linda’s blog

here’s the link: http://www.timesargus.com/article/20100720/FEATURES17/707209971

and here’s how it looked in the paper itself.

a fun little interview of lil ol me:

http://wholefoodeater.wordpress.com/2010/07/17/talkin-raw-with-linda-wooliever-vermont-fiddle-heads/

I’m celebrating summer weather with a HAPPYHAPPY online 10% coupon code. Take 10% off your order of $50 or more. Just enter the coupon in the shopping cart. Coupon good until 7/16/10.

Happy Summer!
<3
Linda

VT Fiddle Heads seeks a highly motivated, self-starting, experienced individual with excellent administrative and organizational skills to implement office operational and administrative support functions. The Office Manager’s responsibilities will include (but not be limited to):

·         Data and inventory management (both in house and on the web)

·         Ordering for store (food and inventory), retail pricing, stocking/restocking

·         Customer service (answering phone calls, emails, and occasionally in-store customers)

·         Wholesale account management

·         Organizing paperwork for bookkeeper and store

·         Sorting mail and bills; filing

·         Ordering supplies other than food or inventory

·         Posting up weekly newsletters

·         Help with marketing/advertising/press releases and/or with events

Qualifications:

·         Able to maintain an efficient and professional (and fun) office/store including general operations, database management, clerical support, restocking supplies and store. Attention to detail is a must

·         Have an interest in raw, vegan and healthy foods (the more knowledge/experience the better)

·         Proven ability to continually develop, maintain and improve organizational skills and work RAWsomely well independently

·         A good team player and a sense of ownership for one’s job/project(s)

·         Strong project management skills, and ability to prioritize assignments and manage pressure with good humor

·         Fast learner, can think on one’s feet, great common sense, excellent communication skillz and did we mention highly organized?

·         Demonstrated ability to engage well with people (retail customers, wholesale customers, vendors)

·         Demonstrated capacity to develop and improve administrative systems, including information management, filing, and project coordination

·         Knowledge of and proficiency in using computers, email, and standard office software

·         Detail oriented with excellent follow-up; flexible and responsive, with a strong customer service orientation

This is a part-time position that will start immediately. Potential for increased hours if right person is hired and/or if person also wants to work the cafe. Pay is commensurate with experience. Flexible schedule! Food perks come with job. Much learning in this job/lifestyle/position. MUST HAVE FUN! Store discount. Ability to grow with the company. Please email Linda at linda AT vt-fiddle.com or call 802-223-2111

I received a great question yesterday about the advantage of using one size/shape nut milk bag over another. I thought I’d post the question and answer in case anyone else had this burning question.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

QUESTION: Hello I am interested in the nut milk bags, however I am not sure what the advantages of each bag is. For example the advantage of having an oval opening compared to the regular 12×12 bag.

ANSWER: I have a link that gives pros/cons for hemp vs nylon and I’ll describe the other sizes here. Even though you didn’t ask about materials, I thought I’d send it along just so you would have it.
http://www.vt-fiddle.com/rawfood/difference_between_nylon_hemp_bags.php - link for hemp vs nylon

• The v-shape bags are used JUST for filtering juices (in your blender) and nut/seed milks. They would not be used for sprouting because there wouldn’t be enough room for the sprouts to grow.

• The oval shape is nice because there are no corners for the nut/seed mash to get stuck in. Not that it is difficult to wash out or anything. We made the ovals because we had enquiries asking if we would make this shape for customers. I’d say if I were wanting to sprout, the 12 x 12 square would still be my preference for a bag. If you wanted a larger bag for making nut/seed milks or juices, the oval shape really does filter beautifully. Something about the rounded shape just feels nice.

A bit of history: we started our nut milk bag business by making the 9 x 12s - they are the standard size nut milk bag. We tested out our bags with our first wholesale customer and so we feel we make the best bags out there.  We were then asked if we could make a larger bag for some wholesale customers so we made the 12 x 12 bag. These bags are great because they give you the best of both worlds - ample space for sprouting and lots of room for making juices and nut milks. Beer makers, tempeh makers and other fermented product makers really like the 12 x 12 size (and they prefer the hemp bags). Then we were asked if we would make a funnel shaped bag that would be less material to have to deal with for squeezing out the liquid but large enough to hold the bags - so we make the 9 x 12 and the 12 x 12 into v-shapes (the 12 x 12 v-shape by special request). Finally the oval bag was asked of us to make and we make the 9 x 12 oval (by special request) and the 12 x 12 oval bag. We’ve also gotten some other custom size/shape bags that we’ve made for various projects and businesses.

All of these shapes and sizes and materials really suggest that there’s a lot of personal preferences for straining/filtering needs. Hopefully this helps you decide which bag(s) will be the ones you want to use or carry in your store.

Hello Fiddle Heads People!

I’m keeping this short and sweet today. I’m on vacation. I’m turning 40 this week and so we have different hours and we have a little coupon sale to celebrate my entering a new decade.

Sunday: Closed

COUPON: From now until July 5th, there’s an online sale on everything in the store. Coupon code is: LINDAS40 - 10% your order. It’s a celebration for me hitting the big 4 0. Use the coupon code for your order of $50 or more.
I’m visiting momma ocean this week as much as I can. I’m also going to plant another lily at my mom’s grave. She died 2 days after my 25th birthday fifteen years ago. So I think about her a lot and always this week. My birthday is July 4th so there’s always fireworks on or near my birthday.

Thank you for your RAWsome time and energy! Please contact me for information or other raw goodies (both bulk and prepared.)

In joy and in health,

Linda

Vermont Fiddle Heads

http://www.vt-fiddle.com

Please check out our Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Worcester-VT/Vermont-Fiddle-Heads/63781489465?ref=nf -  Become a fan and check out photos, events and notes. MM-kay?
P.S. COUPON INFO: From now until July 5th, there’s an online sale on everything in the store. Coupon code is: LINDAS40 - 10% your order. It’s a celebration for me hitting the big 4 0. Use the coupon code for your order of $50 or more.

Monday - CLOSED

Tuesday - 10 - 4

Wednesday - 10 -4

Thursday - 10 - 4

Friday - 12 - 5

Saturday - 12 -4

Sunday - CLOSED

If you have any questions, please send us an email or call at 802-223-2111.

Thank you!
Linda

I’m quite happy to tell you that I’m doing way way better. I have a dull ache in side of my leg/hip when I sit only but that huge pain in the iliopsoas is gone and I’m grateful to be able to move and walk with greater ease. I’m still moving slowly and it’s because I’m really babying this leg. I just don’t want to overdo it, I guess.

I was in Montpelier yesterday morning visiting with some friends for a spirit circle that we share together. Then I walked around a bit through the library. They were having a book sale  and this is like heaven to me. I found several books that needed to come home with me. I had a tote bag with me that ended up getting super heavy. Also while in Montpelier, I had a follow up chiropractor appt so I carried the tote bag close to my body so it would be easier to carry. Thankfully, it is just 2 buildings away from the library. I was definitely walking slowly on the sidewalk (LOVE sidewalks!) and I didn’t really care if people looked at me funny. I was going even more slowly because I had heavy books. Of course I was like, “Linda, do you really need to carry heavy things like this?” But the answer was yes. I love the book sale at the Kellogg-Hubbard Library!

Leita was happy to see me walking better and when I got on the adjustment table she kept saying, “You are doing so much better!” Then I got on the massage table and she went really deep. She said that my muscles feel LOADS better than they did last week and she was impressed with how deep she could go in them. I got off the table and felt very limber and flexible. I went home and got ready for a workshop I had last night on Green Smoothies.

Matt made me a green juice because I was just starting to feel the effects of a deep tissue massage. If you haven’t had one, they are GREAT but sometimes they can cause headaches in me if I don’t drink enough water. If you think about it, there’s a lot of lactic acid that gets released when muscles are getting deeply massaged. So it’s good to help flush them out. I came home and drank some water but really was jonesing for some greens to help me get adequate nutrition. I don’t ever feel like I’m eating unless there’s a lot of greens in the meal.

The juice was made of:

• local lettuce
• local kale
• local sorrel (wild edible)
• local apples
• local cucumbers

After he blended everything in the Vitamix, he filtered it with one of our nut milk bags and then added some spirulina to it. It was a delicious green green drink and it hit the spot.

Somewhere around 4:30 I felt pretty sleepy. I laid down and took a rest. It felt good to be all cozy in bed. The kids were playing with friends and Matt took the day off so he was with them. It was good timing all the way around. I woke up in time to get to the workshop. This is my last workshop for a couple months. I decided to take the summer off so that I could just have a bit less on my plate. Summer is usually a lot of juggling around with kids schedules and so really, it’s just substituting one thing for another, to be honest.

So that’s really my update. I’m still taking the zyflamends, the magnesium, drinking lots of water, massaging my own muscles, walking and keeping them moving. I’m personally quite pleased with the quicker turn around time on this. I went from total immobility to feeling like I’m able to walk and move and sit and pick my feet up whenever I want. I’m not at all at 100% but in the past with these kinds of things, this would have taken a lot longer to get to this point. I asked my chiropractor about this and she said, “Well, if you think about it, for years your body knew how to stay misaligned. The last two years that we’ve been working on your back with the exercises and the adjustments, your body is remembering how to stay aligned. So it only makes sense that you are bouncing back faster.”

She’s a great helper/healer/chiropractor. Bless her heart.

Today I’m going to the cafe to see how I do. I’ve got some orders to fill. Wish me luck!

OH! P.S. This weekend I finally finished Eat, Pray, Love. It’s a really good read. Please join me on the Book List. Time for me to start another book: http://vt-fiddle.com/blog/?p=455

I’m continuing on to give an update on the pain/inflammation that I experienced earlier in the week including what I’ve been doing to try and treat this alternatively and how that’s all going, etc.

I’ll start by saying that I’m amazed at how fast the body can shift out of something that feels so terrible to something that feels way more tolerable. Yesterday I was moving around the house with a lot more ease. Two nights ago I woke up noticing that I had both my knees up and there was no pain associated with it. I was able to take a shower yesterday, wash my feet, get undressed and dressed again and put socks on. So I’m definitely having a wider range of motion in my hips and legs. I’m still feeling a dull ache in my leg and this is what has been with me the last week and a half or so. Yesterday I was also experiencing sciatic pain which I’m really thinking is because I’ve been laying on my ass for two days. The other thing I was feeling yesterday was the beginnings of charlie horses in my right hamstring and groin muscle. I’m guessing that my muscles are just a bit worked and it’s my job to help them relax and regain strength/flexibility.

For the sciatic stuff that was beginning yesterday, I was just massaging down the outside of my hip and leg. I am still taking the zyflamends and they are working amazingly well. I’m eating a vegan diet and a majority raw vegan diet so it’s heavy on the greens. That there is no animal fat clogging me up I think is what is helping the most to having this quick turnaround in my body. I can tell you I’ve had this recurrent pain in my hips over the last 9 years. When I went totally vegan (high raw) and increased my greens is when I started to be able to walk and move again without pain. That is a miracle to me because even while I was doing majority raw for the last nine years, I would occasionally have some kind of meat. When I decided to skip all the meat and add more greens was when I saw a major shift in my health and well being.

I’m using the traumeel to rub on as a kind of ben gay. I’m still applying ice packs every couple hours. The massaging, though, seemed to be the most beneficial. That and getting off my ass and moving around a bit to get some circulation going.

To help with the charlie horse feeling, again I was massaging my leg but also drank some magnesium Calm (almost a tsp) in a small glass of warm water. I remember reading somewhere about potassium and magnesium helping with cramping and charlie horses and so I figured it couldn’t hurt. Also, this was a recommendation from a coupla friends the other day to help with inflammation (one friend is nearly finished with her schooling to be an ND - Go Deanna!)

I’m trying to have a dialogue with my body. I don’t want to mask over any of the experience I’m having with pain killers because I’m feeling like my body has some important things for me to know and do. I’m not having unbearable pain - it’s more like an annoying kind of dull ache. Just the simple act of breathing through the pain has been the biggest way to shift out of it quickly. Even when it was at its worst the other day, I felt a bit like I was in labor because I was just breathing fully and deeply into it and trying my best to experience it waning. It was worse than labor because labor comes in waves, pain lasts for a minute and then goes away for a few minutes before coming back. The pain I had the other day was constant and intense and it was more like the pain when you are transitioning and nearing the time for pushing the baby out. If you had a natural childbirth, then you know what I’m talking about. I found that my body was hurting the more I was trying to move and struggle against i. If I breathed deeply and stayed immobilized, the sharp pains went away. So I’m no dummy, I tried best not to move after that! Funny that both the chiropractor and the ER doctor said when there’s an injury the body gives you pain and immobility on purpose, because it wants to protect the injured spot and give it time to heal. Well, that’s amazing, isn’t it? The problem comes in our heads when we fixate on the pain and think “OMG! What’s wrong! Why is this happening?!” instead of breathing and looking for breaks that do come. The body does give us breaks and it does tell us what we need to know if we only shut up our chattering minds and listen.

The way that I see physical pain and illness is really just the body trying to get our attention. Basically our bodies begin to yell at us because we were ignoring the piddly annoying things that can occur. I have a deep reverence for the body and all it’s wisdom. I am just the student. My body is the wise teacher. The amazing thing is that the body really quickly wants to get to a place of happiness and relaxation (homeostasis) and we tend to slow down that process when we try to numb out, tune out, deal with our minds more or overly fixate on emotions. So my body is responding very quickly and well when I do little things like rub an ache, bring circulation to my tired/overworked muscle, drink lots of water to flush out aches.

Thankfully I’m having reinforcements from the chiropractor. She recommended I use ibuprofen if I needed to for the pain (I haven’t been needing it since the trip to the ER) but she said, “Remember that sometimes we can do more damage when we mask the pain because we don’t feel anything so can overtax the injury and make it take longer to heal.”

I’ve been checking in with her to give her updates. I made two massage appointments - one for this Thursday coming up and one for the following Thursday. Leita (the chiropractor) recommended I do this to help the muscles in my body relax and I’ll feel even better. So that was an easy phone call to make!

I’m also still needing to call and make an appt with the orthopedist. Again, this is the chiropractor’s recommendation. She said if it takes a couple/few weeks to get on their calendar, better to make the appt now and cancel it vs. being a few weeks out and this pain is just not going away. I think I’ve been forgetting to make the appt because I’m feeling so much better (plus I really don’t like allopathic medicine.) But I promise I will do it. I have written it down here so I mustn’t go back on my word.

So that’s the latest. I am doing a good job of caring for myself. I am feeling loads loads loads better. It’s actually feeling quite good to write this out. This way I can look back on this and see what I’ve done and the turn around time. I wish I had done this 9 years ago when the first excruciating pain happened.

Thank you for reading. By the way, Leita Hancock is my chiropractor. She works in Montpelier and she is a kickass chiropractor. I went to several, as I wrote in the first blog on this subject, in VT as well as in MD when we were living there. Her philosophy is to help get a person to a place where they DON’T require her services and that’s why I like her (among other things.) So many places I went were like “OK, you have to see me twice a week, every week for the next 6 weeks and then we’ll go once a week after that for about a month and then we’ll see where we go from there.” When I met her a couple years ago and asked her about this she said that given the pain I was in, she’d want to have me come in every week or couple weeks but she wanted me to do my work of stretching and exercising and help my muscles retain the adjustments. She said she didn’t want me relying on her to feel better and that I have to be in charge of my health. And that has been the case and it’s a much more empowering place to be.

This is just a little update. Today I’ve been continuing with the zyflamend, the extra water, the greens, the traumeel, the ice packs and rest. I’ve been more mobile today which is great although I’m still trying to take it easy so I don’t overdo it. I have to say, I’m tired of sitting with my feet up! I think there’s reason why we have movable appendages! I so want to move and I am but I enjoy the ability to move with more ease and flexibility. My kids cheered me on when I showed them that I was walking without a cane! They are so cute.

My ass wants to move though. So I’m going to go and rest and hope to move a even more tomorrow.

I guess it goes without saying that I haven’t been at the cafe this week. I’m sorry for anyone that has come to find a closed shop. I hope to be there next week! I’m getting there.

The very last thing I wanted to say is that in these times of illness or pain, it’s amazing what one can learn from them. I am looking back to even last week when I was way more mobile and being grateful for that time. I’m also grateful for the feelings of pain, as funny as that sounds. It’s definitely a unique human feeling - to be able to feel it, reflect on it, recall it and then express it. Do other animals feel pain and go, “Gosh, that really hurt Bob. I can’t recall ever feeling a pain like that.” Hey, maybe they do, I don’t know but as far as I do know, this is uniquely ours and whether it’s a good thing or a less than stellar thing to experience from our amazing senses and spirits, it is uniquely human. I’m also incredibly grateful for each moment that I feel better and am amazed at how quickly the body goes towards health. YAY for the human body! YAY for the human experience!

Nighty-night,
Linda