An email Paul received from Calvin Bey, local gardening hero.

When I teach Organic Gardening classes I talk about the abuse of our land with pesticide and chemical (high salt) fertilizers, and why our produce today has 20-70 percent fewer nutrients than it did 50 years ago. This is all documented. Unfortunately few Dr’s know anything about this or about nutrition. I thought this example of what happened to Angela, one of my recent students was interesting. Calvin Bey

Subject: Re: Tours and Classes

Calvin:

Something happened to me recently that I thought would interest you. My 2 year old son has what looked like eczema on his body for months. Then it got worse and looked like ringworm so we swabbed it with iodine. I broke down and took him to the doc. She said it was eczema and prescribed steroid creamwith lots of refills because he would probably need it for the rest of his life.

I was not willing to accept this and had my mom make an apt. with doctor that she sees in Pineville MO. Dr. Smith. He took a brief look at the rash and said it was a silica and iodine deficiency. That since WWII when farmers started using fake fertilizer everyone was silica deficient. He also said that the fluorine and chlorine in our water blocks iodine somehow and lots of people are deficient. We got some liquid silica that we apply to the rash and give him some to drink as well as some special iodine that he gets one drop of a day.

I swear that the rash is already better in one day. It just reminded me of what you talked about with the nutrients not being in vegetables any more.

By the way- my uncle has artichokes already. He lives on Wedington. You should stop by his place sometime and see them . I am sure he would love to show them to you. Paul Marinoni.

Happy gardening- Angela