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This Article from: http://www.westonaprice.org/farming/nutrient-dense.html The Quest for Nutrient Dense Food / High Brix Farming & Gardening An Interview with Rex Harrill by Suze Fisher Rex Harrill of Keedysville, Maryland has been farming and gardening for the better part of thirty years. Seventeen years ago he moved to a 16-acre farm and started a new garden. In the first few years his crops were tasteless and ridden with spittle bugs, caterpillars and several other garden pests. Yet his previous garden had produced delicious, pest-resistant crops, although he didn’t know why at the time. Only later did he realize he’d inherited a garden with exceptional soil fertility at his previous farm. But after two years of bitter turnips, radishes and other crops from his new garden, Rex set out to find answers. That’s when he came across a book called The Anatomy of Life & Energy in Agriculture by Dr. Arden Andersen. He’d finally found what he’d been seeking—a program that developed fertile soil which in turn produced delicious nutrient-dense crops that were resistant to pests, weeds and disease, year after year. Rex also learned from Dr. Andersen that the brix level of the crop correlated with its nutrient-density—that brix was a valuable measurement in determining the nutritional value of the crop. Ever since then, Rex has followed a high-brix gardening approach, strongly influenced by the works of Dr. Andersen along with those of Dr. William Albrecht, Dr. Carey Reams and Dr. Dan Skow. Suze: Rex, can you explain what Brix is? Most people I’ve spoken to about Brix insist that it’s only a measure of a plant’s sugar content. Is this true? Rex: I’ve come across many ways to dispel that “only sugar” notion. A favorite is to sit a Doubting Thomas on my back porch and pour him a glass of ordinary store-bought orange juice. Once he has sipped a little, I add a spoonful of sugar to his glass. Most people quickly understand that sugar is not what makes orange juice taste good—most report that the added sugar just makes the orange juice taste yucky. And it certainly does. The point is that adding the sugar raises the apparent “Brix,” but it does nothing for the taste. True Brix measures a combination of sugar, amino acids, oils, proteins, flavonoids, minerals and other goodies. Sugar is merely one of the components of Brix. This same scenario holds for any fresh juice you wish to name. Interestingly, the above doesn’t hold true for the artificial juices made mostly from chemicals, sugar, and water. Most of them do taste a little better if you add plain sugar. Suze: By “fresh juice” do you mean the sap of any plant? Rex: Fresh juice means liquid squeezed from a fruit. Be warned that much orange, apple, and other fruit juice is reconstituted from concentrate. Reconstituting can lead to false results. For instance, if you were to use 2 cans of water (instead of the recommended 3) when preparing frozen orange juice, you would get a terrific high “Brix” reading but not a true Brix reading. Many people are unaware of the fact that the juice they buy in a carton at the grocery store was once in a very concentrated state so that it could be cheaply shipped from another country. If the company reconstituting the juice adds too much water, you get lower “Brix.” If they don’t add enough water, you get higher “Brix.” Neither is true Brix. To be safe, I guess it is better to use the word “sap” for Brix test samples. Sap is the juice squeezed out of the leaves, stems, green fruit or roots of a live plant. Suze: How is Brix measured? Rex: The Brix test requires a refractometer. For a consumer to conduct a Brix test, they need a few drops of sap (juice) squeezed from the part of any plant that they wish to eat. In other words, they need to squeeze a small piece of lemon, orange, apple, etc., between their fingers and drop the juice onto their refractometer prism. Harder produce such as cabbage, lettuce, carrots and pears often requires a garlic press or similar tool. When the drops fall on the prism, you close the cover plate to spread it out and then look through the viewing end of the instrument where you will see an etched scale generally calibrated in 0-30 or 0-32 degrees Brix. Just as a pencil appears bent when placed in a beaker of water, the light passing through the plant juice droplet is bent so that a clear line is shown against the scaled background. The amount of bending is directly related to the richness of the plant juice (richer juice bends the light more). Centuries of wine making and working with other fruits and vegetables have always shown a direct relationship between higher Brix numbers and higher quality. This higher quality is reflected in superior taste. The process is somewhat altered for the gardener or farmer in that they test the leaf of the growing plant much earlier and are therefore afforded the opportunity to correct soil deficiencies before the crop matures. The gardener or farmer also benefits in that they soon learn that any crop with 12 or better leaf Brix will not be bothered by insect pests. Suze: According to your website it was Carey Reams who first developed the refractive index of crop juices—a chart that gives “poor,” “average,” “good” and “excellent” ratings for produce based on its Brix level. Who was Reams and what was his contribution to high-Brix farming? Rex: Dr. Carey A. Reams was a Florida native who owned a rather large agricultural engineering firm and lab in the Orlando area from 1931 to 1968. When he “retired,” he only did so to further his research and travel the country giving seminars and lectures. During his college years, Reams discovered that there were huge disparities in the mineral makeup of fruits and vegetables—depending on how and where they were grown. Reams developed a following of farmers because they found that his methods produced crops of far superior quality. For many years, citrus and grape growers had used the Brix measurement to evaluate the quality of their produce. Reams took that knowledge and formulated a Brix chart, which covers most of the common fruits, vegetables and forage crops. Sometime shortly after the founding of Acres USA, Reams noticed that while the paper’s contributors and readers talked about higher quality farm production, no one had quantified the process. One day Reams walked into the editor’s office and handed him a copy of his Brix chart. The reverberations have been felt from one end of agriculture to the other. Suze: I understand that energetics was at the heart of Ream’s biological farming approach. Can you explain what that is? Rex: The genius of Reams-style farming is that he devised a way to calculate the energy released when various fertilizers worked their way down to equilibrium. For instance, Reams didn’t suggest that his clients simply scatter so many pounds (or so many tons) of ammonium sulfate on an acre of land. Reams taught his students how to calculate the energy that would be given up by a single molecule of ammonium and then determine exactly how many pounds of that, or any other fertilizer, to apply. In conventional farming fertilizer excesses are generally wasted and ultimately go off the land into the ground water, while shortages create a limited crop yield. Reams-style farming not only creates superior output, it is also very economical because any fertilizer applied is used by the plants, not lost. Dr. Dan Skow is probably the best known teacher currently explaining this desperately needed scientific aspect of agriculture to students around the country. To me, Brix is a measure of energy. A high-Brix plant emits a far superior energetic electromagnetic spectrum than a low-Brix specimen. Insects “see” in this range and they “attack” plants with the weakest emanations. When the grower finally understands that all that talk about how healthy plants “resist” insects is really another way of saying that the strongest plants don’t attract insects in the first place, they are on the road to understanding Reams agriculture. A refractometer is merely a way for us to see by proxy what insects see with their eyes. Suze: How did you become involved in biologically friendly high-Brix farming? Rex: For me it started with a turnip. I was raised on a farm and had always enjoyed sweet turnips, but I had no idea that there were poor, good and great turnips. In 1987 I had to move away from a delightful turnip-friendly garden of many years standing and start a new one at my current place. Those first turnips I grew tasted awful. Not only were they terrible in the mouth, but they were attacked by hordes of bugs, including bugs I had never seen before. This was before the Internet, but I started researching and came across a little book by Dr. Arden Andersen which gave a basic table of Brix values and what they meant to various crops. As measuring Brix called for a refractometer, I visited a winemaker friend and he told me how to get one. I was quite excited the day the instrument came. I pulled one of those bug-eaten turnips and took it to the kitchen. The 3.5 Brix reading told me exactly what I needed to know. A few days later I made the rounds at the local farmer’s market and bought samples from every one who sold turnips. It didn’t take me too long back home to realize that the sweet turnips I liked so much had to measure about 8-9 Brix, or even higher. I haven’t looked back since then. The ace is that when you finally get your soil good enough to grow higher-Brix turnips, the bugs don’t seem interested. Suze: Do you follow Reams’ Biological farming approach? Rex: I certainly do. Dr. Andersen is an open disciple of the Reams approach as am I. The Reams program leads to outstanding fruit and vegetable quality at the same time that it creates significantly increased yield. I simply cannot imagine trying to grow produce any other way. The Reams program, as furthered by Andersen, lays a well-marked path toward higher quantities of higher quality food and feedstuffs for both man and animal. Suze: Can you explain what the Reams approach is? What does it entail? Rex: Many years ago I approached Jay McCaman, a mid-west consultant with that same question. Today, people come to me for simplified explanations of the Reams approach to farming. As I’ve had to spend 15 years trying to master even a few of the fundamentals, I do feel sorely inadequate to provide a decent response to your question in “25 words or less.” However, I will try as long as we can keep one Reams mandate in sight: higher Brix points to higher quality. Although Reams viewed agriculture entirely as an energetic process, the basic Reams program requires that cropland have the following water-soluble available mineral elements per acre in place for a starting point. This is if you are truly looking for high quality (high Brix) and very high yield. 4000 pounds calcium The best system he found for many farmers involved putting down a copious supply of high-calcium lime, soft rock phosphate, and chicken manure. The reader must understand that although it has similar overtones, this “formula” is not the same as the quality improvement methods suggested by Professor Albrecht, who merely wanted the calcium, magnesium, phosphate, potassium, etc. in a certain ratio of “cation exchange capacity” or CEC. Please go to http://www.westonaprice.org/farming/nutrient-dense.html to read the rest of this interesting article. |
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Additional resources for Nutrient Dense/High Brix Food Information: Yahoo BRIX listserv: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BrixTalk/ Other Links: http://www.highbrixgardens.com/ Rex Harrill’s site: http://brixman.com/index.htm Jon Franks High Brix Garden site: http://www.highbrixgardens.com/ What is Brix?: http://www.highbrixgardens.com/highbrix/highbrix.html |
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In a nutshell - BRIX is the measure of the sugars and soluble carbohydrates in the sap of a plant, vegetable, fruit or other liquids such as milk or urine. Dr. Brix, a 19th Century German chemist, was the first to measure density of plant juices. In our foods the higher the brix the higher the nutrition content for our bodies - the better our hunger for food is satisfied. You will find you cannot buy High Brix food anywhere - you have to grow your own in a mineral dense, biologically active garden. Get a refractometer off eBay or from Pike-Agra Labs and test your fruits and veggies - you will be disappointed! CLICK HERE to download a Brix Chart. |