The Modern Pioneer: An Almanac of Natural Living

By Lauren Roy

Starting with my fathers tutelage as a child, Ive learned the many uses of plants that grow right outside our door. It was also at this age that I was taught to respect the old ways as being those we can count on as well as our own hard work and perseverance.

As a mother, I took my role as caretaker of my family very seriously and that meant feeding them and caring for their health in the best way possible. I sought the natural remedies for their and my own health. Being chronically ill and not finding any relief from the consequences of my chronic illnesses and cancer through conventional medicine, I learned the many ways Gods world can nurture, cure, and help us thrive.

Owning a farm gave me more opportunities to hone these skills and fulfilled my desire to share them with my otherworldly community members.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Nov 18, 2016
• ISBN: 9781504369268

Lauren Roy

Lauren Roy is a Christian, mother, farmer, author, and teacher of natural living.

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Copyright © 2016 Lauren Roy.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Balboa Press

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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ISBN: 978-1-5043-6925-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5043-6926-8 (e)

Balboa Press rev. date: 11/18/2016

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Contents

Chapter 1   Simplify, Simplify, Simplify

Chapter 2   The Natural Garden

Chapter 3   Nutrition ~ Then and Now

Chapter 4   The Natural Medicine Chest

Chapter 5   Farming 101

Chapter 6   The Really Scary Chapter on Chemicals

Chapter 7   Recipes

Chapter 8   All My Recipes

‘Tis a gift to be Simple

Tis a gift to be free

Tis a gift to come down

Where we ought to be

And when we find ourselves

In that place just right

We will be I the valley Of Love and delight.

~

When the true simplicity

Is gained

To bow and to bend

We shall not be ashamed

To turn and to turn it will

Be our delight

"Till by turning and turning we

Come ‘round right.

Special Thanks to:

My Lord, all Glory to you for granting me the ability to work In Your world, for Your Glory, every day according to Your Will

To Wendy~Loo for saying you should write all this stuff down! To Dharma and Greg, Andy Griffith and Leave it to Beaver for helping me to understand the beauty of being yourself and living a good and simple life

Dedication

This book is dedicated to my dad, Alfred H. Marengo, Jr the man who fed us weeds, made us collect acorns, and also got mad when I dyed all the pillow cases with Golden Rod.

I was listening

1932 ~ 2015

Introduction

The Pioneer by definition is someone that takes initiative to prepare the way. While using the products of nature to care for our families isn’t exactly a new idea, making the decision to break away from the commercial world, to think for ourselves and go back to the tried and true ways of our ancestors does make us pioneers.

To assist you on your journey, I have compiled a basic history, tenets and recipes in categories such as home, health, cleaning, nutrition and gardening though not necessarily in that order. If this seems overwhelming, start with a first step of reading the ingredients on the food you purchase and those in the cleaning agents in your cabinets. That is sure to be a natural jumping off (or on the bandwagon) point.

I only want to frighten you a little, just enough because the biggest fright will come when you start learning how the chemicals in the cleaning supplies and your food effect your body, your health, and the health of your children and the environment. I want to empower you. I want to change the way you think so you will change the thinking of your children and so on and so on until the tide has turned on the world of capitalism, commercialism and all the negative isms out there.

This will not be a difficult journey overall, I mean our ancestors lived this way without all the bells and whistles we have. But it does begin with a first step and this one is a doozy! So let’s be on our way…Wagons HO!

And by way of a disclaimer, part of what I teach is to think for yourself. So take what I’ve written and challenge it. Challenge yourself by taking responsibility for what you read. And….research, research, research.

This book is not a replacement for medical advice or assistance it should be a compliment to it and your own research and thinking.

Forward Or My Soapy Street Pulpit

I promise not to wax (all puns are intended) all earthy crunchy for too long, after all even on recycled paper one needs to be mindful of resources (smiley emoticon).

Before environmental issues were all the rage, before we blamed every snow and rainstorm on Global Warming, I was greatly affected by the sight of the Native person’s lone tear in the famous commercial about littering. I was equally effected by the environmental and capitalist message delivered by my Hippie brethren, you know the one… Mother Earth was good, Capitalism is (well this IS a family book after all). However, I believe the greatest influence on me as far as being aware of waste and the slothfulness of our race (the human one) was my father.

I think he lay the foundation for my desire to get back to nature with two acts. The first being that we were regular patrons of Old Sturbridge Village, I still am and have been (like my children) since before I was born. Through the village he would extol the virtues of hard work while depreciating how nothing was made to last these days. And the second act was what is sometimes referred to in our family as my father’s Eule Gibbons period.

While this phase influence me greatly, I’ve got to tell you that it’s pretty embarrassing to forage in your neighbors yards because we didn’t have that many oak trees and they had all the good acorns, even more difficult to explain why we needed bags and bags of the things. Yet, bring them we did, paper sacks full of them and then my father boiled, dried and ground them and then made muffins. Thus a legacy was born, and he said no one was listening to him! While he is no longer here to enjoy them or explain how to use them, he has passed that knowledge on to me and it is my pleasure to pass it along to you. You will see a step by step picture explanation of processing acorns and other treats further along in the book.

Hop ahead 25ish years, I am seeing child after child diagnosed with learning disabilities (mine included) watching the numbers of people diagnosed with cancer (me included), MS and mysterious ailments such as Fibromyalgia (me included) and the numbers grew with alarming voracity. This left me wondering why.

It wasn’t until my son was diagnosed with ADHD that things started coming into place for me. I was told I could put him on Ritalin (you know, on holidays and weekends when I didn’t want him too excited) that I decided I was going to take control. I researched the alternative methods, you know, kooky ideas like the role nutrition played, exercise, allowing him to express himself and other weird ideas. And that’s when I found one of my nemeses, Red Dye #40! (Cue scary music).

The more I learned about the effect of dyes and preservatives on the body’s mental, emotional, and physical health, the more alarmed I became. I was PUTTING THESE THINGS IN TO MY CHILDREN! I also began to understand that if these chemicals were causing ill health, good nutrition could promote good health and even be used medicinally. It actually became very clear and I saw it was very simple.

God. You see, we were designed by our Perfect Creator. And God only creates perfect things, a perfectly designed human form and world (Created in His image ~ Genesis 1:26)

We were not designed to eat, let alone process chemicals. God put on earth all we needed to eat, live, care for, and even entertain ourselves. So what happens when you put unnatural substances into a natural machine? How does our body deal with it? To a limited extent our liver and gall bladder processes some of it, however, after a while it takes a toll and those organs become over tasked, tired and it becomes more and more difficult to process the chemicals as well as the natural foods. It also taxes your other organs. After all, it would be like asking your car to run on high fructose corn syrup if you put it in your gas tank? It’ll sludge along until it has engulfed and clogged your engine and wrecks it. It would leak out into the engine, throughout the gears and hoses until the car just stopped running. And that’s exactly how preservatives, dyes and other chemical work throughout your body. What can’t get processed leaches out into your gut, your muscles, and your brain.

Everything you need to live, be nourished and to thrive and healed has already been put here. I am NOT saying stop taking your medicines or stop going to the doctor. What I want to accomplish is to give you an extra way of thinking. I want you to understand how an optimal body should work so that when you are unwell you will research your illness yourself. I want you to ask questions about