Colonel’s Blog, Earthdate 16 August 2024…
Hey Y’all!
Good afternoon and happy Fast-jet Friday from Air2Ground Farms! The fast-jet today is the Mighty-Mighty F-15E Strike Eagle…but today, it’s our daughter Hannah “HAIL” Slayton in the front seat! The series of 3 pics show her getting in the jet before takeoff, as the nose wheel lifts off the runway during takeoff, and in-flight. Yeah, it makes me miss it! It’s hot, but over the past couple of days, it rained an inch and a half. The grass greened up and started growing almost immediately. Rain in August is truly a blessing to a farm that has ruminants which graze during the summer months. The top pic is one of our Tom turkeys. We have 3 Toms and 1 hen and they are about 3 weeks from their processing date. We grew Broad-breasted Whites and they get very big. They should dress out around 25 pounds. So far, the turkey experiment is a huge success. If the processing…process goes this smoothly, we will definitely be growing them for sale next year. We will probably take pre-orders to be ready in the mid-November timeframe. Last week I showed you a pic of our sow that was ready to have piglets at any moment. As you can see in the next 3 pics, she had them! She had 11 and 1 of those was stillborn so there are 10 in the pic. Over the first 2 days, 5 of the 10 didn’t make it. This is a known factor with farrowing pigs on a regenerative farm. If we wanted to guarantee the least amount of loss, we would do like the factory hog farms and put her in a cage that is so tight that she can’t move so the piglets won’t get squished. As is obvious in the pics, she is huge and they are tiny. She weighs about 450 pounds and they weigh about 1.5 pounds. Those first few days are rough as sometimes they aren’t agile enough to get out of the way as she lies down for them to eat. We’re excited that there are 5 healthy piglets and hope they all make it. We processed batch #7 of beef chickens this week, taking us down to 200 remaining in 4 more batches. We cut this entire batch into individual cuts, boneless/skinless breast (half of which we ground and packaged into 1-pound packs), wings, thighs, and legs. We found that customers much prefer the breast packs without the skin and folks are really excited for the ground breast meat. The rest of the farm animals are doing very well. Shelley and I are attempting to see just how well the two of us are doing…
This week, I want to dive into something new we’ve been exploring—Continuous Glucose Monitors (CGMs). We both put one on today as a “Fitness Device.” You might be wondering why, as ketogenic lifestyle advocates, we want to use a CGM, especially when neither of us has diabetes. We believe that understanding how our bodies respond to what we eat and how we live is crucial, and a CGM offers insights you just can’t get anywhere else. First, on a ketogenic diet, staying in ketosis is key. A CGM helps us monitor how different foods or activities might kick us out of that fat-burning state by causing unexpected glucose spikes. By tracking these levels in real time, we can adjust our diet and exercise to stay in a fat-burning mode. Next, it’s all about personalized nutrition insights. Even on a strict ketogenic diet, what works for one person might not work for another. A CGM gives us real-time feedback on how specific foods affect our glucose levels. This way, we can pinpoint things that might be causing glucose spikes—even if they’re low in carbs. Preventing insulin spikes is another reason. We know that insulin plays a critical role in how our bodies store fat. By using a CGM, we can see how different factors—like stress or lack of sleep—impact our glucose levels and potentially trigger insulin release. Keeping those spikes in check helps us avoid storing fat and keeps our energy levels steady throughout the day. Lastly, a CGM helps us track hidden stressors. Life’s daily stresses or poor sleep can cause glucose fluctuations that aren’t immediately obvious. By monitoring these changes, we can identify and mitigate those hidden stressors, ensuring our glucose levels remain stable. We’re going to wear these for 2 weeks (life of 1 sensor) and see. If we love having the data, we may even switch to a KetoMojo that tracks blood glucose and ketone levels and assigns a Glucose-Ketone Index (GKI) to help us dial in our health even more. OR…we may hate the Continuous Monitoring and rip the CGM off of our arm before the 2 weeks is over!
Cheers!
Psycho & Shelley
😀