a0\u00a0 Nature has a science that is predictable, but learning to adjust to all the variables is a practiced art of living by the seasons.<\/p>\n

My kids have adjusted to seasonal living.\u00a0 Maybe because they do not know anything else.\u00a0 Maybe I am the one that needed to adjust.\u00a0 Children seem to live instinctive.\u00a0 Just like when a newborn is immediately put on a mother’s chest after birth, he instinctively searches for nourishment.\u00a0 The infant child raises his head, smelling and feeling for the nipple in search of food. \u00a0\u00a0 I had to learn to tap trees.\u00a0\u00a0 As a year-round employee, I seasonally watched a Kensington Metropark interpreter demonstrate the labor intensive process used by Michigan’s native people to boil down the sap to a syrup with hot rocks.\u00a0 \u00a0 I started tapping my one, large maple tree on a Ypsilanti, Michigan city lot.\u00a0\u00a0 A year or two later, I got my dad involved and tapped a small woodlot of large black maples once tapped many, many years ago adjacent to his 100+ year old country home on Nichwagh Lake in South Lyon, Michigan. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We always let the children taste the fresh maple sap.\u00a0 They love the subtle sweet maple flavor and love to let it drip into their mouths.\u00a0 Now, my husband and I own thousands of sugar maple trees and tap about 40 to get our yearly supply of 10 gallons of Michigan made 100% pure maple syrup.<\/p>\n

Nothing about making maple syrup is easy.\u00a0 Now when I see it sold at the local farmers’ market, if I didn’t already have plenty, I would gladly pay the $20.00 a quart.\u00a0 Making maple syrup isn’t about the product, it is about the process.\u00a0 I would compare it to breastfeeding.\u00a0 The process may be even more important then the food.\u00a0 Even after 20+ years of studying human nutrition and diet, I have certainly not found the perfect food or diet, for that matter.\u00a0 Although one could easily make a nearly indisputable argument that for a human infant, breastmilk is the perfect food . \u00a0 However, maple syrup is just sugar.\u00a0 Maybe it has some micro-nutrients in ample quantities, but it is concentrated glucose. \u00a0 A past supervisor and fellow diabetes educator nearly fell over in disgust when I told her I produced maple syrup.\u00a0 For our diabetic patients, a traditional lumberjack breakfast of maple syrup and pancakes would surely put them in severe hyperglycemic overload.\u00a0\u00a0 Diabetes was unknown to Native Michiganders when they relied on maple syrup as part of their traditional diet.\u00a0\u00a0 They ate it out of necessity and in appropriate quantities to supplement a variety of grown, hunted and gathered foods.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 They also breastfeed their children exclusively during infancy.\u00a0 I do believe their children like mine loved to let the sweet maple sap drip into their mouths every spring and had ample opportunity to appreciate all of nature’s blessings.<\/p>\n

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My\u00a0 daughter occasionally writes an editorial column for our local newspaper.\u00a0 The column is called “through the eyes of a 4th grader”. All my kids spend much of their waking hours in the outdoors of Northern Michigan.\u00a0 In one article<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blessedfeed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blessedfeed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blessedfeed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blessedfeed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blessedfeed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=261"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"http:\/\/blessedfeed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":281,"href":"http:\/\/blessedfeed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261\/revisions\/281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blessedfeed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blessedfeed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blessedfeed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}