Celebrating Earth Day: A Day at the Farm

We celebrated Earth Day by accepting an invitation to spend the day at Swede Dairy Farm.  It is important to me that my kids get in touch with nature. Every Spring we plant a small veggie/fruit garden because I want them to learn the value of growing food. I want them to learn  that it does not magically appear at the grocery stores and to make wise choices on what they put into their bodies. We couldn’t have picked a better activity for this special day.   

This was our first time visiting this farm and we felt welcomed. We each had the name and description of a goat on our name tags and we had to find them, we then took pictures with them.

We got to experience what is like to milk a goat! It was much easier than I had thought!

They had newborn goats and we were thrilled to have been given the opportunity to bottle feed them. 

We were also given a complete tour of the Dairy Farm and even learned how to make Chevre!  

And of course we had to bring home some of the good stuff! We decided on their Lemon-Blueberry Chevre and Goat Cheese Pesto and Pepper Torte. 

It was a very rewarding experience and I’m thankful to have been given the opportunity to spend our day at a farm.  On our way home my husband thanked me for the things I encourage our family to do. We live in a world with such busy lifestyles that we forget to appreciate Nature.  To those who live in the Houston/Austin area, I encourage you to check out Swede Dairy Farm. Not only would you be supporting a great farm but they really do have amazing products. 

~Adriana

Meet Greenola Girl Adriana!

What led me to look into natural supplements and medicine? My kids’ health.

We all know kids would rather play than make a run to the potty. Yup that’s what my daughter Valerie likes to do all the time. She had her first urinary tract infection last year; she had a fever of 104 so I took her in to see her pediatrician and was prescribed antibiotics. The UTI cleared although she did develop a slight rash from the antibiotic. A couple of months later she had ringworm -I love doing my daughter’s hair and her friends at school love touching it and I believe that’s how she got it. We made another trip to the pedi and she was prescribed oral meds for 6 weeks to treat it and for a while we thought it was going away after she finished the meds. Fast forward about 2 months...after this she gets a second UTI, we made yet another trip to her pedi and were prescribed antibiotics again. This time she broke into a horrible rash the day after she finished the antibiotics - it covered her entire body from the soles of her feet to her throat! I rushed her to the nearest urgent care and turns out she is allergic to sulfa-based antibiotics. The doc there told me that symptoms sometimes start mild but can escalate to be life threatening. I was really scared, her rash went away on its own, but her body took a very long time to recover from all the meds she was exposed to within a 6 month period. She would wake up with red cheeks, her immune system was just so weak and her ringworm came back, she had a toxic liver.

Out of frustration and a little anger towards my daughter’s pediatrician I must say, I started researching natural ways to help her. After all, the human race didn’t make it this far with the help of Doctors and pharmaceuticals.  I started using supplements based on raw foods, not all supplements are created equal! Some have synthetic vitamins which are harmful for you in the long run. I use Vitamin D3 as an immune system booster as well as Vitamin C and Cod Liver Oil, I also give my daughter probiotics a couple of times a day on an empty stomach to help recolonize her gut with good flora which had been killed with the rounds of antibiotics. I also started putting coconut oil on her ringworm, coconut oil is a wonderful gift of nature, it is naturally antibacterial and antifungal. It is taking some time, we are into about 2 months of treatment and she is doing so much better! Her cheeks no longer get red and her ringworm seems to finally be going away for good.

I should add that nutrition plays a big role in our health and we eat a whole foods diet that consists of mostly organic produce and grass/pastured meats/eggs. All my kids get these supplements and they all seem to be overall healthier, we survived the flu season with just a couple of little colds :)  

Look for my future blogs, where I will talk about each supplement individually and its benefits!