I Want To Get Out Of The System

     I wrote a note on this, a while back, on Facebook. I will attempt to communicate my heart on this matter, without sounding like I'm paranoid or a conspiracy theorist.

   There are so many factors involved that this article could end up sounded jumbled up, but everyday I am seeing more evidence that brings about concern. It's not a concern based upon fear, so much, but rather a concern for being prepared for the future.

  For the past 40 years of my Christian life, I have seen people respond to this in fear. Some move away to a remote place of safety. Others are storing food away for when this time comes. While I don't think these things are necessarily wrong in themselves, I believe there are two things God wants us to keep in mind.*

1. God wants His people to be prepared.
2. God does not want His people to be afraid.

  So, what is the real problem at hand, and how can I explain it in such a way that it will not take pages for my readers to have to read through?

 There are many problems in our environment and in our society, that seem to make us feel helpless, when it comes to living. There are threats to our economy, and there are threats to our safety. There are threats to our livelihoods and basically there our threats to the well being of our society. They are not just threats that some politician can come in and fix. I am ultimately talking about threats that, if left ignored, could wipe out human existence.

   In this article, I can only cover a spectrum of this, so I will focus on the food and drug industry in America, more specifically.

   The food and drug industry is bigger than we are. Let's go back to the days of Early America. Men and women boarded a ship and eventually came over here and settled our land. Yes, half of them died during the first winter due to sickness, but what they had was precious, and what they had, has been lost today.

   They came over here with seeds from Europe. They also made friends with the Native Americans, and these Native Americans helped them to survive by teaching them how to successfully plant. Early Americans had a lot of land and grew everything they needed to have in order to eat and feed their families. They were also resourceful, and used different parts of an animal for things that they needed. Clothing, oil, eating utensils, and meat all came from one animal, in many cases.

   As America grew and developed, people lived on farms. People used what was called the 'barter' system in which one person traded his goods with another person for the goods offered by the other person. At some point down the road, banking was set up. Now people could 'buy' the things they needed instead of having to 'barter' for them.

    Factories were built, and the first supermarket came on the scene in 1946. The time came when you could buy your own soap instead of having to make it from scratch. Textile mills came about. You could buy your own clothing instead of having to have someone make it, or having to make it yourself.

   The time came when people could buy several items and pay for them with a check or credit card. Today, you can go to other countries and use a credit card. Nothing in itself, is really wrong up to this point, but some things took place that could prove to be harmful, as our country progressed in development.

    At some point within the past 50 years, the government took more and more responsibility over the food industry as well as over the medical industry. Unless we are inside the government, we do not know what takes place and all the decisions that are being made every day, under the guise of protecting the people.

   As a result of this, the Food and Drug Administration was formed. The FDA, as we call it today, has a lot of power, and has taken away the power from the people. Also, governmental funds have helped establish industrialized farming and supports colleges which produce those who work in our present medical field.

   I don't want to make this sound like a political article, but I want people to see what is going on in order for us to be prepared. So, please don't write this off as something political or tearing down of our government. We have to be prepared though, for what is coming.

   Today, the FDA has the power to shut down farms, if they deem it necessary. If those in the FDA feel like consuming raw milk is dangerous, they have the right to penalize those who sell raw milk. If the FDA believes it is fine to put fluoride in toothpaste, even though fluoride is a known carcinogen, they have the legal authority to keep fluoride in the toothpaste, if they want to do so.

    Some of the recent decisions made by those in the FDA have been harmful to people. One example is a farm which produced cheese made from raw milk that was shut down. The FDA came into a health food store, armed, and demanded all of the cheese to be removed. They removed all the cheese from any store that carried it, stating that they believed it was tainted. They tested the cheese over a period of months, and found that the cheese was not tainted, yet they refused to allow the farm to be reopened.

    From the angle of the government, and the industrialized food department, we have today a corporation which owns much of the food industry. The name of this corporation is Monsanto. Monsanto has so much power in the decisions of food production and much of these decisions are unwise. They are not only over many food chains, but are also over many companies associated with agriculture. Like the FDA, their decisions aren't based upon what we know will be helpful for people, but their interests are in what brings in the most money. Anything that is a threat to their making money come in, is challenged by them.

   Monsanto is the originator of the biological process of modifying food genetically. They are taking seeds and changing their genetical structure to make the plant have certain qualities. This is done to make food stretch so that the byproducts can be used in many other products. This way, food can be produced on a massive level. Instead of local farms producing normal, healthful food, now we have enormous farms producing tons of food products that can be used in prepared food products, and sold on our grocery stores shelves. The key thought in all of this is 'massive production'. Monsanto doesn't care if your food is nourishing. They only care that the food can be stretched and added to other food products they produce and put on shelves of every grocery store chain.

   Today, your choices are (when it comes to food) to buy from a local farm (farmer's markets) or to buy from the grocery store, which is ultimately under Monsanto or some other large food industry corporation. Measures are being made today to try to do away with local farms. Can you see why? Do we see a problem here?

   Everything is in this system now, and we are duped into assuming that this system is a normal part of our environment. After all, most of us were born after 1946, so we have no memories of our moms or grandmas making soap or apple cider. And those who do have those memories, welcomed the grocery stores when they came into being. After all, who really wants to sit there and stir a pot for making your weekly amount of soap when you could be doing other things?

   I am not saying though, that grocery stores are bad. I use them all the time. The grocery store is really not the problem. It's the system that's the problem. It's the gigantic corporations that own all the food production that is causing the problem. They are the ones calling the shots and making the decisions of food safety and evaluation, and their decision making is not good.

   So, what is the answer? I hope you now have some background information on what the problem is, so that we can come up with some answers.

   The problem is simply that all of our modern, convenient food items are regulated and come out of large food corporations that care only about making money, and you and I are victims of their judgments on safety and nourishment of food products sold in stores. If there were Godly men and women running these corporations, such as Monsanto, then wisdom would be used and decisions would be made that would be good concerning food. But what we have is corporations run by greedy men and women, who don't give a rip about people. They do not have an eternal perspective, nor do they understand or care about cause and effect. If they want to add mercury to vaccines, they will do so. It might be the only way they can mass produce the vaccines and preserve the ingredients in the vaccines so they aren't lost. But wouldn't it be better to be healthy and not need a vaccine int he first place? The FDA will not go in that direction, for if people were healthy, they wouldn't need vaccines, nor would they need medicine (drugs) to make them well. They would lose money.

    We can be somewhat free of this system, if we take action. Sadly, we might even have to take action in a political way in order to protect our freedoms from the government dictating what it thinks we should eat and what should be allowed to be put into our foods to make it the way it will sell best and not rot on the shelves in the meantime.

   But the main things we can do are to support local farming, and grow our own food. Learn how to grow food without the use of chemicals (another subject for another time). This is really important because the government does see gardening as a threat to their corporations and there are some legal actions that are trying to be made to prevent people from gardening.

   I remember a time when I was growing up, where farmers were actually made fun of. They were thought of as 'Old fashioned' or passe. The idea was for people to not become farmers. This whole action was a form of peer pressure and I believe the same source behind the large food corporations is the same one making fun of farmers.

   Government is good, and God ordained government. The problem we have today, is not with the government itself. It is with the people we elected into government, and what was done behind our backs or without our knowledge that is causing all our difficulties. We can pull away from this system though, and form our own. We can also form our own communities and work together using our own standard of work ethics. Of course, this will be hard to do if our country turns communist or Muslim, but we would have to go underground if that is the case.

   So, Early Americans grew their own food locally and shared their abundance with their neighbors. They bartered for the things they needed. They had fair laws and everyone was involved in the process of growing food. Today, most of our food is grown on Industrialized farms, lacking nourishment, and having additives put in to make them last a long time. Food is not only lacking in nourishment, but also dangerous to eat. Eating at McDonald's might be fun, but there is a trade off. The trade off will benefit the Food and Drug Administration when you get sick from eating food that is actually tainted and devoid of nourishment. The FDA doesn't want you to know this. You are being pulled into it by your taste buds and desire for convenience, and they know this. McDonald's will thrive as long as people keep pulling up in their drive through and entering their arched building. The choice is still yours and mine. How are we going to decide?

So the remaining questions are: How do I get out of the system and How can I survive outside the system? Those will be put on another blog sometime. In the mean time, study organic gardening. Learn to do hard things and don't be afraid of a lot of work. Find others who are interested in organic gardening. Support your local farms and join organic food clubs or co ops.






* We don't first make a case, then try to make connections to support it. We take what evidence we have, then build our case from that.

Homemade Aspirin vs. Store Bought Aspirin

  I know you probably think I am nuts for making many products from scratch instead of buying them from the store. I have to laugh at people who ask me why I go through all the trouble of making soap when you can just buy it at the store.

   One time I had an irritated spot on my body and it wouldn't go away for anything. It was situated in a place where I could not see it, so when I was at the doctor's office one day, I asked him about. I had a really good gynecologist but then he retired and I had to find another one. He was old fashioned and not really into all the modern discoveries of natural healing, but he was a caring doctor. I was surprised at his answer concerning my skin irritation. He asked me what kind of soap I was using, and I told him 'Dial'. He told me to stop using it. He also said that store bought soaps have chemicals in them that are undesirable. So, I have been making my own soap and have no more skin irritation.

   The companies that make aspirin are no different than the soap companies. They have to make a product that will work effectively, and they have to make a product that will be able to last for a long time on the shelves. So, in a sense, we have processed aspirins available at the store, as well as everything else that is processed.

   My quest for natural aspirin came when I found out that tomatoes do well with a little bit of aspirin water. What I struggled with though, was that in order to follow the recipe for this aspirin water, I would have to buy a bottle of aspirins from the store. If I am doing organic gardening, then I really can't put anything in it that might have other ingredients, thus, my search for aspirin made from scratch went on.

   I had learned that aspirin comes from a tree called a 'white willow' tree. The aspirin itself comes from the bark of this tree. Not every willow tree will have this kind of bark though. It has to be the white willow tree.

   Of course, I found this product on amazon.com, put out by a company called 'Frontier'. Come to think of it, I have other products from Frontier as well. I have sassafras Root Bark in the same kind of bag as the white willow bark. I ordered the white willow bark and followed the directions on the package, which is pouring 1 cup of hot water over 2 teaspoons of white willow bark and letting it steep for a couple of minutes. Viola! Liquid aspirin made right in front of your eyes!

   I let mine steep in a little glass teapot designed for steeping herbs in. In fact, mine looks very much like this one:

It has a glass insert that has holes in it, yet the holes are small enough to keep the herbs inside. You pull the insert out after it gets done steeping. I just take the two teaspoons of willow bark and place them inside the insert, then pour the water into the tea pot and place the cover on the top. I guess you steep it until the water turns into the color you want it to be.

  I took the drink after it was cooled off. It really did take my headache away! I have to admit, I bought the willow bark capsules and took them when I had a headache, but they didn't seem to help. I am so glad to have a natural way to take aspirin again, and the tea seems so much better than taking it in capsule form.

   The white willow bark comes in both organic and non-organic. The price difference is about $6, but I don't know what any other differences would be.




  So, next time that headache comes around, here is a way to create a homemade aspirin product without the chemicals and additives that are in regular store bought aspirin. It's not difficult to make either.

The organic white willow bark is a little over $16 and the regular white willow bark is a little over $10. The size of the bag is one pound which should last for a while (unless your family has a lot of pain or needs to use aspirin on a continual basis.). Plus, you can use some on your tomato plants for good health. I could never figure out the measurements because they used a different measuring system than I am used to, but I would assume that it would be the equivalent of a capsule in a quart of water. Then it is sprayed onto the plants, but only once a month, according to the directions I found on the Internet.

Aspirin Recipe From Frontier

2 teaspoons white willow bark
1 cup boiling water

  Put the willow bark into a tea bag, infuser, insert inside of glass tea pot, or cheesecloth. I personally think that using cheese cloth could be kind of messy. Pour the hot water over the bark and let it steep for a good couple of minutes. Then strain the tea so that all the willow bark is in the cheesecloth or tea pot insert. Sweeten as desired.  Leftover bark can make a good compost ingredient!