project and all the research that went into it. It worked. It really was a killer presentation, showing them that the protein shakes from GNC and similar places were completely safe, and I had the science to prove it. From that point forward, I was able to use protein along with my working out.
And yes, I won first place in the science fair.
The protein shakes, though, were just the start. I paid a lot of attention to what went into my body, and around this time I also decided to give up soft drinks for a year. My parents had witnessed over and over how committed I was to taking care of and improving my health, and so on this subject they had decided to challenge me, talking with me about, and demonstrating to me through their own research, concerns about the detrimental effects of ingesting too many carbonated drinks. As an enticement to quit, they offered me one hundred dollars if I went without having one soft drink for a full year. I did it.
I should have held out for more money, but in the end, it was worth it. To this day, I still don’t drink soft drinks.
While watching my diet and working out in the right way helped me train, much of my early strength came from working on the farm. Some days it was just for an hour before we’d begin schooling; other days it might be all day, especially if there was a particular project on the farm that needed our immediate attention. We put up fences, chased and herded cows back to where they should be, planted gardens, felled and cleared trees that were dead—or to create some clearings we needed for other things—chopped firewood, and did whatever other work that needed doing on the farm. We joked that we were getting ready to dial Child Services when the work got too tough.
And as if there wasn’t enough for us to do on our farm, about six times a year or so, Dad would loan us out to a neighbor friend, Mr. Bell, to help with whatever needed doing in raising and caring for his chickens. If you thought that I was complaining about working on our farm, trust me . . . I wasn’t.
Chicken farming was brutal. Mr. Bell had a hundred thousand chickens. Upon arrival each time Dad sent us over, we’d immediately begin putting the new biddies (young hens) into his chicken houses, while also removing any dead biddies and chickens that happened to be in those houses. He had four chicken houses, and it was common for us to easily fill up three good-size buckets with dead chickens from just a single house.
But the fun was just getting started. We would then take the dead biddies to Mr. Bell’s composter, where we alternated layers of chicken manure, which we had shoveled up from the chicken houses, and the dead chickens we had also just gathered up from the henhouses. The job—the smell, as the chickens cooked after being mixed in with the fresh chicken manure—would be a shoe-in for that Dirty Jobs television show. It was horrible.
Farmer strong . On so many levels.
On occasion we’d need to empty the composter when it got ripe and ready, which, as you can imagine, could get full fairly quickly on a chicken farm with a hundred thousand chickens. This process happened shovelful by shovelful through a door down at the bottom of the composter, loading the end product of fertilizer into a trailer. We would then drive the trailer to our property and begin scooping it out, throwing and spreading it evenly onto the garden or pasture as someone slowly drove the trailer along.
How many times was the wind blowing—in the wrong direction—as we threw this concoction onto the garden plots? Every time. It never failed that it ended up all over us—in our mouths, on our clothes, and in our eyes, hair, and ears. It probably doesn’t have to be said that Mom would never let us in the house when we returned but instead forced us to strip and shower outside.
Looking back, I don’t know if it’s funnier that we only got five dollars for working all day or that I thought it was worth so
And yes, I won first place in the science fair.
The protein shakes, though, were just the start. I paid a lot of attention to what went into my body, and around this time I also decided to give up soft drinks for a year. My parents had witnessed over and over how committed I was to taking care of and improving my health, and so on this subject they had decided to challenge me, talking with me about, and demonstrating to me through their own research, concerns about the detrimental effects of ingesting too many carbonated drinks. As an enticement to quit, they offered me one hundred dollars if I went without having one soft drink for a full year. I did it.
I should have held out for more money, but in the end, it was worth it. To this day, I still don’t drink soft drinks.
While watching my diet and working out in the right way helped me train, much of my early strength came from working on the farm. Some days it was just for an hour before we’d begin schooling; other days it might be all day, especially if there was a particular project on the farm that needed our immediate attention. We put up fences, chased and herded cows back to where they should be, planted gardens, felled and cleared trees that were dead—or to create some clearings we needed for other things—chopped firewood, and did whatever other work that needed doing on the farm. We joked that we were getting ready to dial Child Services when the work got too tough.
And as if there wasn’t enough for us to do on our farm, about six times a year or so, Dad would loan us out to a neighbor friend, Mr. Bell, to help with whatever needed doing in raising and caring for his chickens. If you thought that I was complaining about working on our farm, trust me . . . I wasn’t.
Chicken farming was brutal. Mr. Bell had a hundred thousand chickens. Upon arrival each time Dad sent us over, we’d immediately begin putting the new biddies (young hens) into his chicken houses, while also removing any dead biddies and chickens that happened to be in those houses. He had four chicken houses, and it was common for us to easily fill up three good-size buckets with dead chickens from just a single house.
But the fun was just getting started. We would then take the dead biddies to Mr. Bell’s composter, where we alternated layers of chicken manure, which we had shoveled up from the chicken houses, and the dead chickens we had also just gathered up from the henhouses. The job—the smell, as the chickens cooked after being mixed in with the fresh chicken manure—would be a shoe-in for that Dirty Jobs television show. It was horrible.
Farmer strong . On so many levels.
On occasion we’d need to empty the composter when it got ripe and ready, which, as you can imagine, could get full fairly quickly on a chicken farm with a hundred thousand chickens. This process happened shovelful by shovelful through a door down at the bottom of the composter, loading the end product of fertilizer into a trailer. We would then drive the trailer to our property and begin scooping it out, throwing and spreading it evenly onto the garden or pasture as someone slowly drove the trailer along.
How many times was the wind blowing—in the wrong direction—as we threw this concoction onto the garden plots? Every time. It never failed that it ended up all over us—in our mouths, on our clothes, and in our eyes, hair, and ears. It probably doesn’t have to be said that Mom would never let us in the house when we returned but instead forced us to strip and shower outside.
Looking back, I don’t know if it’s funnier that we only got five dollars for working all day or that I thought it was worth so
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