Physically Fit and Psychologically Centered
As you are planning your Backyard Aquaponic Farm, one cannot get far from what can be the benefits of creating and running such an “enterprise” in their little piece of heaven. Even if it is smaller than your ideal, there are great physical and psychological perks to having your own vegetables and fruits at your service.
Physical Effects
We know (or are probably going to find out shortly) that the food that we get from the grocery stores in our local areas haven’t been cutting it on the nutritional values for quite some time. Whether it is because of being mass produced or massed packaged the nutritional content that is in that Hungry Man dinner falls woefully short. Not to mention mass food producers adding things like high fructose corn syrup, refined wheat flour as well as all the food additives and preservatives such as maltodextrin, diglycerides, or monosodium glutamate (can’t forget red dye #6) people are not gaining what they need to have their bodies run optimally as they were designed by Providence to do.
Add to all that, the pesticides that are sprayed on the plant life that the government has seemingly deemed safe, or the hormones pumped into the animals that are mass induced to be on the butcher’s block or with the jury still out on the genetically GMO modified seeds and harvests, there is no wonder that people at large are suffering from the largest spread of vitamin and mineral deficiencies known to mankind.
The modern diet, and what we are getting at the local markets have deteriorated over the last 50 years. But then the question needs to be asked, “How can we avoid this, and get back into sync with the food fuel we need to function?” Here are a few tips to be guided by:
- Cut out as quickly as you can food that has been processed in any way. The biggest nutritional value of that has been cooked out and lost long before it hit the grocery store.
- Eat food that looks like it did when it came off the vine, or out of the ground, (even to the point of some of them – leaving the peels on the vegetable)
- Grow, yes, grow your own food and eat it as fresh as you can. The stuff you get, even the fruits and vegetables with exposure to the elements and the lights have their nutrients decline over the time they have been from their original growing bed.
- Avoid corn oil or canola oil
- Read labels and avoid anything with high fructose corn syrup… that will be hard to do, but well worth the effort!
It will seem that everything in the store will have one of those things that won’t do your body good. But as you eliminate those things that are empty in their nutrients and you get those that are chock full of what your body is craving, then you will feel and see that the efforts are well needed.
The Psychological Effects
Connecting with creation, with the laws of nature (when it comes to growing your own sustenance specifically) allows a deeper relationship to all around you. When you are putting on the ground (or in our case, the chosen growing medium of the Aquaponics system) and nurturing it all to grow and bear “fruit” we gain a sense of peace about it all. Even if we make mistakes and have to start all over again. There is something that provides stress relief in an important way.
And as you grow your knowledge, know-how and your Aquaponic gardens the confidence and sense of accomplishment also brings to you a fantastic psychological benefit. It gets you centered to the truly important things in life that bring you genuine sustenance and substance. Not like other modern activities, that can leave you feeling like it had been one big waste of time (video games anyone?)
An additional benefit that you can with becoming a Sub-Urbian Farmer is as we age (we all do), our brain’s networks become more fixed. But as you continue to learn, and expand your knowledge base with your Aquaponics skills, the neuroplasticity of your brain keeps changing structurally so that learning becomes easier to do than otherwise, keeping your brain from “getting old”.
Both ways you stave off physical and mental atrophy and improve your emotional and some say your spiritual states. What better can you do, then Aquaponics?!
