I grew up in West Virginia, raised by my single mother. My life didn’t seem to be unique at the time.  Like any other kids, my older brother, younger sister and I did household chores, played around the house and went to school.

I received a gun for Christmas when I was eight, and was taken out quail hunting. I helped train bird dogs, played sports, like baseball and soccer, helped with landscaping, and helped with the garden.  We were part of a community of eight houses inhabited primarily by our own family. We were 10 miles from the nearest grocery store or gas station in what the other community members refer to as “Hackneyville.”  Our grandparents and great grandparents lived within walking distance, and were always delighted to have us over for home-cooked meals of biscuits and gravy, beef stroganoff, or chili, to name just a few.

What really made these meals unique was the gravy that came from the squirrels the family killed. Or maybe the neighbors would go fishing in the pond up the holler and bring over some catfish to surprise us for dinner.

I remember wanting to go outside and play while at my great grandmother’s house during a hot summer’s day, but I had to stay in the sweltering kitchen to help string the beans.  We had piles of beans as tall as I could stand, so it took all day and ruined any chance of riding my bike or playing in the woods.  The women would later get mason jars and spend an entire day canning the beans and prepping them for storage.  It was an enormous amount of work, but it was well worth it to taste my great grandmother’s vegetable soup each winter. She’d pull out all her cans she had been working on during summer to make the stew.

I didn’t care for it much, but each fall my sister would get excited to pick a pumpkin out of our garden and bake the seeds.

Our house overlooked the river and  even though the river came up and swept away our garden each year, new soil would be deposited and we’d start fresh year after year.

It was always exciting for the family when a bald eagle flew overhead.  We never knew exactly where the nest was, but for the majority of my childhood they soared across the sky by our home while we went waterskiing or barbecued in our backyard.

Each winter, quail season allowed us to feast on the few ounces of meat from the birds and enjoy a dinner, complete with potatoes from the garden and biscuits from scratch, with the family h.

For school, our bus traveled through all the rural back roads and picked up 30 kids, finally getting to Ravenswood, just 10 miles away, an hour later.  The school had kids coming to it from over fifteen miles in all directions and each class totaled about 100 students.

The school gave all the students two weeks off every Thanksgiving so we could go out for deer season and enjoy time with our families.  It was customary to hunt deer, make deer jerky and smoke the venison each fall.  I remember Jared McGoskey would bring the best deer jerky ever to school each year and share it with the rest of us.  His father owned a convenience store and they had real homemade jerky to sell on the shelves.  I would spend my Thanksgivings with the family, and go horseback riding or watch the family dance with each other – most of them are cloggers.

I knew little of what was going on in the rest of the world.  We were considered kids from the country and “city kids” to us were those who lived in Ravenswood – population 2,000 with its one stop light and one pizza parlor.  The big cities were a good 50 miles away and had a theatre, a mall, and a few shopping centers.

Looking back on everything, I feel blessed to have had my childhood.  My mother only used breast milk when we were infants, fed us fresh fruits and homemade meals as toddlers, and even fought the school when she was told we needed vaccinations.  To me, this was a normal childhood and the way of life.  Now, after traveling the world and thoroughly studying nutrition and health habits of different cultures, I can see that Hackneyville has a story to tell.

This is that story and it brings light to ideas and thoughts on a side of health and fitness that the masses don’t see.  The media has convinced our country and world for generations that baby formula is healthy, your child must be vaccinated, taking pills from doctors is the answer to migraines, and so much more.

Hackneyville never seemed to get that message.  Maybe it was because we only had three TV Channels that never got reception. Maybe it has something to do with my mother’s desire to be the best for her children.  Whatever the reason, I see how others treat their health, and I see their idea of proper care and I can’t help but think it’s Donkey Business.