vendor spotlight: PJ's Produce

by Jerome Farmers Market, July 27, 2016






"Our family moved back to Jerome Idaho for a simpler, healthier life. We strive to provide the most nourishing, fresh, local produce without the use of sprays or unnatural additives. With 30+ years of growing experience & the use of heirloom varieties we provide our community with the best food they can eat. Family owned and micro operated."

– The McGuires





BELOW IS THE MCGUIRE FAMILY'S INCREDIBLE STORY THROUGH ILLNESS, FRUSTRATION, SELF-MOTIVATED RESEARCH AND A JOURNEY TO BECOME HEALTHY ONCE AGAIN BY ONLY CONSUMING THE BEST INGREDIENTS.  

Our story begins many years ago when my wife, a middle aged seemingly healthy lady, got seriously ill with an indescribable kidney disease. The doctors were talking about dialysis and kidney transplants so it was serious but the doctors didn’t know what caused the disease. Their term “Nephrotic syndrome”. It basically means “we don’t know what’s wrong with you exactly but your kidneys aren’t working.”  I had had enough of my wife being constantly sick with the flu, or colds, or sinus infections. In the hospital I told my wife we were going to get past this crisis period using western medicine but once the immediate danger was over we were going to stop listening to doctors and start listing to Doctor PJ.

This led me to devote great amount of time and effort into my own researchh about why my wife was always sick. I read everything I could to learn why my wife was in such poor health. I read Western Doctors books, and Eastern Doctors books. I read about water intake and healthy food and a 3000 year old Greek physician whose famous quote stuck with me, “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.”- Hippocrates

I am the partner in the marriage that did the “bad” stuff. I smoked cigarettes, drank copious amounts of beer, ate anything I desired, but was otherwise healthy. My wife while not drinking and smoking was always sick with something. She went to the doctor regularly and took all the prescribed drugs as directed. She also had numerous body parts removed. Her gall bladder, tonsils, and appendix were only part of the organs removed in our efforts to follow modern medicine.  One main difference in our two health care regimes was my wife took all kinds of prescription pills right along with plenty of over the counter remedies. While on the other hand I needed to be in excruciating pain to even consider taking a couple aspirin. So let’s see, she takes tons of pills and is always ill and I take nothing and am pretty much healthy year round. I didn’t think this was a coincidence. Hippocrates quote still stuck with me, time to start taking Dr. PJ’s advice.

After much research here are a few truths I have come to believe...  Nobody cares about your health or the health of your family except you!  This seems like a bleak statement but knowing it could save your life. Doctors, no matter how well meaning, cannot do what they think is correct for your health as they are limited and controlled by insurance companies. Let’s not forget what western medicine trains them to do in the first place. Eight years of medical school trains doctors how to write prescriptions and remove body parts. They aren’t trained in preventative medicine. Precisely because there is no profit in preventing health issues.

Think about this for a minute, Western medicine is 100 years old or so and according to Doctors in America 3000 year old acupuncture is quackery and non helpful. This alone makes me so angry I could spit! A prescribed pill to suppress a set of symptoms, along with it’s side effects is good for you, but a non invasive 3000 year old procedure completed in 30 minutes that shows promise and relief for 1000’s of people that is BS according to our doctors.
Americans are fat, sick, dehydrated, over prescribed, and short lived.  This isn’t a case of our individual failures this is a specific targeted campaign to profit from each of us. We are inundated with commercials to buy junk food, junk drinks, take pills, get on a diet, and talk to your doctor about restless leg syndrome. WTH? It’s no wonder we aren’t feeling good, sleeping good, or pooping good. Of course there is a pill for each of those, remember to talk to your doctor.

Your great grandparents lived till their 90’s. They had complete use of their faculties at that advanced age. In fact I bet they were riding horses, playing cards, and going dancing at those advanced ages. Now look at your grandparents. They take an average of 9-14 prescribed pills every day. They schedule and have multiple doctor’s visits each week and spend all of the money they saved over decades of working on healthcare later in life. What do they have to show for it? Dementia at age 68 and a hooverround to shop at wallyworld. WTH?

Back to the great-grandparents, mine worked a farm, ate 4 fried eggs and bacon every morning, smoked a pipe every night and drank whiskey on Friday. He never had a cholesterol test. Probably because there wasn’t yet a drug invented to lower cholesterol. They lived an organic lifestyle. Grandma washed her hair with eggs from her chickens and used honey from her bee hive. They ate food from the garden and meat from their own animals. When it came time to butcher a pig they shared with the neighbors in exchange for some of the cow they had butchered. Real food without chemicals.  Prior to 1940 when the first supermarket was introduced where was all the food? It was in the garden, the pantry, and the basement. People actually ate before there was a Krogers.

Back to Dr. PJ’s research, I came to believe that changes to our diet may be the key to getting healthy. Not just our diet needed changing as in America today we are bombarded with toxic and unneeded chemicals in every product we buy. We had to change everything we put in or on our body.  We slowly but surely changed the food we ate, the deodorant we used, the skin care products we use etc. We don’t have money so we couldn’t throw away the entire refrigerator and pantry and start over but we did it one product at a time. When the ketchup ran out we found and bought organic. When toothpaste ran out I tried to find an alternative to Crest.

Toothpaste, holy crap toothpaste! Go right now and read the warning labels on the toothpaste in your cabinets. It states that if swallowed you should call the poison control center. So our FDA suggests that you use a product on the soft parts of your mouth that has so many harmful chemicals that if swallowed, instead of being scrubbed into the mouth, you have to seek medical treatment. WTH?  Do the same with your sunblock. Get up right now and go grab that slather of chemicals that western doctors tell us to pour on our babies and ourselves every day before going into the sun. Let’s not talk about the fact that America uses more sunblock than any other nation. We also have higher skin cancer cases than any other nation. Have a look at the list of ingredients from that sunblock. Google each of the really long words and you will find that sunblock contains a couple of the highest level carcinogens known to science. Not stuff slightly bad for you I mean stuff so toxic it is level ten out of ten on lists of stuff that kills. Yet you are supposed to wear it on your skin prior to sun exposure. Your skin, the largest organ your body has. In my research the sun isn’t harmful. There are millions of folks in other countries who literally spend their entire lives in the sun and there are no skin cancers in those parts of the world.

Don’t take my word on all this please, go do your own research.  We now try to purchase products, whatever the use, that has the smallest list of ingredients. We only consume food that has ingredients I can pronounce. Triptifrickticide and FDA yellow 99 probably aren’t helping our health. We try to buy from the smallest company we can find, local if possible.

Now here’s where it gets a little weird. I don’t think western medicine is completely bunk. To have control over your health requires some testing to monitor your own progress. You need to go to the doctor occasionally and do your blood testing, etc. This way you can track your progress and make adjustments based on the results you need and those you are seeing.

Back to the wife’s illness. She was put on eleven different medications when she was released from the hospital. We weaned her off each and every one of them. From eleven pills a day down to none! On a follow up visit to her kidney Doctor he was reading the much improved lab test results and was praising her on how well she had followed his advice because all her lab tests came back improved and or normal. She informed him that she had not been following his course of treatment. She let him know that she had weaned off all pills and wasn’t taking any further medication.  At that point he chastised her and told her she couldn’t simply stop taking the pills he told her to. She referenced the current and much improved lab results as a sign that we were on the right track with treatment. I mean how can you argue with good results? But as a trained western medical doctor he was against non-prescribed treatments that were working.  Not treatments mind you, we just got her hydrated. We got her real food to eat, real milk to drink and natural skin care products. We didn’t find a quack doctor in the woods telling her to boiled beetles and the eye of newt. She simply started eating better and surprise, surprise, she started feeling better.

I am happy to say that today her tests are normal and we haven’t seen a kidney issue in years.
The research boiled down to a few things for me and I am happy to say my wife's health has greatly improved by following them. We pay special focus to what goes in our bodies. Not in a special, we live in a commune and only eat flowers watered with the tears of children way. More in a no fast food, wonder bread, micro waved gas station slop, and canned beverages of death kind of way.

If we can’t pronounce the ingredients we don’t buy it. I search out real food wherever we live. You can find a neighbor with real eggs from chickens in his yard for sale anywhere in America. When you see those eggs and the color of the yolks you can’t ever look another grocery store egg in the eye. You’ll be doing that neighbor a favor too.  He only wanted a couple chickens but his wife brought home ten. They were on sale at the ranch store and they were so cute. He figured a few of those ten little chickens would die along the way but they didn’t. Plus one of those baby chickens turned out to be a rooster and now he has 8 hens laying eggs every day. The 9th hen just hatched 6 baby chickens and WTH? Here we go again! He gets 3 dozen eggs a week now and he and his wife eat about three eggs a week each.

But the chickens are so damn funny to watch, cheap to feed, so the flock is growing. It’s probably not going to shrink much because those old folks haven’t killed so much as mouse around their place in 20 years or so. Mostly because the chickens kill them along with bugs, and ticks. Please, will you buy some of those eggs for $2 a dozen and take them off his hands.

FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE MCGUIRES AND THEIR FARM PLEASE VISIT THEIR WEBSITE HERE:
or their Facebook page

...OR COME VISIT THEM AT THE JEROME FARMERS MARKET!  THEY HAVE A WEALTH OF KNOWLEDGE AND ARE ALWAYS FUN TO TALK WITH, YOU ARE GUARANTEED TO WALK AWAY WITH A SMILE. ;)





Gardening in mid-late Summer

by Jerome Farmers Market, July 22, 2016
Despite what many people think, July is definitely not too late to start planting vegetables. July is also a good month to put in a second (or third) sowing of certain crops such as carrots, beans and leafy greens. 

It is also the perfect time to start planning the fall vegetable garden -- fall will be here before you know it!
- The Urban Gardener


Here are some plants that will thrive being planted in the middle of July.  Information below found via organicgardening.about.com.


Beans
Start planting both bush and pole beans now that the soil and air are warmed up. Try a continual 7-10 day sowing of different varieties. This will give you continual bean crops and not one large harvest with wasted crop.
Suggested variety: ContenderKentucky WonderTopcrop


Broccoli 
Broccoli can be planted in the fall to produce a crop well into November.
Suggested variety: Calabrese


Carrots 
Planting carrots by mid-July yields a fall crop that will keep in the garden until used.
Suggested variety: Scarlet Nantes


Corn
One of the most rewarding and fast growing crops to grow. Corn is delicious when cooked only minutes after being pulled off the stalk. Try a small plot of corn, working your way to a large field of several varieties. Last practical date to plant any corn variety is the first week in July. Must plant an early maturing corn variety.
Suggested variety: BodaciousSugar BunsEarly Golden Bantam


Cucumbers
Fast growing vine or bush cucumber plants can produce an abundance of cucumber fruits. Be careful to pick a variety for the space you have in your garden. Vine cucumbers can be the best tasting but need far more space than bush varieties.
Suggest variety: Spacemaster 80MuncherMarketmore 76


Kale 
Planting kale mid-July through mid-August will yield an excellent harvest in the fall and winter. Suggested variety: Dwarf Blue



























Market tomorrow, 7/16/2016

by Jerome Farmers Market, July 15, 2016
Also at the Market this week:

The Jerome Civic Club will be selling cotton candy along with their pies and other delicious homemade goodies.  

Check out our add in the local paper for our monthly coupon.  We will also be giving away basil with every produce purchase.

Please come and support our wonderful vendors and all they have to offer! 

  

Market tomorrow! 6/9/2016

by Jerome Farmers Market, July 08, 2016
Ox Meats will be at the Market this week!
Along with the rest of our other awesome vendors!

Kackleberry Farms
Fresh seasonal produce

Heirloom Organix Market Garden

PJ's
Organic fresh produce & gourmet cupcakes

Children Books

Yazmine Arrington
Custom printed shirts, hats, aprons, jackets and more...

Ernie & Julia Zinie
varieties of delicious homemade breads

Gerberry Farm 
flavored honeys and jams & fresh flowers

Especially for You
yummy balsamics and infused olive oils

Fat Daddy Barbeque sauce & rubs

Heart of the Home
hand crafted cutting boards, signs, and aprons

Sunflower
handmade jewelry & homemade jams and jellies

The Lavender Chicken
wonderful culinary lavender, sachets, simple syrup and many more items

Jerome Civic Club
always a variety of homemade goods such as pies, cakes, cookies and more





Oregon Berries at the Market this week!

by Jerome Farmers Market, July 07, 2016
At the Market this week we will have blueberries, blackberries and marionberries fresh from Oregon. 

Above: Blueberry
3 interesting facts about blueberries:

1. Blueberries protect against memory loss.
A 2012 study suggested that eating at least one serving of blueberries a week slowed cognitive decline by several years. One possible explanation as to why came from a 2013 study in mice, which found that berries might protect the brain by clearing toxic proteins that accumulate there.

2. The perfect blueberry should be “dusty” in color.

3. But don’t wash off that “dust” until you’re ready to dig in.A rinse softens your blueberries, which can quicken spoiling, according to the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.


Above: Blackberry
3 interesting facts about blackberries:

1. Health Benefits: Much like spinach, raisins, apples, plums and grapes, blackberries are rich in bioflavonoids and Vitamin C, but other nutritional benefits include a very low sodium count and having only 62 calories to a cup.

2. Younger Looking Skin: Consumption of blackberries can help to promote the healthy tightening of tissue,which is a great non-surgical procedure to make skin look younger. Prolonged consumption also helps keeps your brain alert, thereby maintaining clarity of thought and good memory.

3. Internal Benefits: The high tannin content of blackberries provides a number of benefits to reduce intestinal inflammation, alleviate hemorrhoids and soothe the effects of diarrhea. It is important to incorporate berries in your diet in a variety of ways. Have them as a snack or in your cereal or even as a smoothie.

Above: Marionberry
3 interesting facts about marionberries:

1. Health Benefits: Marionberries are high in antioxidants, vitamins and fiber, and are very low in calories.  Their vibrant purple color packs a powerful nutritional punch that catapults Marionberries to the top of the antioxidant charts. With an underlying earthiness, hints of sweet and a lively tartness, wholesome Marionberries present an explosion of flavor.


2. Marionberries freeze well, preserving their taste and plump appearance. Because of the short peak season, Marionberries are often frozen or processed for preservation. Make jams for canning or purees to freeze or strain and dehydrate to make fruit leather. Use the puree or jam to make thumbprint cookies or add to specialty cocktails. 


3. Oregonians just can’t keep Marionberries a secret any longer. Long revered in the West as a culinary treasure, Marionberries are finally out of the closet and into the kitchens of celebrated and little known chefs everywhere. 





Happy Fourth!

by Jerome Farmers Market, July 04, 2016
KNEE HIGH BY THE 4TH OF JULY!

This is an old adage to help farmers measure the growth of their corn crops.

As you can see by this photo of Fabio and Steve, both measuring around 6' 2" our corn is well above knee length.



Hope you have a happy and safe 4th of July!

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