A professor once told his class, “Any day that you learn nothing, is a lost day.” So, try to learn something every day, even if it’s a bit difficult.
On Saturday, Jan. 4, I had the opportunity to sit in on a “mental health – suicide prevention” talk by Dr. Chambers and Father Bertrand. It was the ninth such session that I had the opportunity to attend. Some were only an hour-long talk, some were a full day presentation, some were more intense and spread over two days. I helped to organize four of these sessions.
I have helped organize many info days on subjects from soil fertility to why you should develop a special dry cow ration with a minus DCAD, to a full day dedicated to farm transfer, to a day about farm safety, to sessions about mental health or suicide prevention. Most of those info days were sponsored by either local businesses and or some part of the government, so there was no charge to attend. The most difficult to encourage people to attend were days about farm safety or mental health and suicide prevention.
I have listened to many friends who said, “I’m very careful on the farm and only crazy people have a mental health problem or die by suicide.” One day, I sat at the kitchen table with a pen and paper and wrote down 140 names of people who had died in a farm accident in our area. I also wrote down 15 names of friends who had died from suicide on farms in our area. I have always learned something new at every info day that I have attended. I just learned that adequate vitamin D can drastically reduce your chance of having a mental health problem or suicide (talk to your doctor). If you look at the side of a milk carton, you will read that vitamin D has been added to the milk. But how much? And is it enough?
At one session, I learned that if you don’t have a healthy gut biome, then your stomach will send a message to your brain that you are unhappy. If you have to take an antacid like Tums or Rolaids, you might have a problem. “You are what you eat,” is an old saying; and it’s right. That’s why the health industry is now the largest employer in our county.
2025 has just started and I just learned a few days ago that a new methane eating bacteria, Methanotrophs, has been discovered that can and already does reduce the methane that cows produce. It’s just new and you can already look it up on Google. Even though the vegan community have been very critical of cow burps and farts killing our planet, I wondered why billions of wild animals like bison, deer, moose, horses, and hundreds more species that have roamed our planet since the beginning of time have not already killed it? Just today, Jan. 6, 2025, I learned that we should never feed our pets any food that has GMO grain in it, either as a filler or supplier of nutrition. It can lead to a shorter life because it increases the chance of cancer and other growths. So what about humans?
China has just recently retaliated in the trade war with the US and Canada. China has threatened to stop all imports of corn, soybean, and canola. Did you notice that all three grains are almost 100 per cent GMO grain? Is this just a coincidence? There are already dozens of countries worldwide that are GMO-free. Russia, India, New Zealand, and much of Europe is GMO free. South America has two streams of grain: GMO and non-GMO. Is this a market that Canada should explore while the US is still trying to force the world to accept their values?
I just learned yesterday that the new TV that we bought is made by the same company that made the last new tractor that our farm bought. There now is a new battery invented in China that has no lithium, is half the size, half the price, lasts twice as long, charges five times as fast, and doesn’t explode when wet. I also learned recently that information gathered by farmers’ computers on the new farm equipment like combines, sprayers, corn planters, tractors, etc. is owned not by the farmer, but by the manufacturer who sold the machine or the software. That information can be sold by them to another interested body like a seed company or chemical company. We must never quit learning and technology is coming faster, much faster.
