Just taking a minute to catch up on everything. Summer is here. Garden growing and starting to bring in Yellow squash and zucchini, beets. Favas too hot and dry....disappointing crop.... Little tincture made, but hopefully enough to meet my needs for the year. Had a weird experience last week. Took tincture first thing in am before going to the garden to work / worked all morning/ fixed lunch/ ate / took a nap and when I got awake about 3:30 realized I couldn't move my legs...like they were heavy wooden boards just laying there. Had DB get my tincture...took some and about 8 minutes later was able to move them and get up. First time that ever happened! Filled tincture bottles that day and got them back in their places. (One beside the bed/ one in kitchen/ one in greenhouse/ one in car/ one in pocket book...so it is never far away with me stuck somewhere. I was concerned at first that I'd had a stroke when my legs were "not connected to my will" , but the L-dopa in the tincture fixed it. God is so good. God Bless you Have a day where you can smile and make someone else smile with you. Love to all

Planted about 400 fava beans yesterday evening with the help of my wonderful husband. I hope these will survive the August heat...at least we have means of keeping these watered. Got very little fava tops and beans off the hundreds planted in the spring...got too hot and dry for them. So pray that these will do better or I may end up having to experiment with taking some mucuna along with tincture. So far, I am doing very well...no complaints, no side effects with the natural things I am doing. Still looking for relief for the constipation...will try the chia seeds today!! Still want to get back to the turpentine experiments, but my bowels need to be moving well first. God bless you all.

Greetings from Bean Acres. It is mid August now...and the produce is really coming in. Our food regimen has changed in accordance to the available fresh vegies.I am still mostly just using the dried fava top bud tincture for L-dopa. My friend,( that I am a caregiver to) has started depending now on eating 2 pod chips a day and mucuna capsule AM and PM . The recipe for doing the bean pods (steaming/juicing/ adding salt & sweetener and ground flax seed is on Robert Rodgers' website under fava beans with a downloadable last pamphlet that I put together. I feel this is a better way to use the pods. The sprout tincture to me is a last resort for people who cannot find the beans or grow them. Actually just freezing the steamed sprouted beans works well and I wouldn't bother tincturing them after all I have experimented with at this point. For me , it took eating about 16 sprouts early in the morning first think for a kick start. That lasted me until about 3 in the afternoon. Ate about 4 then and again at bedtime. My L-dopa needs are much less than some. I get a lot of exercise / sunshine and fresh garden produce. Right now my egg plants are in and I have been consuming them...need for my tincture has gone from 6 times a day to a dropper and a half am and pm. The night shade family...peppers, tomatoes and egg plant have natural nicotine , which help dopamine receptors...helping us function more efficiently. Glen Pettibone has done a lot of research in this area and we communicate frequently about the natural things that we are trying out. I am baking and freezing large quantities of egg plant while they are producing in 1 cup amounts in freezer ziplock bags. I am amazed at how wonderful I feel...thought I felt good before, but this is better. I also have watermelons right now and they are helpful for us also. Just had a friend recommend Barleens Lignan Flax seed oil for my constipation problem and using it this week seems to have help this considerably. God is good. Hope this helps. God Bless you. Aunt Bean

I eat flax seed ground up and stirred into my Greek yogurt (sometimes with LITTLE DAB OF HONEY = I have a voracious sweet tooth!) I grabbed some flax seed the other day at the market and didn't notice that it had not been ground. It's just not the same - in flavor or results. Where can I go have this ground?

Thx for your help.

Aunt Bean, we made Eggplant Parmigiana with one of the fresh eggplants you shared with the support group. It was DELICIOUS! Thank you for sharing. I am accustomed to buying the elongated variety of eggplant. Is there a special name for the short, more rounded type that you had? If so, where do you buy the seed? (I am assuming that you grow your veggies from seed) ?
pEGGY

Hi Peggy. You are welcome for the egg plant...glad you enjoyed it. For constipation...the Lignan Flax oil is doing what ground or whole seeds wouldn't do any more for me. You can grind whole flax seeds in a coffee grinder each time you want them or grind a 1/2 C all at once and put into a sealed container in the refrigerator for easy access. Always refrigerate ground flax seeds...it goes rancid very quickly after being ground. That is why it is better to grind it yourself or buy the oil. The small purple and white striped egg plants are called little sailor and the large solid deep purple are called Black Beauty. I also have Ping Tung growing (long skinny ones ) but , they are just now starting to flower. Must take a longer growing season. I have been freezing as many as possible. My PD symptoms have been helped greatly by it. Need to go out now and find a fresh one for our breakfast omelet! God Bless You. Have a great day. Love Aunt Bean

Just a quick update from Bean Acres. The gardens are coming to a close, with the exception of sweet peppers and ping tung egg plants (long Japanese style) that are just getting started ripening and being harvested...full now of young fruit that I hope will mature before frost comes. Have been baking a lot of egg plant and freezing them for chickpea/ egg plant humus....am going to try adding freshly ground sweet pepper to the recipe today since I am finally getting some. The humus, once made, freezes well in small containers.....so I can make a double batch and have some frozen to pull out when needed. The peppers make every meal something special and more colorful. Haven't needed as much fava top bud tincture for l- dopa supplementation since eating more egg plant/ peppers and tomatoes. Drying the last of the green tomatoes from the garden right now. Getting ready to celebrate my fathers 90th birthday and my 5 month anniversary of being married to my soul mate. God is so good. I am thankful for every day I have with both my father and husband...we have made quite a threesome here at Bean Acres. I am currently doing more research ...hoping to have something in a couple of weeks to be able to make hydrosols out of flowers, which can be used for adding to drinking water/ used for massage or sprayed into the air and inhaled for aroma therapy. There are so many possibilities for PD that have not been researched as yet. Since I have gotten of gluten in my diet...the swelling in my fingers has gone down so very much, that I had to get a ring guard for my wedding ring.( It was so loose that it flew across a sidewalk this week when I brushed a fuzzy off of my slacks.) My intestines appear to be healing and I have had a few normal BMs now. It is great to sometimes go to the bathroom without the aid of laxatives. Have a blessed day. Get some sunshine/ eat good organic food and smile...go to a mirror and smile at yourself if there is no one around. Make someone else's day special if you can and it will cheer you too. Love to all, Aunt Bean

Exciting experiment now beginning at Bean Acres. My precious husband ,of now 5 months has built me a small kitchen distiller for on the stove...using my stainless steel pressure cooker. Has a few bugs to work out but we tried it on some basil last night to see if it would "blow up" the house. It didn't. The aroma.....wow! L-dopa is water soluable..so the hope is that we might be able to do a plant water, along with making brandy tinctures for capturing the L-dopa. Pray for us as we venture into new territory. Love ya Aunt Bean

Just a quick update.... found out this last week that the fava pod tincture (cutting up undried green fava bean pods tiney and placing them in brandy and shaking it for a month works even better than the top bud tincture for PD control) I got tired of waiting to find a chemist to test a few tinctures from last year and tried this one. One drawback was that if taken before bed...I do not sleep, my energy level is too high, whereas the top bud tincture relaxes me in small doses. I have needed less of it and took it as little as once in 24 hours to be symptom free. Of course I am stilll eating egg plant and sweet peppers( which are conming in well in the garden right now and I am freezing and drying them for winter) so it still could be a combination effect...but it works for me!

BRAVO AB!!!!Sooooo happy for you - I will be curious to hear how this new method stands the test of time- it surely is one that is way more accessible as fresh fava pods can be purchased at grocery stores in season. Will yoou be reducing thhe quantity of fava plants you are growing now?

Kind regards
MD

The whole gardening area will probably be reduced some next spring...I just can't keep up with it all without hiring help. My husband and I sing and play music and at this point in my life...doing something we both enjoy so much is more important than having a lot of extra produce to give away. But, the favas are the most important thing I grow for my health...that crop might actually expand a little from this year...Spring crop was a flop...it was so dry. Now we have hoses that will extend to cover the whole lower garden and we can water anytime it needs it . Have a lot of planning to do for next year for sure. Not getting younger though and will have to set priorities and not over plant and go crazy looking at seed catalogues and new varieties and species of food crops that I have never grown before and want so much to try! Guess they just make the pictures look too good! Do have somethiing new just coming to harvest in the green house Tai Rosselle (a hybiscus that has medicinal flowers to experiment with) Enter the distiller that my husband is still tryiing to work the "bugs" out of for making plant waters (hydrosols) I am excited about where that might lead when flowers and herbs start in the spring. Lots of possibilities with it. He is totally amazing. I am so blessed. Have a great day ya'll.