Supa in St Louis

Hello Raw Foodies,

My name is Simon, aka Supa, and I have been a muzzled reader at the board for bit. I have found the banter here about juice recipes and kitchen gadgets very informative. But the stories of people regaining their good health are moving and inspirational. Since the beginning of this year I have been on my own journey of trying to heal my mind and body.

First the bad... I have psoriasis, acid reflux, add, have been a smoker for 25 years, and since the beginning of this year I have been having allergic hypersensitivity skin reactions to substances unknown. The hypersensitivity may have started with three spider (or other bug) bites on my ankle, but it is hard to know and has proved too complex for even the brightest medical doctor minds to unravel what exactly is going on with me. I've been subjected to steroids, antibiotics, antifungals, antihistamines, allergen injections, patch tests, and you get the idea.

Now the good... I definitively quit smoking on leap day this year and started the healing process of removing toxins from my body and reverse some of the damage I have done to myself by smoking. I aim to bring my psoriasis under control and cure my allergy hypersensitivity issues.

I have a love affair with nature (and yes even the bug that bit me) and the mother to much of nature around me, my wife. For our anniversary gift this year we decided to buy a juicer to help us consume the leftover bounty of garden greens before the hard winter frost sets in, and as a side benefit... to help prolong our time together on this planet. :)

We are pescetarian and have been getting our share of fruits and veggies (albeit mostly cooked). She is definitely the head chef of the household and I am the grounds keeper and repairman. I am actually more what they call a generalist, a jack of all trades I do not want to pay other people for and a master of the ones I find most interesting. Where ever we have lived we have always had a garden. During winter I setup an indoor garden so we can keep our potted herbs alive and producing for the kitchen till spring. We also have been sprouting broccoli, radish, and sunflowers for our salads for many years.

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She manages the two worm compost bins which receives most of the kitchen veggie waste. The worm bins create the organic miracle fertilizer we use a sparing handful at a time at the base of every plant. I manage the hot pile composting in the back yard with whatever is left over. This is never enough material to make a dent in our compost nitrogen needs, so every evening I stop by to pickup an eight gallon container with fifty pounds of used coffee grounds and filters from our local Starbucks. If the weather is sunny and hot I separate the grounds from the filters and dry them in the sun to a loose powder for using in a broadcast spreader as an organic fertilizer for the lawn and garden. If its cold or overcast I mix the wet grounds and filters with dry shredded leaves we rake, steal, shred, and stock pile each fall, and then add the mix on top of the current active heap. This is the foundation of my daily exercise and provides the garden yearly with five cubic yards of the richest dark leaf compost that money just can't buy. The rest of the compost we use is composted cow manure from a dairy farm that we bring in two yards at a time at sixty bucks a load. This is what we use for the initial improvement of the our silty clay loam soil when starting a new bed or for a light top dressing of the lawn to help increase the organic matter fraction; which in turn improves water retention, nutrient cation exchange, and keeps the soil food web healthy, diverse, and fed.

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With the addition of the new juicer to our lives, I have found myself a kitchen niche of our morning juice maker. And so that is what brings me here. To find support, confidence, and ideas to keep this up everyday while moving toward better health. So while my wife and I use to clink way too many glasses of wine to cheers the good things that happening from day to day. Now we clink glasses of fresh juice and cheers to good health.

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Cheers everyone,
Simon