Bakery & Farm Play Area Open March Weekends

The Bakery & Farm Play Area are open weekends starting March 18, 2023.  Get your Fan Season Pass Today so you don’t miss a minute of Family Fun on the Farm!

Sunflower Joy shines in the face of a young girl holding a cut your own sunflower at Great Country Farms

Buy your 2023 Season Pass Today!

What’s Ripe and Ready for Picking?

Sign up for free U-Pick Alerts! You'll always be the first to know what's ripe and ready for picking at Great Country Farms.

Thanks for signing up!

By submitting this form, you are granting: Great Country Farms permission to email you. You may unsubscribe via the link found at the bottom of every email. (See our Email Privacy Policy for details.) Emails are serviced by Constant Contact.
Close

Great Country Farms

Community Supported Agriculture, CSA, Produce Farm, U-Pick, Field Trips in Loudoun County, VA

Farm Market & Play Area

Bakery & Play Area Open March Weekends

10am-5pm

Easter Egg Hunts start Mar 25th

Buy a Season Pass Today!

Get March-April
Egg Hunt Tix!

Get Tix to Vist the Farm Animals!

Map your Visit!

  • Home
    • About
    • Attractions
    • Peck of Dirt Foundation
    • Blog
      • 5 Steps for Peach Picking Perfection
      • Apple Pressing Then vs. Now
  • Festivals
    • Raising Chicks with Great Country Farms’ Spring Chick Program
    • Easter Egg Hunt
    • Strawberry Jubilee Fest
    • Father’s Day Fish-a-Rama
    • Teacher Appreciation Week
    • Summer of Sunflowers
    • Pick your Own Blackberry Bonanza
    • Peach Fuzztival
    • The Big Dig Potato Harvest
    • Corn Maze & Apple Harvest
    • First Responders Week~ Sept 5-11
    • Fall Pumpkin Harvest Festival
    • Pumpkin Chunkin’
    • Santa Jingle and Mingle at Great Country Farms
  • UPick
    • Pick your own: Now Picking…
    • Crops By Season
    • U-Pick Tips and FAQs
  • EATs
    • Henway Cider
  • Market
  • Fan Season Pass
    • Fan of the Farm Season Pass
    • Fan of the Farm Season Pass ~ Frequently Asked Questions
    • Fan of the Farm Season Pass – Agreement
  • Birthdays
  • Groups
    • Picnic Venues
    • Evening Farm Party
    • Barn Wedding Venue
  • Field Trips
    • School Field Trips
    • Strawberry Tour
    • Gem Mining Tour
    • Garden Tour
    • Apple Tour
    • Pumpkin- Fall Tour
  • Stay
  • Contact
    • Map out your Visit to Great Country Farms
    • Press & Media
    • Employment Opportunities
    • Farmhand Central
    • Donations

Microbiome Is Our Inner Soil

February 18, 2019 by Kate Zurschmeide

In our last post, we concluded that when soil is healthy, plants and microbes dwell in symbiosis which produces high concentrations of the nutrients both need to thrive. Well, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the same relationship exists between people and the microbes that live in our digestive tract.

   Ironically, however, the human species seems hell-bent on destroying those microbes, or at least reducing their numbers. One fundamental law of nature is that biodiversity is good, but modern culture seems to be at war with biodiversity. Most industrial agriculture functions on the principle of anti-diversity: single crops grown from genetically homogenous seed in soil rendered sterile by industrial grade antibiotics. And industrial medicine seems to work on the cleanliness principle as well: in 2016, the number of antibiotic prescriptions written in America corresponded to five out of ever six people in the country, and nearly a third of those were demonstrably unnecessary. We believe that cleaner is better, even though that may not be true.

   It’s becoming clear that fighting bacteria is both futile and wrong-headed. It’s futile because within any given person, non-human cells out-number human cells by a factor of 1.3, and the number of non-human species living within a single person is comparable to the number of individual people living in one large city. And it’s wrong-headed for the same reason it would be crazy for a city to attack its own population. Sure: some people in town are deadbeats who pee in the pool and shoplift candy bars, but that doesn’t mean you fumigate the village with mustard gas.

   We’re learning, for example, that some nutrients that play crucial roles in human health are produced only by the non-human species living in our gut, including three amino acids required to make the neurotransmitters serotonin and dopamine. What’s more, many of those species appear to communicate with our human cells in ways that tell our DNA what kinds of proteins to manufacture. So in a real sense, the bacteria we’re fighting actually makes us who we are.

   As Dr. Zack Bush says, we should stop thinking of bacteria as invaders and realize that this space is more theirs than ours. We should thank them for letting us stay.

   One way to encourage that thought shift is to deliberately cultivate the growth of bacteria in our bodies, especially our digestive tracts, which do far more than process food. In our next post we’ll talk about things we’re doing on the farm to help bacteria grow inside us.

Filed Under: Big Pictures, Eat Tagged With: antibiotic use, gut bacteria, microbiome

Farm Market & Bakery Weekends in March!

Come buy Donuts, coffee, honey and more!

Get Unlimited Farm Admission with a 2023 Season Pass

Join us for our 30th Anniversary season with a FAN of the Farm Season Pass and your immediate family can come pick & play as often as you like!

I want Unlimited Family Admission!

Sign up for FREE U-Pick alerts

Latest from the Farm Blog

Pumpkin Chunkin’, A Smashing Good Time

Apple Pressing Then vs. Now

Celebrating the 15th Anniversary of the ‘Oinkin’tucky Derby Races at Great Country Farms

Our Top 3 Chocolate and Wine Pairings

Market Monday: Things Are Feeling a Little Nutty

Connect With Us

Follow us on Social Media and stay up-to-date with all the wonderful happenings and fun events at our farm!
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter

© Copyright 2019 Great Country Farms - All Rights Reserved
18780 Foggy Bottom Road Bluemont, Virginia 20135
540-554-2073

Small Business Websites by 5.12 Design Lab · Admin

▲