Ep 1258 ｜ Raising Entrepreneurs & Real Food： A Christian Homesteader’s Journey ｜ Michelle Visser
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
190.52106
Summary
Michelle Visser is the author of the blog, Solely Restored, and she is here today to talk about homesteading, making your home healthier and a calmer place by making your own food, by homesteadING! And this is not a conversation just for people who live on a farm. This is a conversation that is rooted in trust in God, and I think that you are going to find so much peace and so much wisdom from what Michelle shares with us today.
Transcript
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We're living in a time when lies are really easy and the truth is costly.
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And nowhere is that more devastating than in the battle for life that rages through this country every day.
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Her first reaction to her pregnancy was abortion because that's the lie she was told.
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But once she heard the heartbeat of her child, she knew that God wanted her to have her baby and that all things would be possible through him.
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She was provided with the love, support, and the resources she needed.
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At Preborn Network Clinics, this happens on average 200 times a day across the country because of support from people like you.
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Moms who are overwhelmed and pressured suddenly see their child, hear the truth, and realize that they're not alone.
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Give now, dial pound 250, and say the keyword baby.
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Bring peace to your home through the food you make.
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And she is here today to talk about homesteading, making your home a healthier and a calmer place by making your own food, by homesteading.
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And this is not a conversation just for people who live on a farm.
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This is for people from all backgrounds, in all different kinds of communities.
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This is a conversation that is rooted in trust in God, and I think that you are going to find so much peace and so much wisdom from what Michelle shares with us today.
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I loved, loved this conversation, and you're going to, too.
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If you love this podcast, please subscribe on Spotify, on Apple Podcasts, on YouTube, wherever you watch or listen.
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And we love for you to be a part of these conversations, to discuss, and to share your thoughts.
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And it just, it means so much to me that you're here.
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So if you haven't subscribed already, please do so.
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This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers.
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Michelle, thanks so much for taking the time to join us.
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Can you tell everyone who you are and what you do?
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I am, I guess I should say, first and foremost, I am a wife to my high school sweetheart.
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And I remember my first memory wasn't until seventh grade.
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And he was a little nervous because somebody was taking a picture.
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And I looked over and I thought, he's such a cute little guy.
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I didn't know that we were going to start with a love story.
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And he was at the door in the hall, not, like, kind of doing this.
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And I very quickly was asked if I would like to go to the junior prom.
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And then I had to run back to my seat before Mrs. Allborn yelled at me.
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And then from there, was it like, okay, this is it?
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Looking back, I have no idea why I thought it was good to date seven and a half years.
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And I got to homeschool them for 20 years from kindergarten through 12th grade.
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So that was back in the 90s that you were making the decision to homeschool, correct?
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So in the 90s when it was maybe less popular, less common than it is today.
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So tell me how you made the decision to homeschool your kids.
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Honestly, it wasn't something I had even really heard about until Logan, my oldest daughter,
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was four, and I was at just a woman's like a luncheon, and we had a speaker, and it was
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somebody in our church, and I didn't even know, shout out to Judy Brearley, didn't even
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And she just got up and started talking about it.
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I want to be part of their everyday life and learn with them.
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And sure enough, Allie, kindergarten on, I was learning with them the whole time.
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Tell us, can you give us some advice for those of us who are girl moms?
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I would say to not put yourself or your daughters in a box, because we didn't have a whole lot
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It wasn't a typical, people here, I have four girls, and they think, oh, all you did
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But the biggest advice I would give, honestly, is to pray for their future spouse from the
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Especially, I feel like with a girl, it's more important.
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But I just feel like with a girl, it's so important for her to have a godly leader of
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And that starts when they're young, for God to be training them up that way.
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So the first time that I realized I had my first son-in-law, I started crying and I
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hugged Alex, I've been praying for you for so long.
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You know, when it finally hit me, this is who I've been praying for.
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So you're here to talk about homesteading, but I guess that homeschooling and homesteading
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are intertwined, especially with you raising four girls in your home.
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So before we get into Brad and all of the things that you know about Brad, let's talk
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How did you make sure that the keeping of the home and your home education of your kids
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And I mean, for me, I was so blessed to find a Bible study when the girls were young that
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all of us could be involved in at the same time.
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And even when they were very young, they were studying the same passages at their level.
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So all week long, you know, it would just come up because there was a daily lesson for all
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of us, not the really little ones, but when they got old enough to do a daily lesson.
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So all week long, it would just come up in our everyday conversation.
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And it was just a natural part of our education.
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I actually didn't even do like a Bible curriculum because the curriculums I did choose were Christian
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based. And then I had this Bible study that we would talk about throughout the week.
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So what better curriculum than to talk about God's word on a everyday basis?
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It's funny because I still to this day, I don't say to somebody, hi, I'm a homesteader.
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And we're, to be honest, we were accidental homesteaders.
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Because God called our family to move from the Mid-Atlantic area.
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We were about 30 minutes outside of Philly in a very busy, chaotic suburb.
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And it took quite a few years to get there with a lot of open and closed doors and really
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just following God's direction in every way we could with scripture and with godly leadership
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And we just knew for sure we were supposed to, we knew he had jobs prepared for us ahead
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And we just were supposed to get there at the right time.
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So you moved without knowing what those jobs were.
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Which looking back sounds crazy because Bill and I both are very plan everything out to
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And that wasn't the way God wanted us to do this.
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Somebody just asked me last week about, wow, they had never been to our home and they stepped
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in and said, wow, no wonder you wanted to buy this home.
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And I'm like, oh, no, if you knew what it looked like, like it wasn't something I ever
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And she said, well, what led you to buy this home?
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That's all I can say because he put the desire in Bill and my hearts for this home.
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And we didn't know at the time it had, we knew it had 14 acres, but we didn't know what
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We had no idea what it was like to make, to do sugar making.
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But here we moved into a sugar bush and we started tapping trees.
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That was the first, one of the first things God called us to do.
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A lot of people listening have no idea what you're talking about.
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What's a sugar bush and what is tapping trees for sugar?
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Sugar bush just means a bunch of trees that are tappable.
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And you tap in the early spring, late winter, early spring, the tree becomes, it leaves its
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dormant state and it starts becoming alive for the spring and sending its sap to the leaves
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and everything that needs to get going for the spring.
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For us in New England, it's about a six week, maybe eight week window that there's a lot of
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sap moving and you can collect it relatively easily just from the pressure of the tree and
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Well, God is so good that he gave us from the beginning of time, delicious, sweet sugar.
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All we had to do was literally tap into it because the tree has 2.5% sugar in the sap.
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So if you have patience and a way to boil it down and get it down to 66%, then you have
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And it's my absolute favorite sweetener in the world.
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You saw Carly at Share the Errors if you were there.
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And before we get back to that conversation, I want to remind you that Share the Errors is
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And neither you nor your husband were raised in a farming community or rural community?
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Both of my parents were from rural families that farmed.
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My mom lived in the panhandle of West Virginia, and my dad lived in a little teeny piece of
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I used to say they both are from West Virginia, but dad would always correct me.
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I think I was about seven or eight years old when I realized every parent isn't one of 10 children.
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Like, I really thought that was just a given with a parent.
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So they had a lot of mouths to feed, and they did it all off of the land, both of these families.
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And I would go to Butchering Day on my grandparents' farm.
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Looking back, to think that like a six-year-old and a 10-year-old loved it.
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And you could feel the energy and the excitement.
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And I think it's partially because we were thankful for what God had given us.
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Like, God has given us all this meat, and this is our job today to process this food and put it away for the year.
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So I did have that background, but my parents had moved away from that before I was born because—actually, I'm reading J.D. Vance's autobiography right now.
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But for me, it's so much actually my family from the hills of West Virginia.
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And I didn't know there was a hillbilly—I didn't know it was called the Hillbilly Highway.
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And literally, the industrial age of factories up north brought a lot of true hillbillies from the backwoods up to modern day.
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My grandmother was still using a wood stove to cook the meals on when my mom moved out.
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And then she moved to a little piece of, in her mind, a little slice of heaven in a cute little development with a perfect little house that had an electric stove, you know?
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So, yes, we had the background, but not the personal hands-on knowledge.
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So, okay, you moved here just because, really, you felt the Holy Spirit kind of call you to it, and you didn't know what it was going to look like.
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So, that's why you call yourself an accidental homesteader.
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So, after you moved into the home, what did life look like?
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Well, we still lived life as normal at that point.
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I didn't even realize for quite a few months that one of these kind of dilapidated, falling-down outbuildings that we had was a chicken coop.
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And we, that following spring, did bring home our first chickens soon after we got ducks and meat rabbits.
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And we, that was the first thing for me is going out to the coop and bringing in the eggs that made me realize, wait, we can actually have animals that aren't pets but that are providing food for us.
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Like I said, I knew that from my childhood, but it wasn't ever part of my everyday life.
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So, bringing in those eggs and eating the breakfast from the eggs that were just laid was one of the first things for me that was an eye-opening moment that maybe I should be thinking more about our food.
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And maybe I could be doing more to have more real food.
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And those eggs were so different than the eggs you buy at the store.
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And the idea that we could make our own sugar was mind-boggling to me.
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So, the homesteading while you were raising your kids was not really something you were doing.
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You were homeschooling before you were homesteading.
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So, then about 12, you know, 14 years ago, it sounds like that's when you moved to the
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So, there were more online resources and things like that that you could learn from.
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So, I actually had already started a blog because when we first moved, I just was so
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filled with thankfulness with so many things that I, you know, when you just follow God's
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direction, not sure where it's going to lead, but you're confident you're doing the right
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thing and you just need to go, just step out in faith.
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When you're surrounded with blessings, it's overwhelming, like, because you didn't know
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And to see, oh, God, this wasn't, this was also for me.
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It wasn't for whatever job you have for me to do, but it also was for me.
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Now, I went to Facebook and every day I'm putting, and my daughters very kindly said,
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And I named it Sully Rested, S-O-U-L-Y Rested, from Jeremiah 616, which says, stand at the
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Look for the ancient past, ask for the good way, and walk in it, and you will find rest
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So, God calls us to jobs and to work, whatever he's prepared for us.
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In fact, sometimes it's really, really hard, but he does promise us rest for our soul.
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It's not a rest of sit back and enjoy the easy life and retire now, but it's a rest for
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Because it started with the sugar and with the chickens and with the rabbits, but then
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you learned more and more about making your own food.
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Well, it expanded outside with, you know, dairy cows, and we became pig farmers.
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And I mean, things I would have never expected, but I'm a sugar maker and a pig farmer.
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Like, only God would have pulled little Michelle Visser out of the suburbs and did that.
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But, and inside, things really started changing in our kitchen and on our table, because the
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more I realized the goodness of real food, the more I started looking at the ingredients,
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and I started realizing I had been a junk food junkie my whole life, and I had been eating
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My mom knew how to cook from scratch beautifully, but were attracted to convenience.
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And if she had the convenience of a box mac and cheese, heck, why not go with that, especially
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And he learned from his grandfather in the hills of Maryland, but he discovered chemicals and
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herbicides and pesticides, and that's how he gardened when I was growing up.
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So, it was a whole new thing to garden on my own in this new place organically and to
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raise food to put on my table that was organic.
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I had to learn it all, because dad had always just used his pesticides.
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Um, but, and then I started looking at the ingredients of the processed food, and I started
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realizing, well, instead of using this little pack of taco seasoning, I could make my own
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And instead of buying this ice cream that has, like, antifreeze as one of its ingredients,
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So, little by little, it took, I would always recommend to people never to just think you're
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going to do it all, to just jump in and throw away all the processed food and do all real
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But, step by step, one thing at a time, we started improving our pantry and our kitchen
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What differences did you see in your own body and in the health of your family when you started
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Nothing, you know, I don't want, I don't like it when people sit back and say, well, I did
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this one thing and I saw this result, because it's all so intertwined.
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But, just so much more energy and just zest for life and a really good feeling about food
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that I had never had before, because it doesn't feel good to open up a cardboard box and open
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a little packet of something and mix it together.
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It just doesn't give you the satisfaction and the creativity that real food can give you.
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Just more energy, sleeping better, just really good overall.
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Y'all, we know that the university system in the United States, it is so captured by progressive
00:21:46.440
You might be so scared to send your child to college, or maybe you're thinking about trying
00:21:52.480
to go back to school yourself and you're just afraid of continuing that education because
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of how hostile this environment is to Christians and conservatives.
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Hillsdale actually cares about our Christian values, cares about the Constitution, and
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you need to know about where we get our values, why this country is so great.
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You need to take their courses that will explain that.
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For example, one of their courses is about the Federalist Papers.
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You will walk through the key ideas behind our founding documents, 10 lectures, each around
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30 minutes, and it's totally free, and it's completely self-paced.
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They have 40 free courses that they offer on everything from C.S. Lewis to the Constitution
00:22:42.560
If you want to get smarter, you can do that at any time in your life, and you, again, can
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You always hear sometimes when people have some kind of like chronic illness that when
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they start making their own food and they start taking out the processed stuff, that a lot
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But, you know, a lot of the things that people in America struggle with today when it comes
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to our gut, when it comes to our skin, a lot of the things that start with our digestion,
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they can be alleviated or helped a lot by what we do in the kitchen.
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And so how did you kind of adjust to the lack of convenience of making your own taco seasoning?
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Because a lot of people might be thinking, that sounds awesome.
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But I don't have time to make my own ranch dressing and taco seasoning and all of that.
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So how do you organize your time and adjust to putting all the effort into that?
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I would say, first of all, to never be a purist because you will make yourself actually more
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unhealthy than striving to eat all pure, real food.
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And so little steps at a time and bulk, everything in bulk.
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I mean, if I make taco seasoning, I'm not making it just for dinner.
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I actually started a pantry checklist for myself years and years ago.
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And I decided, oh, this is probably something my followers would like.
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To this day, it's still my number one requested thing.
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People are always grabbing my pantry checklist because I'm always changing and adding to it.
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But stay organized and have a list of what you order and know what's running low so you
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And really stick to things that your family, like people will often ask me, where do I
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For me, one of the very first things that I changed in our kitchen was our tea we were
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drinking because we have a lot of iced tea, sweet iced tea drinkers.
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And I was making my own kombucha talking about the gut health.
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So I started making kombucha and I realized I'm feeding it with bleached, processed bags
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So I started kind of researching that a little.
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And then I found out that the staples on the tea bags that I was putting in our compost
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pile for our gardens was killing the worms and hurting our compost because when the worms
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So then I started cutting off my staples and then I realized, well, wait, I'm still like
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I still am getting the tea out of this bleached bag.
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And then I started researching tea and it turns out it's one of the most heavily unregulated
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yet heavily sprayed with pesticide food or drink that you can eat.
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I don't I actually don't really like iced tea that much, but like tea at night.
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And, you know, it's the organic kind and all of that.
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Well, if you're drinking organic tea, then you don't have to worry about the pesticides.
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So but even the bleached the bag bleached bags and it's just so maybe loose leaf tea
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And then you're not getting the little tannins and pieces of leaves off the floor, which is
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what they do when they put the tea in the tea bags.
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You're getting the leaves, the bigger, uncrushed leaves.
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So you're just getting a better taste all around.
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So you started making your own kombucha when you realized, OK, all of these different components
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of the, I guess, processed tea that you were buying are not really good for you.
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So I discovered two different tea blend or two different tea leaves that I could combine
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I really can make homemade that my family is going to like instead of the processed stuff.
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And I started writing all about it on the blog and sharing all the recipes.
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And then I realized that I needed to look at my flour because, I mean, this is like the
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number one ingredient that we all use in our kitchen.
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I mean, honestly, I would say flour today, if you're going to your store and you're buying
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a bag of enriched bleach flour off the store shelf, it's a lie.
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It's actually, they're lying to us because it's no longer what it should be.
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Originally, wheat berries were a valuable commodity from all of time they had.
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And we have records from the Fertile Crescent that they had grain banks and they had cuneiform
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tablets that we can still look at today that show us they had pretty much a banking system
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It was almost like our current modern day checking system that they could exchange wheat
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to others and send it to them like we write a check.
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And then, you know, in medieval times, the feudal lords controlled the grain mills.
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And they, the peasants were not allowed to have any kind of a even crude elementary mill.
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It simply was illegal because they had to go to the Lord's mill and pay him.
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They would pay him with a portion of their wheat.
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We still have the word banal in our words today, which means common.
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And banality was for the common, the communal mill that they were paying the fee.
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Um, and then in, in Italy during the middle ages, a wheat merchant would set up a bench
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And if the wheat merchant ever went out of business, then they would actually break the
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If you put it together, banca, rapta, it's where we get our word bankrupt.
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And we get our word bank from that original time in middle ages where they were trading
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and dealing in wheat because it was the number one commodity.
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Um, and then even in 1914, modern time, when we set up our federal reserve banks, one of
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them was set up in Minneapolis because it was a center of wheat trade and they wanted to be
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able to regulate it because it's an important trade.
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But then we have done so much to it, Allie, that it, it's no longer valuable.
00:29:26.540
What's sitting on the store shelf is simply giving us no nutrition at all, which was never
00:29:31.560
I mean, Jesus himself said, I am the bread of life.
00:29:38.060
And unfortunately in modern day, we've, we've stripped it of that.
00:29:49.300
Y'all, we need to get back to the dinner table.
00:29:51.220
Those conversations with our kids are so formative and so important.
00:29:54.560
And you want to make sure that the American dinner table is filled with American products,
00:30:00.420
You want to support American farms and ranches.
00:30:06.820
So that's why you should buy your meat from Good Ranchers because every single bit of their
00:30:10.180
meat, whether it's their bacon or their chicken or their steaks or their seafood, it's all from
00:30:18.440
This is a way to make sure that you're getting your protein, that you're supporting this American
00:30:29.040
We've been eating Good Ranchers for years in our home.
00:30:31.520
Another Christian family owned company that you want to support.
00:30:44.140
That's GoodRanchers.com slash Allie code Allie.
00:30:46.580
Okay, tell me what else you learned about flour.
00:30:55.540
Because now, yes, there is that enriched bleach flour, which is what I think, you know, my
00:31:01.220
grandmother, she lived with us and she baked a lot.
00:31:03.840
I'm sure that's all she was using and Crisco and all of that.
00:31:07.460
But now there are healthier options, it seems like, in the grocery store.
00:31:15.640
Well, there's a lot of things we can't really trust.
00:31:18.140
I mean, the real problem goes back to when they changed the way grain mills were grinding
00:31:25.160
With a typical, in ancient times, grain mill, you had the two stones that they would grind
00:31:31.320
together and turn the wheat berries into flour.
00:31:35.720
So I have to tell you quickly what a wheat berry is for this to make sense.
00:31:47.740
And then the very internal area of the wheat berry is the germ.
00:31:52.160
The germ is that tiny little part of the wheat berry that's going to become the plant.
00:31:59.120
Do you ever get sprouts at the grocery store or ever grow sprouts?
00:32:07.100
You can even just put them on sandwiches and I just grow my own.
00:32:09.400
And in the middle of winter in New England, I can have fresh food.
00:32:13.540
Because they are that little part of the seed that has germinated.
00:32:17.220
And every nutrient needed for that plant to start thriving in the ground and producing
00:32:21.940
more food, all those nutrients are in that tiny little seed, which is what you're eating
00:32:26.720
with sprouts because they're like three or five days old out of the seed.
00:32:30.340
Well, with a wheat berry, that's called the germ.
00:32:35.340
Around it, which is like 80% of your wheat berry, is the endosperm.
00:32:42.400
And it's the way God designed it for the wheat berry to give the food to the germ as it's
00:32:51.400
So it's a lot of starch and a little bit of protein.
00:32:54.420
Well, in the way it used to be done, you would grind that whole wheat berry into flour and
00:33:03.100
They would sift out some of the bram because the bram is harder and you're not going to
00:33:10.280
But pretty much the whole wheat berry was there in your flour.
00:33:13.980
Well, then in 1880 in Wisconsin, a grain mill owner, James Stevens, decided that he was going
00:33:20.820
to really work at perfecting this because he wanted more output.
00:33:24.240
He wanted more money as all business persons do.
00:33:31.480
And he wasn't the person to actually invent the idea, but he was the first one business
00:33:38.520
So he's known as the inventor of the steel roller mill.
00:33:42.360
So he sent away to Connecticut and had them forge some steel rollers.
00:33:47.640
And he set up a system of rollers and a system of sieves and some air current going through
00:33:52.220
it that made it so he could remove all of the bram and all of the germ.
00:33:58.560
And it left this wonderful white endosperm flour, which is what everybody wanted because
00:34:08.200
Even if it's like microscopic level, it's going to be sharp.
00:34:13.300
And that breaks into your gluten as you're trying to make your bread.
00:34:17.660
So it's just not going to be a light, fluffy, airy, nice rising bread if there's a little
00:34:23.940
So everybody went crazy over this white flour because they could make such wonderful, airy
00:34:34.540
All of a sudden, all the mills were switching over to this other kind of milling.
00:34:38.300
And within about 10 or 20 years, we started noticing lots of diseases.
00:34:44.880
And there was no correlation that anybody knew.
00:34:49.860
It was actually 1904 that the first case of pellagra was noted in the U.S.
00:35:04.280
People would get these red rashes that would turn into like very leathery skin that was
00:35:20.780
So people were separated from loved ones and family, quarantined away.
00:35:24.560
Then it led to horrible diarrhea, dementia, and eventually death.
00:35:31.460
And so 1920, Dr. Joseph Goldberger started really investigating this.
00:35:37.800
And I think he had a real heart for these poor people that this was, you know, they were
00:35:41.480
getting torn from their families and dying in solitude and in pain.
00:35:46.140
And he noticed that in prisons, it was different because the inmates, they weren't, didn't seem
00:35:51.960
They were living in close quarters and it wasn't spreading that way.
00:35:54.760
So he said, this has got to be nutrition-based.
00:35:56.920
And it took him a long time, a lot of different attempts.
00:36:00.060
But he finally realized if he fed yeast to someone with pellagra, it would cure them.
00:36:06.100
And he actually died before he knew what component of the yeast was needed.
00:36:10.780
But his colleagues determined that it was niacin.
00:36:15.860
And it led to all this horrible things and to death.
00:36:18.660
And guess where you can find a lot of niacin in a single wheat berry in the germ that had
00:36:31.100
In fact, literally, the flour had no nutrients, just starch and protein.
00:36:37.860
And you see that in the ingredients on the back of bread packages now.
00:36:45.860
I mean, that's a long time, from 1880 to 1940, for us to be malnourished and not understand
00:36:52.960
But there were other diseases, not just pellagra.
00:36:54.860
And when they combined all the knowledge that they could, they figured out four different
00:36:59.380
ingredients that they wanted to enrich flour with.
00:37:01.740
So they put B1, 2, and 3 and iron back into flour in the 40s.
00:37:06.620
They also were motivated by the fact that the world was at war and we had food shortages.
00:37:11.460
So the government really, I think rightfully, in a good way, wanted to make sure we weren't
00:37:18.100
But can all those things be found in a wheat germ?
00:37:21.500
Like, can iron and all the things that they had to reinsert back into bread be found?
00:37:25.480
What they put back was not even 20% of what's been taken out.
00:37:32.520
Our body, it's not as bioavailable to our body.
00:37:41.440
Then in 1998, the government realized if they added folic acid to the flour, that that
00:37:48.220
There was quite an outbreak of spina bifida and a few other ones.
00:37:52.380
And it appears when you look at the numbers, and I think most people say, yes, it made a
00:38:01.240
But what they were adding back in was folic acid.
00:38:06.800
And folate is very needed in our body because it literally repairs our cells.
00:38:11.900
And if the cell goes unrepaired without enough folate, it leads to, you know, it leads to
00:38:19.080
And the folic acid they were adding back in, first of all, was synthetic, so not as bioavailable,
00:38:27.640
Which is why, back in 1880, by the way, flour, this white flour was so, the millers were so
00:38:33.340
happy because now it can sit on your shelf for two years.
00:38:36.220
It used to be you had to go to the mill every two weeks to get your flour because as soon
00:38:40.660
as the wheat berry is opened up and that little germ is exposed to air, it starts to deteriorate.
00:38:47.620
And within a few weeks, you're going to have rancid flour if you don't use it.
00:38:51.800
So it's just, it's a live food and that's the way it's supposed to be, you know.
00:38:56.200
So they added the folic acid back in and they couldn't do folate or it wouldn't be able
00:39:03.880
But we also had to do quite a big educational campaign because women couldn't just be using
00:39:11.560
That was going to give them about 100 micrograms of folic acid a day.
00:39:15.380
If a woman is in the process of conceiving or in her first trimester, they recommend
00:39:24.600
So she still needed education because she needed to know, okay, you need to eat nuts and eggs
00:39:33.380
So in the 90s, there was a widespread education of pregnant women, which is fantastic and great
00:39:40.360
But I would argue, I mean, do we really know if it was the folic acid?
00:39:43.400
Because that was only one fourth of the requirement they needed for that day anyway.
00:39:48.100
And unfortunately, they have found that folic acid can itself lead to cancer.
00:39:53.760
There have been studies that have shown that it can cause that in the certain cells.
00:40:07.080
I didn't know there was a cancer registry, but they followed the cancer registries in the
00:40:11.740
U.S. And they noticed this unusual thing, that for 15 years, there was a dramatic decline
00:40:24.740
And then in 1998, which is when we added the folic acid, suddenly that changed and it went
00:40:35.360
I just, and that's just anecdotal, but I've just heard of a lot of young people over the
00:40:49.860
You don't want to be paranoid, but you do want to be prepared.
00:40:52.680
You want to be prepared for whatever comes next.
00:40:56.960
We don't know if there's going to be another, you know, weather catastrophe, if there's going
00:41:01.580
to be a supply chain issue, if there's going to be something that stops you from being able
00:41:06.040
to get the medications you need, whether it's antibiotics, because you have some kind of
00:41:10.220
infection, even a life-threatening infection, or whether it's the prescriptions that you
00:41:16.840
You don't want to have to rely on the supply chain, rely on your pharmacy, or even rely
00:41:22.080
on your doctor if you really need those quickly.
00:41:30.240
You can also get Jace daily case, which is a year long supply of the prescriptions that
00:41:35.200
This is a way to love your family well, to serve your family well, and just to be prepared
00:41:40.960
Go to Jace.com, use code Allie at checkout for a discount.
00:42:03.000
And if we want to keep going on the part that you were just explaining as well, we can.
00:42:07.920
But I have Hashimoto's, as do a lot of people diagnosed when I was probably 19.
00:42:13.800
And it's only in recent months that I've actually taken an official food sensitivity test where
00:42:21.140
And it comes back that I am very sensitive to gluten.
00:42:24.080
And I've actually been having just like gut discomfort for the past couple of years.
00:42:33.260
A lot of people with Hashimoto's are sensitive to gluten.
00:42:36.220
But then I also hear that, well, if you go to other countries and you eat bread or you
00:42:41.060
eat pasta, that you don't have the same bad reaction as you do over here.
00:42:45.680
And I'm wondering if it has something to do with what you're talking about.
00:42:51.520
In fact, talking about other countries, back when we were adding into our flour and enriching
00:42:58.040
In fact, in Italy, they had a pellagra outbreak around the same time that we were dealing with
00:43:06.260
In little towns in Italy, I think this is great.
00:43:08.720
They literally built communal ovens, bread ovens, and they encouraged them to use good
00:43:15.120
grains, which had not gone through the green revolution of our country, which we can get
00:43:19.880
to that in a second, but good grains and make whole wheat bread.
00:43:26.260
They knew that at that point, they knew that it was related to folate and they knew that
00:43:33.580
We have in these small towns a lot of poor people who can't necessarily afford good food.
00:43:37.480
So one thing is, let's at least give them the equipment to make the bread.
00:43:49.160
Get meat rabbits because there's a lot of protein.
00:43:51.620
And if anyone in the family was sick, they encouraged the children to go to school for
00:43:57.220
And they set up a program where the children could be well-nourished because they knew it
00:44:02.580
So instead of manipulating the primary thing in our kitchens and changing the flour, and
00:44:10.340
you don't really know what the results might be with that, instead, they took really hands-on
00:44:26.880
Um, Norman Borlaug in 1970 was given the Nobel priest prize for basically feeding the world
00:44:35.320
is what they said, because he had figured out how to manipulate wheat to give it a higher
00:44:42.360
yield and to just simply grow more wheat for your buck.
00:44:46.700
And, um, um, while there's definite advantages to understanding plant science, unfortunately,
00:44:53.920
every time that we genetically change or we breed certain characteristics into any of our
00:45:02.640
And he figured out how to breed wheat so it grew very short because that would allow the
00:45:11.780
And they figured out how to make the bran, that 15% on the outer edge.
00:45:16.960
Tougher, which was great for the millers because then the bran has, you have to sift it less
00:45:24.140
because it breaks off in bigger pieces and it's really easy to just get it out of there
00:45:29.300
Oh, by the way, all those things that they took out, even back in 1880, they figured out
00:45:34.000
They made even more money because it made great animal feed.
00:45:37.200
So when they took out the bran and the germ, they were selling it as animal feed.
00:45:41.720
And when they, um, when they started milling it in this with the steel mills, they went
00:45:47.840
from 20 barrels of flour a day to 500 barrels of flour a day with no extra energy, no extra
00:45:54.920
So there's definitely money involved in the whole story is what I'm saying.
00:45:58.740
So what is it about the wheat germ that can help?
00:46:03.360
Well, if I'm understanding, maybe I'm not understanding it correctly, so I might not
00:46:07.060
What is it about the wheat germ that helps a body you believe break down gluten?
00:46:12.400
Because you're saying gluten is not necessarily in and of itself bad, but maybe in combination
00:46:19.340
with this bread that has been stripped of the good stuff, inserted with the synthetic stuff,
00:46:24.340
that that is maybe what's causing the problems, especially in America.
00:46:27.460
It comes back again to the green revolution, which started in like the 1950s, went through
00:46:31.980
the seventies and eighties that, I mean, it's still going on.
00:46:34.380
I don't know why I acted like it had an ending point.
00:46:37.080
But one of the things they did with wheat, another thing they did was they enlarged that
00:46:42.000
They figured out a way to grow wheat that had a larger endosperm, that white starch.
00:46:46.300
I told you it had starch and a little bit of protein and less of the germ and the bran.
00:46:51.080
So now we have a wheat that is, it has, it's oversaturated with that protein and the protein
00:46:59.620
when it's, when it's exposed to water, the proteins will combine and make gluten.
00:47:10.460
We've just made like a Franken wheat and the gluten is excessive, but it gets worse because
00:47:16.240
part of the green revolution, we knew what we want to make enough food to feed the world
00:47:19.600
and we want to make sure we're producing more and more.
00:47:26.120
Glyphosate, if you are not buying organic flour, glyphosate is in trace amounts in your
00:47:33.480
And we mentioned gut health and me making my kombucha and working on my gut health.
00:47:37.760
If we are exposing our gut to glyphosate, we are killing the good bacteria.
00:47:42.620
We've had gut problems in this country for many decades.
00:47:47.800
I think a lot of it has to do with this glyphosate in our flour because we're all eating flour.
00:47:52.320
And of course, if your microbiome is not healthy, then it can't do its job.
00:47:57.760
And one very important job of our microbiome in our gut is to digest gluten.
00:48:03.840
So we have more gluten than we're supposed to in our flour and we can't digest it.
00:48:08.420
I learned from a friend who is very, like actually has celiacs.
00:48:15.240
So she cannot eat gluten, but she started making her own sourdough bread from a very,
00:48:23.840
very old sourdough starter that she had been given a long time ago.
00:48:27.580
And it's very fermented and she is able to eat that no problem.
00:48:32.180
And I'm guessing it goes back to what you're saying there.
00:48:38.380
It's a different nature when you are making your own bread.
00:48:41.780
Now, I don't think this person is milling their own bread.
00:48:43.800
I was just going to ask you that because that's a huge, and when you said that you're having
00:48:47.200
difficulties, I was going to say, we need to get you a grain mill, Allie.
00:48:52.420
Like one of my favorite things we would buy, so I don't make my own sourdough bread, but
00:48:59.900
And when I was postpartum, the thing that I felt like helped my milk supply the most was
00:49:05.880
the sourdough bread with butter and grass fed butter.
00:49:10.780
And when I would have two slices of that and it would like really help me.
00:49:19.180
You were getting all of your essential nutrients because a wheat berry, okay, a wheat berry has
00:49:24.200
protein and fiber and complex carbohydrates and minerals and vitamins and healthy fats
00:49:29.820
and polyphenols and antioxidants, all of that in one wheat berry.
00:49:35.120
And it is 40 of our 44 essential nutrients in a wheat berry.
00:49:40.820
If you are eating dairy or butter, you know, dairy, butter is dairy.
00:49:44.880
If you're eating that with your bread, you're getting the other four.
00:49:50.020
He gave us bread and he gave us dairy and literally all of our essential nutrients are in those
00:50:02.200
You know, it's crazy that you used to have to get buckets, put them in the back of your
00:50:09.600
By the way, back in 1870, fun fact, we had 23,000 grain mills in this country because this
00:50:17.860
My grandfather still did it in rural West Virginia in the 1930s and 40s.
00:50:22.000
He would go every couple of weeks to the local grain mill and take his wheat.
00:50:26.080
They would grind it up and he'd take it back home in flour sacks.
00:50:28.760
My grandmother would tell him, I'm told, pick out a pretty one because I have a special
00:50:33.260
And he'd come home with the pretty flour sacks.
00:50:43.560
You guys know that we are living in a culture where lies are pervasive and lies are celebrated,
00:50:49.420
especially when it comes to the lie of what is happening inside the womb.
00:50:54.360
The abortion industry tries to tell young women, this is just a clump of cells.
00:51:02.560
You'll be able to break up with your boyfriend.
00:51:03.900
You'll be able to avoid this suffering, this pain, this hardship if you just kill your
00:51:10.340
They need to not only hear from a trusted person that this life matters and that you
00:51:15.300
matter and you're not alone, but they also need to see and hear the reality, the humanity
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Preborn supplies pregnancy centers across the country with ultrasound equipment and other
00:51:28.240
resources that they need to show women the truth of life inside the womb.
00:51:32.180
And when that woman gets a sonogram and she sees the reality of her child, she is so much
00:51:39.220
So by partnering with Preborn, donating whatever you can, $28 is the cost of a life-saving
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00:52:03.780
So because we had a local mill in every town, it wasn't a problem.
00:52:15.840
Well, today you don't have to go to the grain mill and wait for the horse or the water to
00:52:29.860
But it's crazy to me that we can have that technology in a little appliance on our counter
00:52:43.480
I would recommend going, well, I mean, anyone who wants to get my pantry checklist, I have
00:52:47.860
a lot of stuff on there about the different wheat berries and where I source them.
00:52:50.960
But definitely find organic because you don't want that glyphosate.
00:52:54.020
You don't want to go to all this trouble and be putting glyphosate in the flour you're making.
00:52:57.160
Trust that if it says organic, that it's glyphosate.
00:53:01.880
But I am told that there is generally really tight, stringent regulations over that.
00:53:09.100
So, I mean, you got to get to a point that at some point you just have to trust, right?
00:53:16.460
And if you have any sort of gluten sensitivity, by the way, celiacs, one in 133 people have celiacs
00:53:28.280
In fact, we are five times more celiacs today than back in 1950.
00:53:33.800
And one in three people are gluten sensitive like you are.
00:53:38.980
And I feel like for me, it's gotten worse over time, actually.
00:53:47.920
And it just gets harder for it if it's not getting fed the really good stuff.
00:53:52.240
So I would recommend if you have any sort of gluten sensitivity, you might want to look
00:53:58.940
Because we do have ancient grains like they were in ancient times that have not been altered.
00:54:05.960
Thankfully, it's because they had an extra hard hull, which the hull is the part around
00:54:17.520
And I love to use that for cookies because it's slightly nutty.
00:54:22.040
If you're using real wheat berries, they all have different taste, different color, and
00:54:33.000
And all of these ancient grains had this harder hull around the outside, which made it that
00:54:40.240
And if they had other ones to play around with and alter to make franken flour out of,
00:54:47.520
So they didn't even touch all those ancient grains.
00:54:50.220
So thankfully for us today and anyone with gluten sensitivity, we do still have grains
00:54:54.960
we can go to that are not overwhelmed with gluten.
00:54:58.800
In fact, the ancient grains have less gluten naturally.
00:55:02.720
So you know what, I'm going to try this and see this is funny because I've been saying
00:55:07.700
for a long time, I just did not get on the sourdough trend of making it myself.
00:55:18.560
So let's dispel any myths that people might have that you have to be rich, that you have
00:55:23.660
to have all the time in the day just to do all of this.
00:55:27.820
You know, don't have any other responsibilities, you don't work, you don't have kids, that's
00:55:31.820
the only way you can do it, or that you have to live on 14 acres.
00:55:36.180
I'm glad you asked that because everything, even if you're a homesteader who has a huge
00:55:40.940
working homestead, it all comes back to the kitchen.
00:55:43.900
All of us have a kitchen and all of us in our kitchens can make changes.
00:55:48.380
There's a real thing to food synergy and the fact that it really works together.
00:55:53.520
The ingredients work together and different foods work together in a way that makes everything
00:55:57.940
more bioavailable if we're eating real, whole food.
00:56:01.680
And I mean, in Colossians, it says that he holds all things together.
00:56:08.200
And I believe that has a lot to do with atomic structure even.
00:56:11.680
I believe without Christ, we would all be chaos.
00:56:19.520
So you don't have to be rich if you can simply find a way to access real food and just have
00:56:25.820
Not everything, but when you have a choice, like when we were going to the airport and
00:56:30.600
I was looking at my choices, I grabbed a couple apples and I went to the garden and got a couple
00:56:34.960
cucumbers because they have the natural packaging.
00:56:38.060
It's easy to take them and they're real food with real ingredients.
00:56:42.860
So it's just when you're presented a choice, if you can, go with the less processed or
00:56:51.380
And the more of those choices we make every day, the better it is for our bodies because
00:57:01.420
Can you tell us a little bit more about where we can go to find you and to find this information?
00:57:07.780
Because this is just kind of like scratching the surface and people are like, okay, I want
00:57:13.800
And you have a whole blog dedicated to showing people in very simple ways how to start.
00:57:24.160
I named that after Jeremiah 616, S-O-U-L-Y rested.
00:57:28.900
And there I write about not just fresh flour, a lot about fresh flour, but all things about
00:57:35.160
And I have a podcast, the Simple Doesn't Mean Easy podcast, where I talk about this every
00:57:41.280
And please go to solelyrested.com slash fresh, because they are anyone who would like that
00:57:46.640
pantry checklist and my recipes for fresh flour, everything, I'll send it to them.
00:57:53.000
This was such a peaceful and helpful conversation for me.
00:57:59.940
I really encourage everyone to go to your blog.
00:58:03.900
You talk about motherhood and homeschooling and your faith.
00:58:10.660
We need peace and stability and to bring things more into our home in this very chaotic age.