Imperfect Improvement
Five years. It’s been almost five years since I saw the 2014 documentary movie, “Fed Up” and decided once and for all to commit to a long-term intentional change to address my uncontrolled craving for sugar. (See “My Addiction“) My solution was admittedly an imperfect one, but I have very slowly achieved a noticeable improvement throughout the ensuing years.
One of the imperfections of my plan to take command of that insidious nagging urge to eat something that will produce the intoxicating dopamine reward is that I allow myself to have a little sweet treat or treats every day. I liken it to trying to live a sober life while still continuing to have an alcoholic drink every day, (no disrespect intended to those who are working a program to manage alcohol or any other substances). From my understanding, total abstinence is the more effective practice.
Since there are natural sugars in plenty of foods, total avoidance of sugar is an extreme I chose not to pursue. After watching “Fed Up,” my plan was to avoid the added sugar in processed food, especially in cases where it is well hidden and unexpected. I was surprised to learn how much sugar might be included in buns and some types of bread, in sauces, dressings, and yogurts, to name a few.
I decided to start paying attention to labels and serving sizes and plotted to achieve the World Health Organization (WHO) and the US Food and Drug dietary guidelines of 10% of daily calories consumed.
Based on an oft-referenced 2000 calorie per day average (your mileage may vary) that amounts to 200 calories or roughly 50 grams of sugar per day. I decided to aim for 10 grams of sugar per my three main meals. That gave me a full 20 grams of headroom to account for variations and a modest cookie or dessert bite for moments of rewarding bliss.
One serving size of a Girl Scout S’mores® cookie equals two cookies coming in at 16 grams of sugar. I eat just one.
These S’mores taste incredibly sweet to me. One welcome improvement over the five years of measured sugar intake is that I have developed a heightened sensitivity to sweetness. That’s probably one of the things that helps me to be able to stop at just one cookie per serving.
It’s an imperfect formula that I’ve settled on, but since I started this practice, I have controlled my hemoglobin A1c levels and avoided the all-too-typical annual weight gain that normal aging usually brings on.
The craving? It’s still a constant companion, but one that has become much easier to contain, …one measured serving at a time.
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Breathing Room
There is a lot of effort required in felling every single tree surrounding a large oak tree, but when the job is finally complete, the result evokes a rewarding feeling of satisfaction every time you walk past it. The newly opened space beneath the crown of the oak inspires increased visual energy solely on the oak. It’s nice to reclaim the more pronounced prominence these dominant trees deserve among the vast number of surrounding volunteers that naturally sprout and eventually rise up to become pests.
We are literally providing them more breathing room.
Over time, my perspective of managing a wooded lot has evolved from a basic belief that there can be no such thing as too many trees to one of being able to sacrifice some toward a goal of a healthier forest overall.
That’s not a simple transformation.
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Not Simple
We really didn’t plan for this. I picture gardening as digging up some dirt and dropping in some seeds. Cyndie mentioned wanting to grow some of our own food. I’m not one to quickly volunteer for a huge project that only grows more laborious with time, but I was willing to support Cyndie in having a garden.
She suggested the slope and I agreed to create terracing to facilitate. From there, things have slowly evolved to include our simultaneous lumberjacking project to remove marked trees from beneath our preferred mature oaks. There is no longer anything simple about this modest little produce garden.
Yesterday, I finally felled the last, most difficult, trees from beneath the two oaks nearest our house. Only about 27 left to go throughout the rest of our woods.
We are wrestling with placing tree trunks that are almost too heavy to manage in place of creosote-soaked fence posts as the wall in the first terrace. The fact that none of them are as straight as first glance implies throws a real complicating challenge into my attempts to make reality merge with our fantasy of perfect results.
For her part, Cyndie is keeping the pressure on to complete this first terrace with her early planning and execution of starting plants indoors and testing soils.
The first peek of a sprout was from one of her lettuce seeds. I’ve never seen what a lettuce plant looks like when it goes to seed.
We now have data on the nitrogen, phosphorous, potash, and acidity levels in the clay-dominant soil on the slope, as well as in three different locations where we have stores of composted manure. Our hope is to combine the best of each to build a premium growing environment in this first terrace.
Seeing how involved this has become is a classic revelation of why I am not quick to jump on board with every idea that pops up. Sure, I’d love to have fresh food from a garden of our own, but can we get there by just digging up some dirt and throwing in a few seeds?
I guess it’s not that simple.
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Newest Ramp
Chicken ramp is now up to version three. I’ve given up on the cutesy woven willow branch ramps because they don’t hold up to the abuse of the elements and the apparent urges of critters and/or chickens to pull them apart.
It feels a little sad to be getting around to fixing this just days after the loss of five hens, but there are still three birds who are going in and out of the coop and I have decided to remedy the design flaw of passing through the drop zone for snow sliding off the slanted roof.
The new design approaches the chicken access door from the side, keeping it just inside the drip line off the roof.
Cyndie said the first chicken to exit the coop this morning after the door was opened had to stop abruptly to figure out the turn, but then walked right down.
I watched the Wyandotte who is becoming broody approach the new ramp from the ground yesterday, driven by her strong urge to get back inside and park in an empty nest box. She stopped where the bottom of the old ramp would have been and stretched her neck up as tall as she could with a look of incredulity as she inspected the strange alteration.
Then she flapped her wings and hopped halfway up from the side and scrambled up through the opening.
I’m anxious to see if the snow will drop just beyond this new ramp since that is the primary reason I changed to the side entry, but hopefully, that test won’t happen for many months.
Seven years ago today, the first spring after we had moved here, we received 18-inches of wet snow that wreaked havoc on trees and branches. I will always remember the sound of snapping limbs that resembled rifle reports cracking all around me within the otherwise sound-deadened thick blanket of white.
It was very distressing.
I will happily wait until next winter to see how the newest version of the chicken ramp works when melting snow drops off the roof overhang. By then, we should have round three of purchased chickens established, as Cyndie has already placed an order for all new breeds. Delivery is much delayed and breed selection was rather limited due to very high demand.
I guess a lot of people are in the market for the comfort of having their own source of eggs at a time when going out in public is being discouraged.
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Remote Start
Came home from work on Wednesday to find the startings of a garden growing in the house.
Guess I better figure out how I’m going to complete the terrace project for all the new plantings that will soon be sprouting.
Cyndie is even testing our soil for pH level to determine the starting point before we bring over loads of composted manure to improve the dirt.
After she worked to get the teeny, tiny seeds from packets she purchased all planted into the starter pods, there were some much larger seeds with which she wanted to experiment.
Based on inspiration from our neighbor who planted honeydew seeds he had saved from the sweetest, best-tasting grocery store melons, which ended up successfully growing to produce an over-abundance of equally delicious honeydew, she wants to try growing squash from salvaged seeds.
I will be dumbfounded if that project meets with success.
Between the multiple-pronged challenges of weather, weeds, and wildlife all conspiring to foil our first attempt at a produce garden, I think it will be a long shot for any garden harvests to be making their way to our kitchen.
I welcome the possibility of being pleasantly surprised.
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Luck Ends
Our surprising run of luck with keeping our latest eight free-range chickens in the wilds of rural Wisconsin farm country ended yesterday in a very similar fashion to our first attempt a couple of years earlier. In the waning hours of daylight, when Cyndie went out to close the chicken door on the coop, there were only three hens on the roost.
A cursory survey of the surroundings turned up one body and one pile of feathers. No other clues were found.
Some predator or predators had a good meal last night. It, or they, made off with four gorgeous hens.
It was a real joy while it lasted. Unfortunately, it is not joyous at all when lives come to an end. The cycles of natural life can be harsh.
The unwelcome drama made for a pretty crummy end to an otherwise rainy, gloomy day.
And then there were three…
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Not Knowing
If only we knew. Have I been infected? Do I have antibodies? Will illness strike someone I know? Will the economic depression last very long? Will the food supply chain normalize? Will hospitals near me become overrun? When I get the virus will I have no symptoms, or will I need to be hospitalized? Will there be a second wave?
Thus far, the COVID-19 pandemic has barely impacted my life. I could avoid contributing to the oversaturation of media information on the topic and only write about home projects and the weather as if there is no life-altering virus outbreak disrupting the world all the while. I’d prefer that, actually. But the reality is, there is an undulating ripple that is disturbing the universal foundation of how everything used to work, which makes pretending there isn’t seem conspicuously disingenuous.
Of greater distress to me than not knowing the answers to all the questions in my first paragraph is the growing reality that I no longer have plans on the calendar for going out with friends or family for dinner to celebrate events, or for going to see live music performances, or to go to the lake this summer, or take a week off work to go biking and camping with friends.
We don’t know what we are going to be doing next week, next month, all summer, or next year. That puts a real crimp in the realm of feeling hopeful and inspired.
It’s just not very sexy to replace that kind of hope with the more realistic desires of hoping we all get through this alive and with some semblance of our incomes, assets, and health still intact.
I struggle with a little guilt over feeling like I would prefer to just get the virus and be forced to stay home and do nothing for two weeks just so I could have a few days of certainty and also a little justification for allowing myself to lay in bed until I honestly didn’t want to anymore.
I’m tired. I don’t want to simply appreciate the sunlight shining on the newly blossoming flowers. Dewdrops on the grass. Pond frogs starting to sing again.
I don’t want to meditate on the zen of not knowing.
Well, maybe I do want a little of that meditation, especially in place of hearing one more government briefing about how they are going to ramp up testing or whether or not it is wise to speculate about injecting disinfectant that works on hard surfaces into human bodies.
Is it possible to inhale UV light? That might work.
I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be sarcastic.
I feel for those who suffer every day with the fear of getting infected and for the people who are already suffering significant financial disruptions. As well, for those who are needing to work long hours for days and weeks on end at higher risk of infection to care for seriously ill patients.
Here’s to achieving the art of finding peace with not always knowing.
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First Cut
For some reason, surrounded by more simultaneous projects than I can keep track of, yesterday I decided to do something that wasn’t on the list: mow some grass. It was earlier in the year than I usually choose to mow, but it was something I could just get done while quickly making the place look better. Cleaned up the leaves nicely.
That’s just a way to not say that I’m bugged by an inability to finish taking out all the trees that have been marked for removal by the DNR forester so long ago I’ve lost track. That whole project is conflicting because I’d rather be planting trees than cutting them down. It is also daunting due to the large number of trees in multiple locations with red dots painted on them.
Compared to that extensive lumberjacking exercise, sitting on the lawn tractor while spiffing up a few of our lawn grass areas was easy picking.
Unfortunately, I allowed myself to get sidetracked after the mowing by attempting to remove several of the last piles of downed wood from Saturday’s effort, which ultimately usurped plans to make big headway on the produce garden terracing.
The intended quick effort to remove two of the heaviest sections of downed tree trunk ended up killing valuable time while I fought a losing battle with the winch cable on the ATV. I allowed the cable to unspool too far and it came off the winch. Unfortunately, I had upsized that cable because the previous cable kept breaking when used with the snowplow blade.
The bigger diameter cable doesn’t fit well in the hole of the winch spool hub, so my hasty attempts to re-secure it were repeatedly foiled. In the end, I temporarily rigged it to accomplish the immediate task after multiple iterations and we were able to move that wood into the barn. I’d like to let those pieces dry out for use in undetermined future sculpting projects.
It just took three times as long as it should have.
We think the tree was an American Hornbeam or Hop Hornbeam and may have some burl adding bulges to the otherwise muscle-looking features of the trunk.
I think it will present some interesting visuals when carved and sanded.
I’ll have a hard time figuring out where to make a first cut on that beauty when the time comes after a year of seasoning.
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Breaking Point
How far can things stretch before they break? The one sure way to find out is when the “thing” in question actually breaks. I’m inclined toward not discovering this in most cases, and as a result, try not to stretch the limits of unknowns that could involve harm.
It’s weird to watch the number of people who are choosing to march together in protest over having businesses forced to shut down and people commanded to shelter in place. Have they honestly reached their breaking point? Something tells me that would be a poor use of the descriptor.
For the most part, I avoided breaking anything I didn’t intend to break yesterday while pretending to be a lumberjack, although I did suffer a significant contusion just above my right knee. Wood is really heavy. Really, really heavy. A tree that didn’t seem all that large tipped precisely in the direction I intended, but at the last moment when the upper branches reached the ground, it caused the trunk to swiftly roll back toward me and smack my leg.
I was able to cut the smaller trees straight through with a single swipe, such that I am right beside them as they respond. Sometimes they lay down on their own, other times the trunk shifts and lands upright on the ground with the high branches held up by surrounding limbs. The tree that got me was just a bit bigger, so I smartly cut a notch on the front side and made a slot on the backside for the hinge technique of felling trees.
There was one important next step I forgot where I’m to swiftly move away when the tree starts to tip.
I stretched the safety rules, but luckily this time, not to a breaking point.
Out of the many trees toppled yesterday, I only had one get hung up on a nearby three so solidly that we couldn’t pull it down. I cut the leaning trunk to separate the upper portion from the base but that didn’t do anything about the limb that was tightly nestled deep in the “Y” of the standing tree.
Using the skills I learned from my brother, Elliott, I tossed a weighted line into the branches in order to pull a rope through. Cyndie and I took turns trying to pull in every direction, but nothing was going to change that perfect catch-point of the two trees. I headed back to the shop for the pole-chainsaw.
It wasn’t long enough to reach the critical point from the ground, but I was able to trim and bring down the bulk of the tree.
I was reaching the breaking point of my tolerance for dealing with that blasted tangle of branches and called it a day.
There is a terrace wall construction project that is in need of attention.
Counting my blessings that sheltering at home for us does not mean staying inside an apartment or our house…
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