Pausing

In the grand scheme, a single chicken has very little significance but after almost a year of seeing her everyday, enjoying her eggs, having her follow me as I worked on various projects, I am feeling a loss. We have 11 other hens and I do not know any of them individually but each is important to my day. My daily chores typically start with letting the Delaware hens out to free range, checking their water, then taking water, feed, and grit to the Rhodies, taking feed and grit to the Delaware house, and gathering their early eggs. Upon opening the Delaware door I immediately saw the body of one hen. After removing her I had to continue the chores to completion. Knowing why a hen expires can help prevent other occurrences so we tried to figure out what had happened. Looks like she had a prolapse from her vent so we photographed it and sent the photo to a vet. Once we have her opinion we can decide if we need to take any action.

Disposing of the carcass seemed so wasteful and a sad part of homesteading. The joys here are made sweeter by these sad moments, a lesson learned and relearned. Life will go on with no recognition that one of the dozen is now gone but every time I count to ensure all have come in to roost for the night I will remember.

Who is James Edward Wilson?

Who I am. Trying to eat right and exercising occasionally convinced me that I was healthy. Typically delusional. Although not unhealthy, my trajectory was not taking me there. That is what we men do, we are confident that we know how to take care of ourselves and don’t need advice. Self reliance is necessary. Too often, the rigid self reliance practiced by men strands them in self defeating habits. Only those who recognize that much of conventional wisdom fails to match reality will find value in what I am going to share. In my mid 50’s I decided to investigate better health choices after a heart scare. This started my journey to better health and a hopeful anticipation of a healthful future. What I have discovered and experienced has convinced me that if I improve my adherence to what I know, I can expect to live a healthy, active life until age 120. My name is James Edward Wilson and I am 65 years old.

In this blog I will share what I have learned and am practicing that has improved my health and continues to do so even as I increase my age. You can watch as I experiment with what I believe and with me discover how effective these practices really are. To measure my progress I will track measurements of my waist, belly, and abdomen, my resting heart rate, my blood pressure, and my total body fat. Plus I will track my exercise performance. You can watch or join the experiment. One test subject does not make much of an experiment sample so I hope many join in and take the chance of increasing their longevity to 120 years with me.

The blog topics I intend to cover here include:

1. Longevity
2. My Vision
3. Deciding to Decide
4. Commitment
5. Muscle Mass
6. Bone Density
7. Circulation
8. Injury
9. Nutrition
10. Nutrient Dense Foods
11. Shop, Grow, Forage
12. Food Preparation
13. Supplements
14. Exercise Routines

This is my starting point and I expect that discoveries will cause additional topics which may be inserted or appended depending on the nature of the new topic.

Exercise will comprise much of my experiment. To help keep me adhering to my plan of daily exercise I am creating a Youtube channel to function as my daily Video Blog (VLOG). Although I do not have a professional recording nor exercise studio I am pressing forward because success comes to those who act instead of merely conceiving. Even more than the blog I invite one and all to join the VLOG, not as a viewer but as an active participant. The only thing you will loose is old age aches and pains and perhaps a too early demise.