Caleb Warnock’s Guaranteed Edible Weed Killer

[Above: milkweed thistle killed with Caleb Warnock's Edible Weed Killer]

After five years of work, thousands of dollars, hundreds of experiments, and hundreds of hours of testing, I am pleased to announce that I have formulated an entirely edible backyard weedkiller that is guaranteed to kill all backyard weeds -- including the roots -- in one application when applied as directed.

I have been very close for a couple of years now, and have been working feverishly since early spring to perfect this recipe. After giving speeches to thousands of people because of my books, the biggest request from audiences has been a safe and chemical-free recipe for killing weeds. People have told me they want to give up using Monsanto’s Roundup and its generic versions because of concerns about expense and long-term effects.

I have been certain for years that it was possible to create an all-natural weedkiller that could be guaranteed to work as well as all commercial weedkillers, at a much lower price, with no environmental or chemical risks. My only requirement was that the recipe be entirely edible because I’m not going to use anything in my garden that I don’t want to eat.

My years of work have come tantalizingly close. This year, the final two puzzle pieces clicked together.

First, master herbalist Kirsten Skirvin was teaching a class at my home when she said this: “Whenever there is a problem caused by nature, the natural solution is always only a few feet away.” I admit it sounded like hocus-pocus to me. My first inclination was to apologize to those who had paid to be in the class. But Kirsten is not a fly-by-night herbalist. She has more than two decades of experience. I decided to be quiet and put her words to the test. She was talking about cuts, burns and stings -- not killing weeds. Nevertheless, as I began to test her theory, I began to see that it was true. And I started to wonder how it could be applied to weeds.

The second puzzle piece clicked for me while I was teaching a class earlier this year. Someone asked me a question about something completely unrelated to killing weeds, and I answered the question -- and realized in that instant that the answer had been staring me in the face for three years. I knew immediately that I had found a recipe I could guarantee, at last. Since then, I have tested and tested. I figured out the exact vegetable-based formula. The most difficult and frustrating part was figuring out how to apply it correctly. As it turns out, the way the weedkiller is applied makes all the difference in the world.

My weedkiller:

- Is entirely edible. The recipe doubles as a super-healthy salad dressing, which is how I would suggest you eat it.

- Kills all common backyard weeds in one application when applied as directed.

- Is guaranteed safe for pets, bees and insects so long as you don’t apply it directly on them.

- Safe and even beneficial for garden soil.

- Safe for use around children, and safe for the person applying the weedkiller (except that you could hurt your eyes if you got it directly in your eyes. Do not get the formula in your eyes.)

- Where I live, the ingredients, when purchased at a grocery store, cost just less than $3.50 per gallon to make at home. One gallon will kill roughly 100 to 400 square feet of weeds, depending on the height and density.

- Can be all natural and 100 percent organic, depending on the vegetables you use to make it.

- Will kill living weeds of all ages, and is guaranteed to kill field bindweed, mallow, cheatgrass, dandelions, lawn grass, clover, broadleaf grass, perennial weeds and all common backyard weeds in a single application when used as directed.

- This recipe does not use salt and will not affect future plantings or have any negative or long-term affect on your soil or garden!

- The weedkiller takes less than five minutes to make. You will need a blender.

- To apply the weedkiller, you will need one of two inexpensive tools, costing about $4, or $20 if you want to apply the weedkiller as a spray. You will be able to use these tools over and over again, and you likely already have these tools if you have a garden.

- My weedkiller recipe will also kill vegetables, berry bushes, flowers and shrubs if applied directly on them. Apply only to plants you wish to kill. This weedkiller may also kill insects if applied directly on them.

It is no exaggeration when I say that creating this formula has required five years of work, thousands of dollars, hundreds of experiments, and hundreds of hours of testing. Because of all this expense and effort, I cannot give this recipe away. I have thought carefully about how to make this recipe public -- should I keep the recipe a secret and sell weedkiller by the gallon? The problem with this is that only local people would have access because shipping a gallon would be prohibitively expensive. Should I sell the recipe? The problem with this is that someone could publish the recipe and destroy my opportunity to sell what I have worked so hard to create. So what I have decided to do is sell the recipe for $29 per household, but only to people who agree to the following terms:

“By purchasing this recipe, I hereby agree never to publish or make public the recipe for Caleb Warnock’s Guaranteed Edible Weed Killer in any way, by any medium including but not limited to verbally sharing the recipe or distributing the recipe via electronic and/or print media, including to family and friends who do not live in my immediate household. I agree to the above stated terms even if I request and receive my money back, or even if I request but do not receive my money back. I agree that, should I request and receive my money back, I will never again use the recipe, nor publish it or make it public in any form.”

The recipe is $29 per household. You need only to purchase the recipe once to use it for your lifetime. My recipe is guaranteed to work with a 30-day money-back guarantee. You can purchase it only at SeedRenaissance.com. My belief is that this recipe has the potential to change the world. With this recipe, I cannot see any reason to use any chemical weedkiller. -Caleb

[Below: Weeds killed with Caleb Warnock's Edible Weed Killer]

"Step Away From the Tylenol"

Since I love to save money, I found a new study about buying generic over-the-counter headache pills and even food brands to be fascinating. Done by the University of Chicago Business School, the study finds that we are all wasting a lot of money on brand names, while the people in the know -- doctors, nurses, and most importantly pharmacists -- are buying the generics.

Not only that, but professional chefs are much more likely to skip a brand name and purchase a no-ad brand when it comes to “salt, baking mixes, prepared food, sugar, dried fruit, dairy spreads and dips, bread, pickles, soup, and cheese... chefs opt for generics with what they call pantry staples, where they can readily ascertain that the generic salt or baking soda is the same as the brand-name alternative.”

So it turns out that, to the professionals, the cheap stuff is the good stuff in many cases -- a lesson we can all apply at home. You can read the full Slate.com article here: http://slate.me/14wPMYl

Caleb: Salt of the Earth or 'Condescending Prick'?

There is a so-called “recipe” floating around the internet, especially on Facebook, that drives me crazy. It’s a version of homemade weed-killer called “Kill Them All” or some variation of that, and it calls for mixing vinegar and salt together to pour on weeds.

Weed killer indeed.

I’ve been sounding off about this recipe online for months, at first dismayed and then incredulous as the recipe kept popping up more and more. I belong to several so-called “permaculture” groups that meet online and in person to discuss the concept of permanent sustainable agriculture. Someone on one of these groups posted the recipe for this weed-killer. “This is such a bad recipe,” I wrote on the comments to the post. “I wish people would stop passing it around,”

“Why?” wrote the person who had posted the recipe.

“Because salt is a permanent decision,” I replied. “Gardeners above all others should know this. I don't understand people poisoning their own soil.”

“Well, you are trying to poison a plant,” responded someone else in the group. “I think it would just depend on the concentration of salt that ended up on the ground. It's better than what Monsanto gives us to spray.”

It not better, actually. It’s not better at all -- and if you know me, you know I oppose Monsanto tooth and nail. “It's hard for me to believe we have to have this discussion on (this permaculture site),” I responded. “Makes me depressed that even gardeners see nothing wrong with salting the earth.”

To my surprise, the person who posted the recipe then responded by calling me a “condescending prick.”

“Disagreeing with you isn't condescending,” I wrote. “I'm genuinely surprised because the whole idea of permaculture is to do no harm.”

To which the person responded that I was “arrogant and condescending.”

I’m happy to say that several people came to my defense, but I reprint the conversation here because it was eye-opening to me to see how much education there is left to do, even among proponents of “permaculture,” which I consider to be the highest form of gardening. (Being called names didn’t much bother me -- after all, I’m a journalist by trade, and I’d already been called much worse by far more important people on that very day.)

I fear that a lot of people are seeing this weed “solution” and putting it to use. Here’s why I think that’s a terrible decision:

1. Depending on how much salt you use, salt is a permanent decision. You salt the earth, it will at least be years before you can use it again. What if you move unexpectedly? (If you don’t think people move unexpectedly, you haven’t lived very long.) Are you going to walk the next family over to your garden and explain that you salted the earth for them? What if you decide you need to change things around in your garden? Or what if you read my upcoming book and learn that you can have the easy luxury of a self-seeding garden -- except that you have salted between all your garden beds?

2. Let’s say that you salt the earth and three or four years later, something is able to grow in that space again (Rejuvenation that soon is possible, depending on how much salt you used.) Where do you think all that salt went? Do you think it magically disappeared? I can tell you exactly where the salt went -- it headed into the aquifer underground. Or it was captured in runoff and went toward the nearest body of water. In the county where I live, we have a large fresh-water lake -- a true gem in the middle of the desert. Once upon a time, the south and west shores of the lake were home to groves of commercial fruit trees -- until the water in the lake got so salty that it could no longer be used to irrigate the fruit trees. Even alfalfa fields had to be abandoned because of the high salt content on land that was flooded by lake water in the spring. Salt, as I said, is a permanent decision. Once you put it into the ecosystem, it cannot be removed. It can be diluted, and even a decade ago, water managers used to say “the solution to pollution is dilution.” They don’t say that anymore, after it became obvious that dilution ceases to work once the pollution levels grow to a certain tipping point. After that tipping point, the only solutions left often cost hundreds of millions of dollars -- and now you know why sewage and run-off fees have jumped so much in the county where I live. Short-sighted solution, long-term natural consequences.

3. Salting the earth was a widespread ancient custom after war -- to add famine to injury, the conquering military would salt the land so that the defeated people couldn’t grow food to feed themselves. (The Romans used to salt the earth of their enemies, to name one example. There are also examples in the Bible.) Imagine who is laughing when people decide to salt their own earth. The idiocy is astonishing, if you think about it. It certainly proves true the old saying that those who don’t learn history are doomed to repeat it.

4. In our society that is flush with morbid obesity -- even, and most sadly, among children, why not just get off the couch and pull the weeds? You might need to examine your lifestyle if the only way you can fathom gardening is with a “spray” for every single problem you encounter. I like to call it “going to the gym” when I’m going out to pull weeds. Turn off your television and go get your hands dirty. Go show your kids the value of actual physical work -- if you can get your kids away from the video games long enough to see daylight.

5. Finally, here’s why it’s a stupid recipe: If you salt the earth, you don’t need any of the other ingredients in the recipe -- salt alone will kill the weeds. So if you insist on being stupid, at least be smart about it.

June Color Tour of Caleb's Garden

 Naturalized columbines in white and lavender. 

 More naturalized columbines in yellow and red.

 A showy display of evening primrose.

Blue mountain geraniums.

Purple Dame's Rocket, which I look forward too all year. They get five feet tall! 

 Buttercups.

These are called blue-and-golds.

Pinkish naturalized snapdragons.

 The herb Hounds-tongue.

 More snapdragons.

A sea of salvia. 

 Close-up of a mountain geranium.

 Wild yellow roses.

 Wild red roses.

The red roses are so nice right now, I had to include two pictures :) 

 Another wild rose hedge. We love this for the rare color. Very tropical looking. 

Have a great day in the garden! -Caleb

You Are Not Gluten Intolerant -- Unless You Want To Be

A week ago, a mother and daughter showed up at my house uninvited (which I’m discouraging, so don’t get any ideas) to thank me for reversing their gluten allergy. This woman’s daughter had read on my blog that natural yeast eats the gluten in flour until it is gone, and the daughter got a yeast start from me and started baking with our cookbook. Then she asked her gluten-intolerant mother to eat some bread.

“I told her no,” the mother said to me. “I didn’t want to be sick. When I eat gluten, I’m sick for days.”

The daughter persisted. After several weeks, this mother decided to try some of her daughter’s natural yeast bread on a Monday “because then I could be sick on Tuesday and Wednesday,” she told me.

She had absolutely no faith this would work. But because her daughter insisted, she eat the bread.

“And I had no reaction,” she said.

So she ate more, over several weeks, “and I had no reaction,” she said.

This woman was sitting wide-eyed on my couch, emotional and amazed. She wanted me to tell the world. She couldn’t believe that reversing gluten intolerance was so simple.

“I am eating wheat flour for the first time in years,” she said.

“I know,” I said. “Hundreds of people have told me stories just like you. I try to tell everyone. Help me!”

I have close personal friends that won’t try this. I don’t judge them because they are tired of being sick from gluten, and have worked hard to convert to a gluten free life.

But if the cure for gluten intolerance is simple, why not cure yourself?

When we remove gluten from our families, we begin to make our kids increasingly gluten intolerant. This puts the kids on a difficult course for the rest of their lives. So I ask again -- if the cure for gluten intolerance is simply, why not cure your family?

Let me ask you a question. Where did your gluten intolerance come from?

For so many people, they just one day begin to feel sick, and eventually figure out it comes from eating gluten. They talk with friends and doctors -- and the doctors immediately say, “Remove gluten from your diet for a few weeks, and if you feel better, you are gluten intolerant. Then you just live gluten free.”

But no one says where this gluten intolerance is coming from. The doctor’s don’t know and don’t pretend to know. You don’t know -- your intolerance just develops one day.

But I know.

Gluten intolerance is a symptom, not a disease. Store-bought yeast does not eat gluten -- it is unnatural and has been modified so that it raises bread quickly, but does not eat gluten. 

Natural yeast does. To learn how to use natural yeast, click here.

When you eat wheat foods made with natural yeast, you are not eating gluten because the gluten is gone. The yeast eats it and turns it into yeast. If you don’t believe this, take some of my fresh yeast to your doctor and they will test it for you (I believe insurance pays for this test in most cases if you have gluten intolerance. Ask your doctor).

Gluten intolerance is very trendy right now. Many, many people have begun diagnosing themselves without even going to a doctor. But if you don’t want to be on an expensive artificial diet for the rest of your life, try natural yeast. If you don’t want to see your kids on a special diet for their whole lives, try natural yeast.

The cure to gluten intolerance could not be more simple. I don’t know what else to say. If you want a FREE natural yeast start, which you can use for the rest of your life, click here. If you would like more information about natural yeast, including how it affects allergies and diabetes and heart burn, see our book at the link below. -Caleb

How to Grow Potatoes!

Here is a 30-page booklet that takes you step by step through growing potatoes. The cover is a bit cheesy, but don't let that fool you. This book had some great information. For example, did you know:

- Potatoes produce more nutrition calories for a family garden per square foot than any other vegetable?

- One medium potato has 110 fat-free calories and provides 45 percent of your daily vitamin C?

- Potatoes are one of the most pesticide intensive vegetables in the grocery store, but when you grow them yourself organically (which is easy, with the help of this book), you don't have to, as this book puts it, "play roulette with your children's health"?

- You can grow potatoes for almost no cost?

This book is a quick, informative read.  -Caleb

Illegal GMO wheat appears to have “escaped” into nature

According to a new article in the Washington Post, Japan has suspended all imports of U.S. wheat after genetically modified Monsanto wheat mysteriously appeared in an Oregon field.

The fear now is that this illegal wheat has “escaped” from open field trials 12 years ago and has naturalized, which would have huge food implications. Although it is early days, this certainly appears to be the most likely explanation right now. Yikes.

Monsanto says the mysterious appearance of its GMO wheat is not a big deal because it is safe. People like me say it is not safe, for many reasons. The two biggest are: First, at the very least, Roundup-Ready vegetables and grains mean farmers are drenching wheat in chemicals -- and the land where the wheat grows. And second, the GMO genetics can spread through pollination, contaminating and irreversibly changing natural wheat varieties. It is hard to overemphasize that once this contamination takes place, it cannot ever -- EVER -- be undone. This is why GMO food is illegal in most of the world -- except the U.S., where corporate patents are more important than global health.

Here is the problem. The wheat was last approved for test-growing 12 years ago. This wheat was genetically modified to be resistant to the herbicide Roundup, so that farmers can spray this poison on the wheat and kill all the weeds around it, but not the wheat.

Ironically, the illegal wheat was discovered when the farmer spayed his field with Roundup, but this wheat refused to die.

Japan was the first to cancel orders for U.S. wheat, but won’t likely be the last. Europe imports 1 million tons of wheat a year, according to the Washington Post, and since the discovery they have said they are watching the situation closely because they have “zero tolerance” for GMO food.

Here is another eye-opener:

“The United States already relies heavily on genetically modified crops,” reports the Post. “Genetically engineered corn, cotton and soybeans have gone from 5 to 17 percent of the U.S. market in 1997 to between two-thirds and more than 90 percent in 2012. By some estimates, more than 70 percent of processed foods sold in the United States contain ingredients and oils from genetically engineered crops.”

Food safety groups are demanding an investigation, pointing out that the illegal wheat isn’t supposed to exist in fields and didn’t just “magically” appear.

“This was not from a recent trial, which means it’s been sitting there in the environment,” said Andrew Kimbrell, executive director of the Center for Food Safety, a nonprofit group, as quoted in the Post.  “It’s highly doubtful that it’s just on one farm. If it’s out there, it’s out there.” The center’s science policy analyst, Bill Freese, added, “It’s been 12 years since this wheat was grown officially in Oregon. It doesn’t just disappear and magically appear 12 years later.”

You can read the whole Washington Post article here:

Dandy Noodles -- Backyard Renaissance Indeed!

Here is what we had for dinner last night: Dandelion noodles, picked with revenge in my garden, and eaten up with zest! So great, and so easy to make this recipe from the brand-new Ultimate Dandelion Cookbook! First, I sauteed the dandelions in a bit of water and then pureed them with an egg in the food processor, added flour and rolled out the dough:

Then, I let that dry a bit and then cut the noodles with a pizza cutter:

Then I cooked them and served with a homemade tomato mushroom sauce that I simmered for two hours with fresh parsley, oregano, and chives from my garden:

Just writing about it is making me hungry again! And this dish even got a rare complement from my wife, so you know that is success!! We will be having this again. Delicious! Get your copy of the Ultimate Dandelion Cookbook on Kindle by clicking on the link below. -Caleb

Don't Miss This Self-Sufficient Cookbook!! "Ultimate Dandelion Cookbook"

I love this brand-new cookbook, even though I didn't write it :) I wish I had thought of it first! You can get your copy on Kindle. Why eat dandelions? Well, here are some of the facts from the book:

- Dandelion greens have more protein than spinach or collard greens!
- Dandelion greens have twice the Vitamin A of spinach or collards, and five times more than kale!
- Dandelion greens have more Vitamin C than spinach or collard greens!
- Dandelion greens are rich in Omega-3 fatty acids!
- Dandelion greens are a great source of calcium, iron, and many other vitamins and minerals. See the full chart and details in the book :)
- Best of all, dandelions are free!

Here are my favorite recipes in this cookbook:

- Dandelion Noodles -- if you like spinach noodles, you'll likely love these! And so easy to make!
- Dandelion Quiche -- (we have lots of backyard eggs, so this is PERFECT for us)
- Crockpot Gingered Dandelions, Chicken & Chickpeas
- Dandelion Pizza
- Pumpkin-Dandelion Soup
- Chinese-Style Dandelion Dumplings (this recipe reminds me of my Dandelion Ravioli in my Forgotten Skills book)
- and there are dozens and dozens more. Yum!

Want to browse the cookbook? Simply click on the link on the above right! Enjoy! -Caleb

On May 8, My Wife Found Me Passed Out on the Floor

"They dies everywheres," said the boy. "They dies in their lodgings... and they dies... in heaps. They dies more than they lives.” (Bleak House, Charles Dickens)

On Wednesday, May 8, 2013, my wife found me passed out on the bedroom floor. This is the story of my comeuppance.

I first felt a tickle in my throat on Sunday afternoon, May 5. By this time, my wife had been sick for nine days. A hellbent virus had swept through our extended family, toppling everyone into bed one by one. I alone was untouched -- and I had gotten cocky about it. I had been publicly evangelizing the virtues of sinus rinsing. Twice in the previous month I had given public demonstrations in classes at my home (one woman left the room and wouldn’t watch. “No extra charge for that,” I quipped when I dripped on another woman’s notes and she protested.)

My confidence was earned. Sinus rinsing had changed my life. By May 5, 2013, I had handily avoided many family illnesses by faithfully rinsing. I had every confidence that this wave of illness would be no different.

When my wife first got sick, she told me to quarantine myself by sleeping in another room of the house. I was so confident in the protective power of nasal rinsing that I dismissed the idea. After nine days of being right, sinus rinsing had become my superpower.

Then the tickle at the back of my throat.

"You had better turn him out," said Mr. Skimpole.

"What do you mean?" inquired my guardian, almost sternly.

"My dear Jarndyce," said Mr. Skimpole, "...I have a constitutional objection to this sort of thing. I always had, when I was a medical man. He's not safe, you know. There's a very bad sort of fever about him."        (Bleak House, Charles Dickens)

By Wednesday, May 8, I was feverish and aggressively treating myself herbally -- using Caleb’s Blend (marshallow root, mullein tincture, yarrow flower) in tandem with peppermint compresses, rinsing my sinus with salt and sodium bicarbonate, pounding fresh yarrow leaves from my garden for anti-inflammatory tea. But I worsened.

That morning, I drove myself to the doctor. My wife’s virus had turned into infection in her ear, and I was afraid I might follow. The doctor determined there was no bacterial infestation and wrote a prescription for a lidocaine gargle to numb my throat, which by this time felt like it was bleeding.

Driving home, I began to see auras. A migraine caused by sinus swelling had set in. By early afternoon, and home alone, I was in exquisite pain. I tried to crawl from the bed to the phone to call 911. On the floor, I began to vomit so fast and hard I could not breath. Then I passed out.

At some point my wife came home and found me on the floor. Rousing me, I whispered “blessing.” She got a member of our lay Mormon clergy -- my son-in-law happened to be nearest -- who rubbed consecrated olive oil onto the crown of my head before laying his hands on me to give me a blessing by the authority of the holy Melchizedek priesthood, and in the name of Jesus Christ. I then whispered for Excedrin Migraine, a blend of Tylenol and caffeine. Immediately, I either fell asleep or passed out again.

When I woke up, I felt brand new. It did not last. The pain slowly redoubled, intensifying through the night.

At some point the next day, I doubled the recommended dose of Excedrin Migraine, on top of the Tylenol I had already taken -- a dosage I knew would begin to damage my liver. I was desperate. At some point, it became clear to me that I had about two minutes before I would lose consciousness again. I was home alone again. I had to save myself. I prayed, and saw the image of myself opening my grandmother’s fridge. When I was a boy on the farm, and I got a rare migraine, my grandmother would treat me with a cold Coke from her fridge. For decades, she kept one Coke on hand as medicine to cure her own rare headaches. I had been raised to never drink caffeinated soda because -- as my grandmother and my mother would say -- caffeine is medicine and not a recreational drug. Now, a few months past my 40th birthday, I had not had a single caffeinated anything since being treated by my grandmother decades earlier (I don’t even drink uncaffeinated soda). I crawled to the phone and dialed my wife, who immediately left her office to buy me a can of Red Bull.

Within minutes of drinking the Red Bull, I began to weep. For the first time in 30 hours, relief.

It took two more cans to stabilize the pain at a tolerable level. My wife drove me to a chiropractor, who said he could drain my sinus. He couldn’t. (He easily accepted an $80 fee, however.) Next Charmayne drove me back to the doctor, who injected me with a steroid in one hip and an anti-nausea drug in the other. Infection had now invaded both my sinus and right ear, and I was prescribed the antibiotic Cefdinir, created in a Japanese laboratory and given an oddly Celtic name.

That night was spent on the hardwood oak floor of the living room. Propped with a wadded quilt, I managed to position myself just right so I could sleep face down for a couple of hours.

The next day, I had my third migraine in three days. This time, it only took two Red Bulls to quell my misery to the point where I could open my eyes. My stepdaughter managed to get my laptop iTunes to play Alanis Morrisettes’s “Jagged Little Pill” album. I needed distraction from three days of lightning strikes to the brain. I fantasized, envisioning an awl that I would carefully insert between the top of my eye and skull, pounding with my palm until I pierced The Pain. Wiggling the wooden handle would allow a cloud of steam-pain (?) to whoosh out of my head. There was no blood in my fantasy. Just relief.

In reality, when “Jagged Little Pill” became annoying, I was too weak to reach over and shut it off.

Like the other days, I wrapped my entire head with a huge frozen gel pack. By now, my forehead and eyelids were literally burned red from peppermint compresses, which gave me a tiny palliative.

This next sentence sounds masochistic now, but you have to remember I was on my third migraine in three days. I hit myself on the head with my fist and knuckles for over an hour -- tapping and banging circles around the expanding pressure under the left side of my forehead -- until I had to stop because of the swelling.

"Charley," said I, "are you so cold?"

"I think I am, miss," she replied. "I don't know what it is. I can't hold myself still. I felt so yesterday at about this same time, miss. Don't be uneasy, I think I'm ill."

I heard Ada's voice outside, and I hurried to the door of communication between my room and our pretty sitting-room, and locked it. Just in time, for she tapped at it while my hand was yet upon the key.

Ada called to me to let her in, but I said, "Not now, my dearest. Go away. There's nothing the matter; I will come to you presently." Ah! It was a long, long time before my darling girl and I were companions again. (Bleak House, Charles Dickens)

Ah, yes. My comeuppance.

We approach sickness much more flippantly today than we did in 1853, when Bleak House -- Dickens’ best novel -- was published in 20 installments. In those days, sick people were immediately and strictly locked in a room, quarantined against infecting everyone around them. When fever took over, you became delirious and then -- if you were lucky -- you lost consciousness, sometimes for days. There were no antibiotics to save you, no Tylenol for pain, no steroid shots in the hip to drain away the inflammation in the skull. If your fever won the day, you woke up and lived. If your fever lost -- well, graveyards were busy places.

Today, we act like we have forgotten all this. Because we have.

Recently, the five-year-old living next door broke his leg at some place where parents pay to let their kids jump on a bunch of indoor trampolines. Literally the next day, our grandson Xander was begging us to go to this place. With a touch of righteous anger, my wife explained to him and me (I was standing nearby, so I was guilty) that a hundred years ago, no one would have let their child jump on a trampoline because if you broke your leg, you had a fifty-fifty chance of dying from infection. Parents took the health of their children very seriously because children routinely died. It was not uncommon for half of your children to die. Men married two and three times because their wives died in childbirth. Just this week, there was a major story in our local newspaper about a stunningly beautiful young woman who died in a neighboring town while giving birth to her sixth child. The placenta had attached to her organs and she went into cardiac arrest during a C-section. The baby lived. This happens so very rarely today that it was front-page news. In 1853, it was too common to make headlines.

“It was not until Charley was safe in bed again and placidly asleep that I began to think the contagion of her illness was upon me. I had been able easily to hide what I felt at tea-time, but I was past that already now, and I knew that I was rapidly following in Charley's steps.”       (Bleak House, Charles Dickens)

If we -- my wife, me, the kids, the grandkids --  had been living in 1853 when this wretched virus mowed us down, how many of us would have lived?

The question is a trick. The answer is that our family would likely have been little scathed, because at the first sign of illness, the sick person would have been quarantined swiftly and strictly. In those days, this was the drill: One “brave” person would be placed in the quarantined room to care for the sick. The sick would become well and then take care of the caretaker, who had now succombed to the contagion. Daily food and updates were passed through an outside window. The quarantined room was eventually unlocked and -- ideally -- two people emerged. (The “brave” person assigned to care for the sick was rarely the mother. She was too important. It was usually an older sibling -- he or she only had an iffy chance of living to adulthood anyway.)

Me and my family were saved by modern medicine. But we were sickened in the first place by modern stupidity. How I wish now that I had followed my wife’s advice and slept in another room! (The only advice my own mother has given me since my wedding day: “Do what your wife says.”)

When master herbalist Kirsten Skirven taught herbal healing classes around my kitchen table, she would speak of earthquakes. If the earth moves violently, we will be on our own because hospitals will either be flattened, or swamped with critical cases. Herbal knowledge may be the only thing we have for our family (Kirsten will be busy, for sure). I would suggest that we will need to add the old art of quarantine to our efforts, if we really want to save lives.

And foolish is the person (ahem -- me) who waits until a crisis to remember the virtues of quarantine. Voluntary household quarantine should be used today -- without waiting for an earthquake or the zombie apocalypse.

We rely too much on doctors to save us. We are too casual with the health of our youngsters.

When sick, we are far too quick to go to church and school, fanning our disease across town.

We have been medically spoiled -- may our lives always be so. But a pinch of quarantine can save lives, doctor’s fees -- and easily prevent three migraines in three days.

(Postscript: The day after I wrote this, I blew my nose and immediately my sinus began to swell again. Within hours, I had my fourth migraine in five days. At publication, I am still on antibiotics. Yeesh.)