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Saturday, June 22, 2013

Buckwheat and its Benefits

Re-blogged from Waking Times

Buckwheat – 9 Great Reasons to Know it, Plant it, Grow it and Eat it!

June 21, 2013 | By | 1 Reply

Flickr-buckwheatBecky Mundt, Green Med Info
Waking Times

Buckwheat is one of those plants that may be unfamiliar to most Americans. It is a staple crop in parts of China, Russia and Eastern Europe, but is less well known to U.S. food consumers.

Buckwheat is not a cereal grain, although it's name might lead you to think it is. Rather, it is a flowering plant. Buckwheat is a relative of sorrel, dock and rhubarb, whose 'fruit seeds' are a great source of nutrition, cancer fighting phytonutrients, antioxidants and fiber.

A major crop which has been cultivated throughout the world for centuries, buckwheat production in the U.S. is currently far lower than in other parts of the world.

In the U.S. it is often planted not for the harvest of its seeds but as a weed control cover crop, a green manure to be cut and either tilled or left on the soil as organic matter, or as a honey crop for bees.

There are some powerful benefits offered by buckwheat in the garden and in the diet, not the least of which is its ease of growing and ability to thrive without fertilizers or pesticides.

1. Buckwheat is a great gluten free grain substitute.

A source of high quality protein, it contains all eight essential amino acids. Use it to make pancakes, porridge, as a substitute for rice, or sprout it and add it to salads and sandwiches for an antioxidant boost. Research has shown that sprouting buckwheat changes its nutrient profile and provides a super antioxidant boost.1

To super enhance that antioxidant boost, add trace minerals to the sprouting water.

2. Buckwheat improves blood cholesterol levels.

In populations where buckwheat is a staple in the diet, it has been shown to lower serum cholesterol and particularly to lower LDL cholesterol, earning it a reputation as a heart healthy grain substitute.

3. Cancer fighting properties.

Studies have shown that various parts of the buckwheat seed inhibit tumor growth and slow cancer cell growth in a variety of different types of cancer.3

4. Buckwheat is a clean crop.

Common buckwheat is one of the traditional ancient foods of people around the world. It has never been engineered, gone through breeding programs or modified, so you don't have to worry if it's safe.

5. Buckwheat shows results as an appetite suppressant.

It may even reduce your appetite and help you lose weight. In studies of grain substitutes, buckwheat was found to provide a higher sense of satiety than staple western grains such as rice and wheat. 4

6. An important bee crop.

Bees adore it. It blooms later than most spring pollen producers and can be a very important food source for bees. Like borage, it will continue blooming and producing new flower clusters and seed heads all season right up to the first frost, providing a major food source for the honey bee.

So, if part of your life mission right now is to help bees, planting common buckwheat is a definite must-do action item.

7. Buckwheat flowers are the source of buckwheat honey, which has proven antioxidant and anti inflammatory properties.

Not only does the buckwheat flower sustain the bees during the mid and late season when traditional pollen sources are low; the honey it produces is medicinal. According to research:

"As buckwheat honey was most effective in reducing ROS levels, it was selected for use in wound-healing products. The major antioxidant properties in buckwheat honey derive from its phenolic constituents, which are present in relatively large amounts. Its phenolic compounds may also exert antibacterial activity, whereas its low pH and high free acid content may assist wound healing."

8. It makes an attractive addition to the garden and has a fragrant flower.

No matter where it is planted in the garden, it adds flowering beauty and a pleasing scent. It can go in the vegetable gardens, herb gardens or along borders and edges. It can be broadcast seeded in meadows. Plant it around the main vegetable and fruit gardens to attract pollinators.

9. It's a great cover crop for garden beds

Buckwheat can crowd out some of the toughest spring weeds. While it's growing it is adding phosphorous to the soil for any vegetable crops which can be inter-planted later in the season once the buckwheat has been established.  In polyculture gardens it is left to continue blooming and plants are planted in among the stalks.

Buckwheat is a popular crop in permaculture for all these reasons.

So, even if you don't grow enough to harvest the seeds and make your own grain substitutes, adding buckwheat in the garden provides food for bees, nourishes the soil and fills the air with a delightful fragrance.

For those not fortunate enough to have a garden, this information might inspire a local seed bomb project. Remember, common buckwheat grows easily, without fertilizers or pesticides, so it's easy enough to make up small clay 'seed packages' and deliver them to edge lands, open spaces where little care is being taken of the property. Organic common buckwheat is sold by many organic specialty seed farmers.

Oh, one more thing, buckwheat can be used as a replacement for barley to make a gluten free beer. So, if it's really true that humans began growing grains and developing agriculture in order to make alcohol, as some anthropologists have suggested… Now there's the reason we were waiting for to get truly motivated!

Buckwheat: plant it, grow it, sprout it, eat it!

About the Author

Becky Mundt is an author (101 Home Uses of Hydrogen Peroxide), researcher and writer living on a small farm in Oregon. She has done research in more subjects than she can even remember, for many different organizations. Her passions include alternative approaches to health, organic garden and farming practices, sustainable and low impact living practices and the people she loves and their lives and interests.

View her website BeckyMundt.com where she maintains her blog a poetry section and "The Daily Thistle" an often less than daily humor column.

Sources:

1. http://www.greenmedinfo.com/article/buckwheat-and-especially-buckwheat-sprouts-have-significant-antioxidant-activity

2. http://www.greenmedinfo.com/article/trace-element-water-improves-antioxidant-activity-buckwheat-sprouts

3. http://www.greenmedinfo.com/article/buckwheat-has-cytotoxic-effect-number-cancer-cell-lines

4. http://www.greenmedinfo.com/article/alternative-grains-and-psuedocereal-products-may-have-appetite-reducing-activity

5. http://www.greenmedinfo.com/article/buckwheat-honey-has-antioxidant-and-anti-inflammatory-properities-which-may-aid-wound


New Message from AAMichael: "We celebrate this time with you now."

We celebrate this time with you now. – channeled by Ron Head

June 20, 2013 in Michael, Ron's Channeled Messages |

super moon

Michael

 

On this day we would ask you to center yourselves as much as possible and prepare yourselves for the immense energies you will receive during this super moon and solstice.  Continue to focus upon the inner changes you have been concentrating on, and allow the energies themselves to make the changes in your outer world that can and will be made.

 

Your input, received through prayers and intentions, is invaluable, but attempting to direct outcomes with your conscious minds is not needed.  Allow the immense and unfathomable energy and intelligence of the All to do what needs to be done, and you will be far ahead of where you would be if you tried to direct the changes yourselves.

 

Determine, decide, intend, and then allow would be a good way to approach things.  Or you could think of it as deciding with your conscious mind and then letting your higher selves to do the work.  Those from Eastern philosophies teach non-action, wu wei, tao, and other ways of describing this, but learn it in your own terms.  You are familiar enough with the principles now.

 

The flood of energy approaching you as we speak is massive.  There is nothing more than the intent to ride it out and take utmost advantage of it that is required of you.  If that means, in your particular case, that you need to lie down and rest, then do that.  If you wish to dance with the moon, then do that.  Let your heart and your body guide you for the next few days.  But remember to breathe the energies into yourselves and let them bring to you what they are meant to bring.  A great many of you are sufficiently familiar with this process now to know what is necessary.  Share your hard won wisdom if you are asked.

 

Those who are still asleep and do not have any idea of what is occurring now may act out, not knowing what to make of their feelings.  It is not necessary that you become involved, even to the extent of letting the awareness of these things to pass by you.

 

The growing power of your collective single purpose is of great value to your planet and yourselves now.  Breathe this new energy into that and the next few days will prove to be of immense importance.

 

We celebrate this time with you now.  Be peace.  Be love.  We are here with you always.  Good day.

 

 

Copyright © Ronald Head. All Rights Reserved. You may copy and redistribute this material so long as you do not alter it in any way, the content remains complete, and you include this copyright notice link: http://oraclesandhealers.wordpress.com/

Summer-Solstice Walk by Lauren Bruno

21 Jun

Magical Solstice Walk in Goshen Woods

Posted June 21, 2013 by laurabruno in Uncategorized. Tagged: , . 3 Comments

David took some lovely photos from our little Solstice walk in Goshen Woods. We saw a turtle and a snake! Potent signs of Earth, healing, boundaries, and transformation, although the snake moved too fast for a photo op. I'll let the rest of the pictures speak for themselves. Thanks to David for documenting our walk. (You can always tell when David takes the photos, because they're in focus and nicely framed. LOL, I still haven't mastered my iPhone, and David has quite the photographer's eye!)

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Solstice 2013 - Sonnenwende

Magical Celebration MidSummer
Fri, June 21, 2013

 Magical Celebration MidSummer

The Battle of Light and Dark

In the Craft the solar year is often seen as being ruled over by two opposing kings.

The Oak King rules the waxing year from midwinter solstice to summer solstice, the

part of the year when the hours of daylight increase. The Holly King rules the waning

year from summer solstice to winter solstice when the hours of daylight decrease.

At each solstice they battle for the hand of the Goddess and the honor of ruling the land.

The summer solstice begins with the Oak King in power, but this is reling Uished to

the Holly King at the close of the festival.

This idea of two gods, one of summerllight and one of winter/darkness, occurred

in many myth systems. These two lords, often twins or even hero and dragon/snake,

fight for rulership at the beginning of summer and at the beginning of winter.

The Greek sun god Apollo killed the python at Delphi with his sun-ray arrows.

The serpent represented the powers of darkness, underworld, and earth womb

as opposed to Apollo's gifts oflight and sky The Egyptian god Ra, as the solar cat, fought the

serpent of darkness Zet, or Set. Similar stories are of sky gods fighting serpents, such as

Marduk and Tiamat, Zeus and Typhon, and Yahweh and Leviathan. In Irish myth the

Fir Bolgs and Tuatha de Danaan first fought at Midsummer. The monstrous Fir Bolgs

represent the powers of winter, decline, and death.

The dark twin, or the dragon, is not an evil power but merely the other side of

the coin. One is light, the other dark, one summer, one winter, one sky, and the

other the underworld. Pagans accept these polarities as a necessary part of the

whole-winter comes but summer will return. The sun sets, travels through the

underworld at night, and is reborn with the dawn. The king dies, returns to the

underworld womb of the earth goddess, and is reborn.

In Christian times the theme of these myths were changed and the hero killed

the dragon instead of just defeating him for the summer months. According to the

Pagan worldview, the slain lord will rise again every year, and the light and dark

rule in balance. Later myths see death as a final ending and the light and dark as

being in opposition. The gods of the light half of the year became dragon-slaying

saints such as St. George and St. Michael, and the dragons they slew became a

metaphor for defeated Pagans. The dark became evil, and the fruitful underworld

'womb of the Goddess became the Christian Hell.

Pagan :"Midsummer festivities were transferred to the Christian Feast of St. John

the Baptist. However, St. John may not be as 100 percent Christian as he seems

at first glance. Robert Graves points out that while the winter solstice celebrates

the birth of Jesus, the summer solstice celebrates the birth of John, the elder cousin.

This relates them directly to all the ancient twin deities of light and dark, summer and winter.

If John is the Oak King of midsummer, Jesus is the Holly King of midwinter-"

"Of all the trees that are in the wood, the holly bears the crown," as the old Pagan

carol says. Some of the representations of St. John are rather strange for a Christian saint.

He is often depicted with horns, furry legs, and cloven hooves like a satyr or woodwose,

a wild man of the woods. His shrines, too, are often of a rustic nature, osten Sibly because St. John was fond of wandering in the wilder-ness.

It is possible that St. John not only took a Pagan midsummer festival for his feast day, but also

the attributes and shrines of an earlier green god. Frazer speculates that he took on the mantle of

Tammuzi Adonis, the vegetation god who was honored at Midsummer.

In the Craft today the theme of the battle of light and darkness is usually enacted

as a ritual drama with a choreographed battle between the Oak King and the Holly King.

Now is the time of brightness, long days, and warmth. There is the promise of

the harvest growing in fields and gardens. The earth is pregnant with goodness,

made fertile by the light of the sun. The sun god is in his glory: strong, virile, the

husband and lover of the Goddess. The power of the sun on this day is protective,

healing, empowering, revitalizing, and inspiring. It imbues a powerful, magical

charge into spells, crystals, and herbs.

It is a time for fun and joy, for enjoying the light and warmth. Modern Pagans often celebrate

Midsummer outdoors and follow the festival with a picnic or barbecue.

This excerpt is from Midsummer-Magical Celebrations of The Summer Solstice by Anna Franklin.

Click on this link to download your own free copy, Blessings <3.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/130846663/A-Franklin-Litha-Midsummer



Your Garden will not green-grow
-if you do not water it properly-