The hay bales at Loseley
Let me paint the picture. It is a bright sunny Autumn day. I am out enjoying the blue skies and changing colours of the trees on the horizon. I am sitting on a log that lies along the edge of one of the the fields above Loseley. I have a soaring view out across the Surrey Hills. To my right is Hindhead and the Devils punchbowl. To my left are the Chantries and the ridge of hills that run from Pitch Hill all the way to Leith Hill and Dorking. I drink the view in and then I close my eyes and enjoy the sun on my face. I can hear bird song, the rumbling of a tractor. I reopen my eyes and look up to see the criss cross of aeroplane trails far up above.
Next moment something different catches my attention. It is much closer. It is floating past my shoulder, it is compact and small and looks like it is paragliding from my side of the field across the sky. And then I see another and a third. 3 little friends who appear to be having a race to see who can go the furthest. They launch themselves out and fly through the air holding on to the silk thread they use to make their webs. It is a genius thing to behold and I envy them their freedom. Watching spiders floating past on an almost invisible thread of silk opens my eyes to look closer at what is going on around me. About 2 metres above the ground there is a highway of airborne insect traffic floating, buzzing & paragliding through the air.
At the same time as I am enjoying the spider antics, down below a farmer is driving his tractor up and down corridors of freshly sprouting winter greens. He is so far away, a couple of fields lie between us. I watch as he extends two long metal arms from the rear of the tractor, they are switched on and spray the crops with chemicals. It is a pleasant sight and I watch his progression for ten minutes.
The tractor faithfully rumbles up and down each row drenching it with a soft stream of chemicals. I look over and vaguely wondered what he is applying and whether it is very potent and how far down the food chain it will reach. It does not seem to be my problem until I catch the whiff of whatever he is spraying as it diffuses through the air and reaches up to curl itself around me cloaking me in an oily embrace. There is no tangible breeze to bring it to me. No strong current of air coming my way. I cannot believe it has reached me, nearly half a mile away from where I sit. There is nothing to see. No creeping mist, no visible spray, but I feel it entering my lungs and it makes me choke. I hurriedly move away into the woods to hide from the chemical cloud that has risen.
I walked home and forgot about my spider friends paragliding across the sky. I never saw which member of the trio went the furthest. I abandoned them to their games. But when I returned home I realised that they would have been drenched to a greater degree than I was. That level of chemicals entering their world could only be a bad thing. And I felt sad and compromised because I like farmers and I like locally grown food but I also like spiders.
I have recently been rereading a book on health that stated ...
"American soil is essentially sterile. Pesticides and herbicides are believed to be the 'total solution' in the natural world. They kill virtually every microorganism they touch, much of our overuse of medical antibiotics has reduced the human gut to a burned -out mine field, destroying the good guys along with the bad guys." Jordan S Rubin - The Makers Diet
It got me thinking about how far we have grown away from our natural roots and how many chemicals we have introduced into our daily lives.
The photo above is of my nephew George having a chat with one of the cows at Loseley. My Mum was a nurse and she was all for more dirt and more animals in our lives. She was the first to teach me that we need to build up our immune system. That's why I like to get outside and get myself around wildlife.
Sadly the book I was reading also stated that farmers routinely give big helpings of antibiotics to cattle, pigs and poultry to prevent infections from spreading in their stressful, crowded quarters. Researchers estimate that by consuming just one glass of commercially processed and packaged milk from your local supermarket shelf, you unknowingly ingest the residues of as many as one hundred different antibiotics! (Fortunately for the cow above, none of this applies.)
What we need is more dirt in our lives. We don't need more super crops, more mono- crops, more intensive cattle and poultry farming, more chlorine in our water systems or our swimming pools. Did you know that chlorine continues to kill all bacteria, even the good stuff inside our bodies once we drink it in our tap water. Imagine the kind of damage it does when we swim or shower in it considering that our skin is the largest organ of the body. It seems to me that we have completely over done the hygiene and sterilisation in our over processed manmade world.
We need to get back to a more natural world and more dirt. Why do I keep on going on about dirt? Well the microbes in dirt keep us alive. In small part we are made up of them. Our guts are made up of a balance of 85% good bacteria and 15% bad.
Your body desperately requires healthy intestinal flora. But unfortunately we are fighting a losing battle with imbalance in our lifestyles and in our digestive tracts. Our heavy reliance on huge amounts of sugar in our diets mean we are inhibiting our natural ability to fight disease. Eating sugar shuts down our ability to fight disease for 6 hours. The large amount of insulin needed to process sugar surpresses our bodies ability to fight infection. Forget the low fat diets, it is low sugar that we need.
Scientists are searching the globe for new microbes. Yes, that is soil they are hunting down. Soil that hasn't been contaminated with modern chemicals and striped of its natural bacteria. Rain forest soil, ancient woodland soils. Places where we can find microbes that will help us fight against disease.
'One gram of soil can contain as many as 10, 000 species of microbes unknown to science.'
Jo Handelsman, Professor of Plant Pathology.
Dr David Strachan, a respected epidemiologist at Britain's London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine stated .. "We need dirt. Societies growing separation from dirt and germs may well be the cause of weaker immune systems resulting in the growing incidence of a wide range of maladies."
When I returned from 2 weeks away over the summer, I looked in the fridge to find my loaf of bread was still bouncy and fresh. I looked at a tub of spreadable butter that is possibly 6 months old and it had no signs of any mould in it. These are worrying signs of how my life has been invaded with chemicals. These items should be happily going mouldy but instead they are pumped with additives to give them a lengthy shelf life. If they can do that to the product, what will they be doing to my insides?
Above - Sharkey the old race horse resting his head on my nephew George.
It is rather frightening to realise that despite my desire to be a healthy, well balanced country girl, my life is actually very far from that. I am a victim of chemical overload just as much as everyone else. I am reminded that I need my bread to go stale in one day. I need natural animal fat like butter and not chemically processed margarines in my diet. I need to buy organic milk and not be filling my body with a residue of hormones. I need to drink tea from loose tea leaves and not bleached teabags. I need my fruit and vegetables to go soft and mouldy and not sit around looking plump and shiny for weeks on end.
But in my world there are so many obstacles to removing the chemical overload. I'd like to eat organic, free range food but it is much more expensive than I feel I can afford. I'd like to grow my own crops but I don't have a garden.
Here are the solutions, I do have dirt I can eat in the woods and cattle I can be around to build up my internal immune system. I can eat less and pay more for my food. I don't know what to do for the spiders who are probably lying choking under a hedge after the crops were sprayed but I do seem to have conquered the chlorine problem. I am lucky enough to drink well water at Loseley which means I am not drinking highly chlorinated tap water. (But I have been informed that Loseley's water is high in sulphates as a result of the chemicals that run off the land from the farm fields! Oh dear, you win some and you lose some.)
Well at least I do love wild swimming and much prefer salt water to chlorinated pools. But what am I going to do next time I visit my brother's lovely clean pool in France ?!
So how do I conclude this post on our excessive use of chemicals in the developed world.
You may not be comfortable eating dirt but doing some gardening, getting outside, walking, hiking & being around animals will bring you back into touch with healthy soil bacteria. A growing number of scientists, nutritionists and medical doctors are convinced this is the most effective way to enhance the healing response of the body. Oh, And eat more edible wild fungi. Edible mushrooms are the richest source of glycoproteins that optimise immune function.
Our bodies are amazing, built to fight infection and disease. Give them the help they need and they will do their job.
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For more detailed information on diet and health I recommend reading Jordan's book - THE MAKERS DIET.
Here is a link to another very interesting article on the effects processed food has on our bodies.