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Gardening has many benefits. You can grow your own food, have control over how it is grown, receive excellent nutrition, and experience the stress relief a garden can give you. Being in nature, digging in the dirt, breathing in the fresh smells, gives your body and mind a chance to unwind and ground.
Wait what is this thing about grounding? It is electrically reconnecting you to the earth. Our bodies tend to build up positive charge, especially under stress. The surface of the earth is negatively charged. By something as simple as walking barefoot, or digging in the dirt, you allow your body the opportunity to return to neutral charge by letting go of the positive electrical charge. Gardening is an excellent way to ground, while still accomplishing something for the type A personality.
Gardening is also a whole-body work out. Lifting baskets of produce, pulling weeds, digging holes, reaching for produce, pushing a wheelbarrow, are all activities that engage muscles throughout the body to accomplish the task. When you add general yard work, like pruning, or tree trimming, you have more specific exercises that work more of the upper body. Exercise releases endorphins that make us feel good. So, gardening can give you an exercise induced endorphin rush.
The act of growing something from plant to maturing fruit, gives you a sense of accomplishment. Even growing something simple like a pot of herbs, which you can harvest quickly and continually, can produce this feeling. This has a positive affect on your mental health, by giving you a reward.
So, gardening can improve your health emotionally by allowing you to ground yourself, physically through exercise, and mentally through giving you the sense of accomplishment. That is not even mentioning all the nutritional benefits from having truly fresh food.
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Tough question, but one most of us will face at some point. Something we loved doing must be put on hold for a time, sometimes known, sometimes unknown. Hobbies or passions are held or altered for different reasons: life circumstance, health, finances.
When this happens there usually is a process of grieving. You deny that you really have to give that hobby up and find ways to still include it. Then you have feelings of anger or frustration that you just can’t make the hobby work. You might try bargaining for time, money, health, to get just a bit more of that passion. Then you fall into a bit of a depression as you long to do what you used to love. Finally you accept that maybe one day you will be able to do your passion again.
Feeling like my passions are being taken away has happened to me recently. I am a strong willed, independent, woman. I love riding horses, and being in my gardens. With the addition of each child my time riding has decreased, but I am ok with that as I still have them and have continued to care for them. My garden has increased as our family has increased, filling much of my used to be riding time, because it is something else I enjoy and the kids can do it with me.
Late this winter however, I saw both of these hobbies start to be limited and felt them being taken away. I had started bleeding heavily during pregnancy and found I had a large subchorionic hematoma. I was put on activity and weight restrictions of 10 pounds, until the bleeding stopped. This made it impossible to feed hay to my horses, help my kids ride, or start yard prep for the garden. At first I was ok, ‘it’ll only be a couple weeks, then I can resume’ (denial). But the two weeks turned into a month and still no end in sight. In total I bled 7 weeks. Even after it was done, I was still advised to keep the lifting light and limit activity so nothing would reinjure.
I was angry. Angry there was no clear reason or answer to why. Angry I couldn’t take care of my portion of the chores, upset I was having to rely on everyone else to feed hay, get feed, pour the feed into the cans, and do the heavy lifting in the gardens.
I then went through a bit of depression as I realized all the things I might not be able to do this summer. Planting was going to be difficult, weeding, mulching. Planting the bushes was out of the question. Clean up in the wind break was on hold. My plants I started suffered, as I didn’t care for them like they needed.
Only recently have I been able to accept that I will not return to full normal activity until months after delivery. That has been helped by being surrounded by friends and family that are willing and able to step in and help, with the chores I cannot do (thank you to my husband, who does the bulk now with his own cattle chores). Friends who come out and help with the big garden days (Nicole and Andrew) and get the digging, mulching, weeding done.
Is it still hard? Yes. I want to do so much and don’t like relying on others to have to help me all the time. I have accepted that some things just won’t happen this year, but there is next year. I also know this is not forever and one day I’ll be back to full speed. But that buggy horse is sounding really good right now….
Wanting a community to lean into? Join the FREE Courageous + Purposeful Mommas group! This community is for the Mommas, mommas to be, in the midst of raising, and kids grown, looking for tips on building your family up and providing for them through natural methods. Tips include: gardening, bulk buying, caning,/preserving, livestock, homesteading, and home remedies. Your family is precious, and this group is to help you gain the knowledge and tools to keep your family well and not reliant on outside professionals. Remedies and tips are easy and simple for the busy momma, time is precious after all, including pregnancy, birth, young kids, and illness. Trust your Momma gut again! This community offers the resources + community you need to help get started on your journey and prepare for whatever future you envision.
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What is sooooo good about the great outdoors? I am truly blessed to have kids who love the outdoors, and love to be outside with me. We live on a farm and spend most of our days in the spring, summer, and fall outside. They play in the dirt, catch chickens, play with the dogs and calves, and help in the garden. One of the books I read a while ago had an excellent ‘recipe’ for preserving children.
“Take 1 large field, a dozen children, 2-3 small dogs, a pinch of brook, and some pebbles. Mixz together children and dogs; sprinkle the field with flowers; spread over all a sky of deep blue and bake in the sun. When brown, set away to cool in the bathtub.” ~The Encyclopedia of Country Living.
I might be biased, but country kids are some of the healthiest kids around. There are a few studies that have suggested this as well. Check out google scholar if you want to dive deeper there. But what does all the great outdoors have to do with health? Let's take a look at some basic things the great outdoors has to offer our health.
#1 Vitamin D! There is no doubt the best, most readily available source of vitamin D comes from the sun. When you are outside you soak up that Vitamin D, giving your immune system what it needs to help keep you healthy. With that said, do NOT go out and get sunburned. That is not helpful to your body.
#2 Fresh air! Remember over winter how stuffy the house gets to feeling? You cannot wait until spring to throw open the window and let all the air in? Fresh air allows us to breathe in clean sair, that is not loaded with bad bacteria that make us sick.
#3 Bacteria exposure! Before you go and freak out, hear me out. Bacteria way out number us. They live in us and surround us. Many ‘bad’ bacteria actually naturally live in the body. They only become ‘bad’ when they move to where they are not supposed to be, or become too populated. Your immune system is like a muscle, the more it works out the stronger it becomes. Outside is loaded with bacteria, good and bad. Exposing yourself to all that bacteria is like exercising your immune system. It becomes stronger, with small exposures, then when a large challenge (hello flu) comes around it is armed and ready to fight.
With those 3 things in mind, I’ll keep my kids outside as long as they can all year. Don’t worry, I’ll be out there too!
Wanting a community to lean into? Join the FREE Courageous + Purposeful Mommas group! This community is for the Mommas, mommas to be, in the midst of raising, and kids grown, looking for tips on building your family up and providing for them through natural methods. Tips include: gardening, bulk buying, caning,/preserving, livestock, homesteading, and home remedies. Your family is precious, and this group is to help you gain the knowledge and tools to keep your family well and not reliant on outside professionals. Remedies and tips are easy and simple for the busy momma, time is precious after all, including pregnancy, birth, young kids, and illness. Trust your Momma gut again! This community offers the resources + community you need to help get started on your journey and prepare for whatever future you envision.
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For more on wellness tips click here:
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