Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 1258 ｜ Raising Entrepreneurs & Real Food： A Christian Homesteader’s Journey ｜ Michelle Visser

00:00:00.000 We're living in a time when lies are really easy and the truth is costly.

00:00:04.280 And nowhere is that more devastating than in the battle for life that rages through this country every day.

00:00:09.520 That's exactly what Natalia faced.

00:00:11.360 Her first reaction to her pregnancy was abortion because that's the lie she was told. 1.00

00:00:16.540 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.

00:00:24.340 Natalia chose life.

00:00:25.480 She was provided with the love, support, and the resources she needed.

00:00:28.780 At Preborn Network Clinics, this happens on average 200 times a day across the country because of support from people like you.

00:00:36.460 Moms who are overwhelmed and pressured suddenly see their child, hear the truth, and realize that they're not alone.

00:00:41.680 That moment of truth costs only $28.

00:00:44.540 That's what it costs to sponsor an ultrasound.

00:00:46.460 An ultrasound doubles a baby's chance at life.

00:00:49.360 This is not the time for silence.

00:00:50.980 Give now, dial pound 250, and say the keyword baby.

00:00:53.600 That's pound 250, baby.

00:00:55.800 Or visit preborn.com slash Allie.

00:00:57.800 That's preborn.com slash Allie. 0.81

00:01:01.020 Bring peace to your home through the food you make.

00:01:05.260 Today we are talking to Michelle Visser.

00:01:08.200 She is the author of the blog, Solely Rested.

00:01:12.080 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.

00:01:23.860 And this is not a conversation just for people who live on a farm.

00:01:28.880 This is for people from all backgrounds, in all different kinds of communities.

00:01:34.360 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.

00:01:46.000 I loved, loved this conversation, and you're going to, too.

00:01:50.680 If you love this podcast, please subscribe on Spotify, on Apple Podcasts, on YouTube, wherever you watch or listen.

00:01:58.440 And we love for you to be a part of these conversations, to discuss, and to share your thoughts.

00:02:03.880 And it just, it means so much to me that you're here.

00:02:06.860 So if you haven't subscribed already, please do so.

00:02:09.780 This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers.

00:02:12.380 Go to GoodRanchers.com.

00:02:13.700 Use code Allie at checkout. 1.00

00:02:14.880 That's GoodRanchers.com, code Allie.

00:02:16.880 Michelle, thanks so much for taking the time to join us.

00:02:29.180 Can you tell everyone who you are and what you do?

00:02:31.280 Of course.

00:02:32.000 First of all, thank you for inviting me.

00:02:33.640 I'm thrilled to be here.

00:02:34.940 Me, too.

00:02:36.240 My name's Michelle Visser.

00:02:37.840 I am, I guess I should say, first and foremost, I am a wife to my high school sweetheart.

00:02:42.520 I met Billy Visser in fourth grade, actually.

00:02:44.740 So what do you call that?

00:02:45.420 Can you call it an elementary?

00:02:46.920 I had a lifelong sweetheart.

00:02:48.240 Yeah, a lifelong sweetheart.

00:02:49.280 Was it love at first sight at nine years old?

00:02:51.560 Actually, it's so funny.

00:02:53.560 Billy was very quiet.

00:02:55.300 And Michelle was very, talk to everybody. 0.77

00:02:57.420 Yes.

00:02:58.000 And I remember my first memory wasn't until seventh grade.

00:03:01.840 That's how quiet he was.

00:03:03.060 Oh, my goodness.

00:03:03.740 And he, like, his pockets were sticking out.

00:03:05.660 And he was a little nervous because somebody was taking a picture.

00:03:07.760 And his pockets are sticking out.

00:03:08.860 And I looked over and I thought, he's such a cute little guy.

00:03:12.480 Yeah.

00:03:13.440 Like, you kind of felt for him a little.

00:03:14.940 I did.

00:03:15.420 And I thought, I wish he would talk to me.

00:03:17.480 Yeah.

00:03:18.220 Okay.

00:03:18.640 Eventually, he did.

00:03:19.460 Yes.

00:03:19.740 I didn't know that we were going to start with a love story.

00:03:22.120 But now I got to hear more about it.

00:03:23.740 Okay.

00:03:24.000 So when did the sparks fly?

00:03:25.920 Well, we were actually in 11th grade.

00:03:28.940 So knew him that long.

00:03:30.400 And it took that long for him to ask me out.

00:03:32.440 It was actually before algebra class.

00:03:34.420 And he was at the door in the hall, not, like, kind of doing this.

00:03:39.180 And I very quickly was asked if I would like to go to the junior prom.

00:03:42.280 And then I had to run back to my seat before Mrs. Allborn yelled at me. 1.00

00:03:45.140 Yes.

00:03:45.520 And you obviously said yes.

00:03:47.300 And then from there, was it like, okay, this is it?

00:03:49.960 Well, kind of.

00:03:51.320 We were a little fickle.

00:03:52.880 We were young on and off.

00:03:54.100 But at seven and a half years, we dated.

00:03:55.960 And then we got married.

00:03:57.200 Looking back, I have no idea why I thought it was good to date seven and a half years.

00:04:00.160 We could have got married so much sooner.

00:04:01.800 Yes.

00:04:02.300 But it all worked out.

00:04:03.620 It did.

00:04:04.280 And how many kids?

00:04:05.540 We have four adult daughters.

00:04:07.240 Okay.

00:04:08.020 And I got to homeschool them for 20 years from kindergarten through 12th grade.

00:04:13.680 So that was such a blessing.

00:04:15.000 All four of them.

00:04:16.000 And that was.

00:04:16.440 And they turned out okay.

00:04:17.680 They turned out okay.

00:04:18.880 There's one here.

00:04:19.960 She looks completely normal to me.

00:04:23.520 And obviously that's sarcasm.

00:04:25.460 I'm a big, big fan of homeschooling.

00:04:28.420 Okay.

00:04:28.860 So that was back in the 90s that you were making the decision to homeschool, correct?

00:04:34.840 Let me think about that.

00:04:36.800 80s, 90s, maybe?

00:04:38.100 She was born in 95.

00:04:41.220 Okay.

00:04:41.840 So yeah.

00:04:42.480 Yeah.

00:04:42.780 So in the 90s when it was maybe less popular, less common than it is today.

00:04:48.800 Right.

00:04:49.140 So tell me how you made the decision to homeschool your kids.

00:04:52.440 Honestly, it wasn't something I had even really heard about until Logan, my oldest daughter,

00:04:57.280 was four, and I was at just a woman's like a luncheon, and we had a speaker, and it was

00:05:02.840 somebody in our church, and I didn't even know, shout out to Judy Brearley, didn't even

00:05:06.980 know she homeschooled or what it was about.

00:05:08.820 And she just got up and started talking about it.

00:05:10.580 And I thought, that's what I want.

00:05:12.940 I want to be with my children.

00:05:14.520 I want to be part of their everyday life and learn with them.

00:05:18.800 And sure enough, Allie, kindergarten on, I was learning with them the whole time.

00:05:22.660 It was such a blessing for me, too.

00:05:24.220 Yes.

00:05:24.920 Okay.

00:05:25.260 Four girls.

00:05:26.880 Tell us, can you give us some advice for those of us who are girl moms?

00:05:30.040 I would say to not put yourself or your daughters in a box, because we didn't have a whole lot

00:05:39.800 of tea parties.

00:05:40.760 We didn't do a whole lot of nails.

00:05:42.620 It wasn't a typical, people here, I have four girls, and they think, oh, all you did

00:05:45.440 was tea parties and paint your nails.

00:05:47.020 And that's not what it was.

00:05:48.120 Each girl is very unique and different.

00:05:50.260 And none of them really were girly girls.

00:05:52.280 But the biggest advice I would give, honestly, is to pray for their future spouse from the

00:05:59.160 moment your child is born.

00:06:00.680 Especially, I feel like with a girl, it's more important.

00:06:03.640 I don't have a son, so maybe I'm not speaking.

00:06:06.180 Maybe I'm speaking out of term.

00:06:07.380 But I just feel like with a girl, it's so important for her to have a godly leader of

00:06:12.340 her home.

00:06:12.800 And that starts when they're young, for God to be training them up that way.

00:06:17.020 So the first time that I realized I had my first son-in-law, I started crying and I

00:06:21.160 hugged Alex, I've been praying for you for so long.

00:06:24.300 You know, when it finally hit me, this is who I've been praying for.

00:06:26.760 Yes, without even knowing his name.

00:06:30.040 That's amazing.

00:06:31.060 So you're here to talk about homesteading, but I guess that homeschooling and homesteading

00:06:36.920 are intertwined, especially with you raising four girls in your home.

00:06:41.100 So before we get into Brad and all of the things that you know about Brad, let's talk

00:06:47.140 about maybe how you did that.

00:06:49.200 How did you make sure that the keeping of the home and your home education of your kids

00:06:56.440 were interconnected?

00:07:00.960 I would say everything comes back to the home.

00:07:06.340 And I mean, for me, I was so blessed to find a Bible study when the girls were young that

00:07:11.680 all of us could be involved in at the same time.

00:07:14.220 And even when they were very young, they were studying the same passages at their level.

00:07:17.880 So all week long, you know, it would just come up because there was a daily lesson for all

00:07:23.120 of us, not the really little ones, but when they got old enough to do a daily lesson.

00:07:26.560 So all week long, it would just come up in our everyday conversation.

00:07:29.840 And it was just a natural part of our education.

00:07:33.860 I actually didn't even do like a Bible curriculum because the curriculums I did choose were Christian

00:07:38.940 based. And then I had this Bible study that we would talk about throughout the week.

00:07:43.640 So what better curriculum than to talk about God's word on a everyday basis?

00:07:47.940 Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

00:07:49.780 And when did you start homesteading?

00:07:53.180 Was that in the very, very beginning?

00:07:55.500 It's funny because I still to this day, I don't say to somebody, hi, I'm a homesteader.

00:08:00.900 It's not a term I use for myself.

00:08:04.720 And we're, to be honest, we were accidental homesteaders.

00:08:07.800 Okay.

00:08:08.100 Because God called our family to move from the Mid-Atlantic area.

00:08:13.980 We were about 30 minutes outside of Philly in a very busy, chaotic suburb.

00:08:19.220 And he called us to move to New England.

00:08:22.580 We didn't know why.

00:08:24.180 We didn't understand what was going on.

00:08:26.340 And it took quite a few years to get there with a lot of open and closed doors and really

00:08:31.060 just following God's direction in every way we could with scripture and with godly leadership

00:08:35.420 and with prayer.

00:08:37.180 And we just knew for sure we were supposed to, we knew he had jobs prepared for us ahead

00:08:42.740 of us in New England.

00:08:44.140 And we just were supposed to get there at the right time.

00:08:46.340 Okay.

00:08:46.800 So you moved without knowing what those jobs were.

00:08:49.240 We did.

00:08:49.740 We really did.

00:08:50.660 Which looking back sounds crazy because Bill and I both are very plan everything out to

00:08:54.540 a T kind of people.

00:08:55.560 And that wasn't the way God wanted us to do this.

00:08:58.280 We bought the house we did.

00:08:59.780 Somebody just asked me last week about, wow, they had never been to our home and they stepped

00:09:04.300 in and said, wow, no wonder you wanted to buy this home.

00:09:07.280 And I'm like, oh, no, if you knew what it looked like, like it wasn't something I ever

00:09:11.900 would have been drawn to.

00:09:12.640 And she said, well, what led you to buy this home?

00:09:14.980 Honestly, looking back, the Holy Spirit.

00:09:16.880 That's all I can say because he put the desire in Bill and my hearts for this home.

00:09:22.360 And we didn't know at the time it had, we knew it had 14 acres, but we didn't know what

00:09:27.120 that was going to mean to us.

00:09:28.260 We had no clue.

00:09:29.320 God did.

00:09:30.980 And it's uphill, covered in trees.

00:09:33.440 We had no idea what it was like to make, to do sugar making.

00:09:37.760 Yeah.

00:09:37.900 But here we moved into a sugar bush and we started tapping trees.

00:09:41.780 That was the first, one of the first things God called us to do.

00:09:43.880 Okay.

00:09:43.940 A lot of people listening have no idea what you're talking about.

00:09:46.220 Oh, really?

00:09:46.500 Yes.

00:09:46.920 What's a sugar bush and what is tapping trees for sugar?

00:09:49.940 Sugar bush just means a bunch of trees that are tappable.

00:09:52.180 It's that simple.

00:09:53.560 And you tap in the early spring, late winter, early spring, the tree becomes, it leaves its

00:10:01.600 dormant state and it starts becoming alive for the spring and sending its sap to the leaves

00:10:06.680 and everything that needs to get going for the spring.

00:10:08.820 As it does that, you have a window.

00:10:10.700 For us in New England, it's about a six week, maybe eight week window that there's a lot of

00:10:15.180 sap moving and you can collect it relatively easily just from the pressure of the tree and

00:10:20.260 the sap moving.

00:10:20.880 Well, God is so good that he gave us from the beginning of time, delicious, sweet sugar.

00:10:29.260 All we had to do was literally tap into it because the tree has 2.5% sugar in the sap.

00:10:36.120 So if you have patience and a way to boil it down and get it down to 66%, then you have

00:10:40.800 maple syrup.

00:10:41.380 And it's my absolute favorite sweetener in the world.

00:10:45.160 Of course.

00:10:46.120 Quick pause to tell you about our first sponsor for the day.

00:10:53.220 It's Carly Jean Los Angeles.

00:10:54.740 This cute brown top is from CJLA.

00:10:56.900 I love CJLA stuff.

00:10:58.280 They've got some especially amazing items right now.

00:11:01.900 You guys know that CJLA makes the best jeans. 0.87

00:11:05.640 Seriously, if you don't have any denim from CJLA, you are missing out.

00:11:09.100 It fits so well, so comfortable, so many good styles.

00:11:12.220 No matter what style you're looking for, you can find it at CJLA.

00:11:15.620 I love that they have a lot of give, but they don't stretch out so that they lose shape throughout

00:11:19.880 the day.

00:11:20.280 That's so hard to find.

00:11:21.880 And that's one thing that I love from them.

00:11:23.800 But really, I love all of their items.

00:11:25.880 I've been wearing CJLA for such a long time.

00:11:28.560 And the great thing about their clothes, it's a capsule clothing company.

00:11:31.780 So you get a few really quality pieces and you mix and match.

00:11:35.340 And those can last you all year.

00:11:37.720 They can last you through multiple seasons of life, multiple seasons of the year.

00:11:42.060 And because they're so timeless, something that you buy today, you can still wear five

00:11:46.160 years from now.

00:11:47.060 So you're not wasting your money on trendy things that you're just going to give away

00:11:50.660 next season.

00:11:51.680 Plus, this is another family-owned Christian company that is seeking to glorify God in all

00:11:57.660 they do.

00:11:58.380 You saw Carly at Share the Errors if you were there.

00:12:00.760 So you know that they're the real deal.

00:12:02.680 Go to CarlyJeanLosAngeles.com.

00:12:04.420 Use code AllieB for 20% off your order.

00:12:06.960 That's CarlyJeanLosAngeles.com, code AllieB.

00:12:09.860 And before we get back to that conversation, I want to remind you that Share the Errors is

00:12:13.740 available for all Blaze TV subscribers right now.

00:12:16.860 It premiered on Wednesday, but you can watch it at any time.

00:12:19.780 Not only this year's, but last year's.

00:12:21.600 And all you have to do is subscribe.

00:12:22.860 BlazeTV.com slash Allie.

00:12:24.360 You'll get $40 off.

00:12:25.940 I believe it's $40 on the website.

00:12:29.080 If you use my link, you could subscribe.

00:12:31.620 And then you can watch all subscriber-exclusive content, including Share the Errors.

00:12:35.560 You will love it.

00:12:36.600 If you're a related gal who missed it, or maybe you went and you want to watch it again

00:12:40.500 and take notes, make sure that you subscribe.

00:12:42.500 And you watch Share the Errors from last year and this year.

00:12:47.120 All right.

00:12:47.480 Back to our conversation.

00:12:52.920 Okay.

00:12:53.600 So you moved to this place, Sugarbush.

00:12:56.880 And neither you nor your husband were raised in a farming community or rural community?

00:13:03.620 Correct.

00:13:04.040 I did have the background from my childhood.

00:13:07.440 Both of my parents were from rural families that farmed.

00:13:13.580 My mom lived in the panhandle of West Virginia, and my dad lived in a little teeny piece of

00:13:17.880 Maryland that's tucked into the panhandle.

00:13:20.380 I used to say they both are from West Virginia, but dad would always correct me.

00:13:23.260 I was from Maryland.

00:13:24.160 Yeah.

00:13:24.380 But they both were actually one of 10 kids.

00:13:27.800 Wow.

00:13:28.160 True story.

00:13:29.180 I think I was about seven or eight years old when I realized every parent isn't one of 10 children.

00:13:35.580 Like, I really thought that was just a given with a parent.

00:13:38.160 Yeah.

00:13:39.060 Yeah.

00:13:39.380 So they had a lot of mouths to feed, and they did it all off of the land, both of these families.

00:13:43.920 And so I have a rich heritage in that.

00:13:46.160 And I would go to Butchering Day on my grandparents' farm.

00:13:49.240 Looking back, to think that like a six-year-old and a 10-year-old loved it.

00:13:53.260 But I did.

00:13:53.800 I loved it.

00:13:54.680 I mean, it was so much fun.

00:13:55.900 And you could feel the energy and the excitement.

00:13:57.820 And I think it's partially because we were thankful for what God had given us.

00:14:02.640 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.

00:14:08.860 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.

00:14:19.040 Lobiliology.

00:14:19.400 Loving it.

00:14:20.120 Yeah.

00:14:20.500 So good.

00:14:21.160 I did not know it would be so good.

00:14:22.860 I wasn't expecting it to be so good.

00:14:24.260 But for me, it's so much actually my family from the hills of West Virginia.

00:14:30.440 And I didn't know there was a hillbilly—I didn't know it was called the Hillbilly Highway.

00:14:33.600 J.D. taught me that.

00:14:34.420 And literally, the industrial age of factories up north brought a lot of true hillbillies from the backwoods up to modern day.

00:14:48.560 I mean, that's literally what my parents did.

00:14:50.040 They left the backwoods.

00:14:51.040 My grandmother was still using a wood stove to cook the meals on when my mom moved out. 0.78

00:14:56.380 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?

00:15:04.060 Yeah.

00:15:04.340 So, yes, we had the background, but not the personal hands-on knowledge.

00:15:09.000 Yes.

00:15:09.460 It's not like you were raised butchering.

00:15:13.260 Correct.

00:15:13.620 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.

00:15:22.220 Yeah.

00:15:22.340 So, that's why you call yourself an accidental homesteader.

00:15:26.580 Very much.

00:15:26.880 So, after you moved into the home, what did life look like?

00:15:31.700 Well, we still lived life as normal at that point.

00:15:34.740 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.

00:15:44.020 And we, that following spring, did bring home our first chickens soon after we got ducks and meat rabbits.

00:15:49.860 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.

00:16:01.520 Like I said, I knew that from my childhood, but it wasn't ever part of my everyday life.

00:16:06.400 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.

00:16:15.600 And maybe I could be doing more to have more real food.

00:16:18.240 And those eggs were so different than the eggs you buy at the store.

00:16:20.720 So, Bill had already tapped the first trees.

00:16:23.860 He did that our first winter.

00:16:24.860 We moved in in late spring.

00:16:27.000 He tapped trees that winter.

00:16:28.580 We got chickens right after that.

00:16:30.280 And the idea that we could make our own sugar was mind-boggling to me.

00:16:35.860 And how did y'all learn how to do that?

00:16:37.440 Nowadays, you can watch a YouTube video.

00:16:39.520 Yeah.

00:16:39.920 Or Grok will tell you.

00:16:41.300 So, did you buy a book?

00:16:43.060 Did neighbors tell you?

00:16:43.780 There were YouTube videos.

00:16:44.480 It was only 11 years ago.

00:16:45.720 So, there were YouTube videos.

00:16:47.620 Oh, okay.

00:16:48.320 So, this is not.

00:16:50.100 I think I just want to clarify the timeline.

00:16:52.360 This was not before you had kids.

00:16:54.100 That's what I was imagining.

00:16:55.240 And it's my fault.

00:16:56.120 I didn't explain that correctly.

00:16:57.180 This was not the 90s.

00:16:58.840 No.

00:16:59.180 This was just.

00:16:59.860 We moved in 2013, I believe.

00:17:02.720 Okay.

00:17:03.000 So, the homesteading while you were raising your kids was not really something you were doing.

00:17:07.360 You were homeschooling before you were homesteading.

00:17:09.740 Got it.

00:17:10.100 Correct.

00:17:10.540 Okay.

00:17:10.780 So, then about 12, you know, 14 years ago, it sounds like that's when you moved to the

00:17:18.960 sugar bush.

00:17:19.600 11 years ago.

00:17:20.320 Yeah.

00:17:20.380 Okay.

00:17:20.940 Okay.

00:17:21.480 Got it.

00:17:21.840 Now, I have a better kind of understanding.

00:17:24.160 So, there were more online resources and things like that that you could learn from.

00:17:28.280 But there was no book.

00:17:29.760 And there were very few blog posts.

00:17:31.700 And they weren't detailed.

00:17:32.580 So, I actually had already started a blog because when we first moved, I just was so

00:17:37.960 filled with thankfulness with so many things that I, you know, when you just follow God's

00:17:42.780 direction, not sure where it's going to lead, but you're confident you're doing the right

00:17:45.920 thing and you just need to go, just step out in faith.

00:17:48.860 When you're surrounded with blessings, it's overwhelming, like, because you didn't know

00:17:53.540 what you were stepping into.

00:17:54.640 And to see, oh, God, this wasn't, this was also for me.

00:17:58.740 It wasn't for whatever job you have for me to do, but it also was for me.

00:18:02.740 Like, this is good for my soul.

00:18:04.500 This is a real blessing.

00:18:06.000 So, I was putting it on social media.

00:18:07.700 Now, I went to Facebook and every day I'm putting, and my daughters very kindly said,

00:18:11.200 Mom, come off of Facebook a little bit.

00:18:13.740 Let's help you start a blog.

00:18:15.080 So, that's why I started my blog.

00:18:16.620 Yeah.

00:18:16.940 And I named it Sully Rested, S-O-U-L-Y Rested, from Jeremiah 616, which says, stand at the

00:18:25.060 crossroads and look.

00:18:26.240 Look for the ancient past, ask for the good way, and walk in it, and you will find rest

00:18:31.820 for your soul.

00:18:34.140 So, God calls us to jobs and to work, whatever he's prepared for us.

00:18:39.820 And it's not usually easy.

00:18:41.180 In fact, sometimes it's really, really hard, but he does promise us rest for our soul.

00:18:45.700 It's not a rest of sit back and enjoy the easy life and retire now, but it's a rest for

00:18:50.820 our soul, and that's enough.

00:18:53.180 Yeah.

00:18:53.440 Okay, so tell me, what else you learned?

00:18:56.520 Because it started with the sugar and with the chickens and with the rabbits, but then

00:19:00.840 you learned more and more about making your own food.

00:19:03.600 So, what did that journey look like?

00:19:05.200 Well, it expanded outside with, you know, dairy cows, and we became pig farmers.

00:19:10.100 And I mean, things I would have never expected, but I'm a sugar maker and a pig farmer.

00:19:13.200 Like, only God would have pulled little Michelle Visser out of the suburbs and did that. 1.00

00:19:17.980 Yeah.

00:19:18.700 But, and inside, things really started changing in our kitchen and on our table, because the

00:19:25.440 more I realized the goodness of real food, the more I started looking at the ingredients,

00:19:31.280 and I started realizing I had been a junk food junkie my whole life, and I had been eating

00:19:35.840 processed food my whole life.

00:19:37.120 My mom knew how to cook from scratch beautifully, but were attracted to convenience. 1.00

00:19:42.200 And if she had the convenience of a box mac and cheese, heck, why not go with that, especially

00:19:46.680 because she was working full time.

00:19:48.840 And my dad knew how to organically garden.

00:19:52.620 And he learned from his grandfather in the hills of Maryland, but he discovered chemicals and

00:19:58.940 herbicides and pesticides, and that's how he gardened when I was growing up.

00:20:03.080 So, it was a whole new thing to garden on my own in this new place organically and to

00:20:08.440 raise food to put on my table that was organic.

00:20:10.660 I had to learn it all, because dad had always just used his pesticides.

00:20:15.600 I knew those well.

00:20:16.320 Um, but, and then I started looking at the ingredients of the processed food, and I started

00:20:21.880 realizing, well, instead of using this little pack of taco seasoning, I could make my own

00:20:26.200 taco seasoning.

00:20:26.880 And instead of buying this ice cream that has, like, antifreeze as one of its ingredients,

00:20:30.860 I could make my own ice cream.

00:20:32.360 So, little by little, it took, I would always recommend to people never to just think you're

00:20:37.120 going to do it all, to just jump in and throw away all the processed food and do all real

00:20:40.580 food.

00:20:40.840 I'm still not there after 10 or 11 years now.

00:20:43.200 But, step by step, one thing at a time, we started improving our pantry and our kitchen

00:20:49.500 table, and it felt really good.

00:20:51.280 So, I just kept going.

00:20:52.840 What differences did you see in your own body and in the health of your family when you started

00:20:57.440 making those changes?

00:20:58.820 A lot, actually.

00:21:00.660 Nothing, you know, I don't want, I don't like it when people sit back and say, well, I did

00:21:05.060 this one thing and I saw this result, because it's all so intertwined.

00:21:08.120 But, just so much more energy and just zest for life and a really good feeling about food

00:21:15.300 that I had never had before, because it doesn't feel good to open up a cardboard box and open

00:21:19.580 a little packet of something and mix it together.

00:21:21.740 It just doesn't give you the satisfaction and the creativity that real food can give you.

00:21:27.160 So, I started feeling much better in that way.

00:21:29.420 Just more energy, sleeping better, just really good overall.

00:21:33.940 Next sponsor is Hillsdale.

00:21:41.600 Y'all, we know that the university system in the United States, it is so captured by progressive

00:21:45.920 ideology.

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

00:21:56.860 of how hostile this environment is to Christians and conservatives.

00:22:01.320 You should check out Hillsdale.

00:22:02.620 Hillsdale actually cares about our Christian values, cares about the Constitution, and

00:22:07.620 you need to know about where we get our values, why this country is so great.

00:22:12.900 Like, what did the founders actually believe?

00:22:15.480 What did they write?

00:22:16.780 You need to take their courses that will explain that.

00:22:19.700 For example, one of their courses is about the Federalist Papers.

00:22:24.140 You will walk through the key ideas behind our founding documents, 10 lectures, each around

00:22:30.060 30 minutes, and it's totally free, and it's completely self-paced.

00:22:34.380 They have 40 free courses that they offer on everything from C.S. Lewis to the Constitution

00:22:40.820 to Ancient Rome.

00:22:42.560 If you want to get smarter, you can do that at any time in your life, and you, again, can

00:22:47.240 go at your own pace totally for free.

00:22:49.580 What a good deal.

00:22:50.500 Go to hillsdale.edu slash relatable to enroll.

00:22:53.620 There's no cost.

00:22:54.460 It's easy to get started.

00:22:55.860 That's hillsdale.edu slash relatable.

00:23:03.220 You always hear sometimes when people have some kind of like chronic illness that when

00:23:09.800 they start making their own food and they start taking out the processed stuff, that a lot

00:23:14.580 of times those symptoms will alleviate.

00:23:16.480 Like you said, it's not just one quick fix.

00:23:18.640 But, you know, a lot of the things that people in America struggle with today when it comes

00:23:23.520 to our gut, when it comes to our skin, a lot of the things that start with our digestion,

00:23:27.920 they can be alleviated or helped a lot by what we do in the kitchen.

00:23:34.340 For sure.

00:23:35.040 And so how did you kind of adjust to the lack of convenience of making your own taco seasoning?

00:23:42.040 Because a lot of people might be thinking, that sounds awesome.

00:23:46.020 I would love that.

00:23:47.420 But I don't have time to make my own ranch dressing and taco seasoning and all of that.

00:23:52.760 So how do you organize your time and adjust to putting all the effort into that?

00:23:59.980 There's so many things I could tell you.

00:24:01.720 I would say, first of all, to never be a purist because you will make yourself actually more

00:24:07.020 unhealthy than striving to eat all pure, real food.

00:24:10.560 And so little steps at a time and bulk, everything in bulk.

00:24:15.420 I mean, if I make taco seasoning, I'm not making it just for dinner.

00:24:18.080 I'm making it to last me for a year.

00:24:19.980 I'm mixing it up and putting it in my pantry.

00:24:22.120 Also be organized.

00:24:23.660 I actually started a pantry checklist for myself years and years ago.

00:24:27.820 And I decided, oh, this is probably something my followers would like.

00:24:30.900 So I put it out there.

00:24:31.800 To this day, it's still my number one requested thing.

00:24:34.180 People are always grabbing my pantry checklist because I'm always changing and adding to it.

00:24:38.360 But stay organized and have a list of what you order and know what's running low so you

00:24:43.980 know what to have on hand.

00:24:46.060 And really stick to things that your family, like people will often ask me, where do I

00:24:50.720 start?

00:24:50.960 What's the one thing I should start with?

00:24:52.320 I can't answer that.

00:24:53.500 It's different for each one of us.

00:24:55.800 For me, one of the very first things that I changed in our kitchen was our tea we were

00:25:00.400 drinking because we have a lot of iced tea, sweet iced tea drinkers.

00:25:04.100 And I was making my own kombucha talking about the gut health.

00:25:06.640 I wanted to improve my gut health.

00:25:08.160 So I started making kombucha and I realized I'm feeding it with bleached, processed bags

00:25:15.360 of tea.

00:25:16.280 Like that doesn't seem right.

00:25:17.760 So I started kind of researching that a little.

00:25:20.040 And then I found out that the staples on the tea bags that I was putting in our compost

00:25:25.400 pile for our gardens was killing the worms and hurting our compost because when the worms 0.57

00:25:30.800 eat the staples, they die.

00:25:32.080 So then I started cutting off my staples and then I realized, well, wait, I'm still like

00:25:36.340 I still am getting the tea out of this bleached bag.

00:25:38.340 It's been sitting in that for all this time.

00:25:40.360 And then I started researching tea and it turns out it's one of the most heavily unregulated

00:25:44.580 yet heavily sprayed with pesticide food or drink that you can eat.

00:25:50.540 Oh, no.

00:25:51.120 I drink tea probably every night.

00:25:52.600 I'm in the South.

00:25:53.360 That's right.

00:25:53.740 I just remembered.

00:25:54.440 Oh, no.

00:25:54.640 Yeah.

00:25:54.960 Well, it's different.

00:25:55.860 I don't I actually don't really like iced tea that much, but like tea at night.

00:26:01.080 Yeah.

00:26:01.200 Like a cup of warm tea.

00:26:02.480 Yeah.

00:26:03.000 That's my love language.

00:26:04.220 I love it.

00:26:04.520 And, you know, it's the organic kind and all of that.

00:26:07.100 OK.

00:26:07.460 Well, if you're drinking organic tea, then you don't have to worry about the pesticides.

00:26:10.320 So but even the bleached the bag bleached bags and it's just so maybe loose leaf tea

00:26:15.260 is the way to go.

00:26:16.300 I that's what I recommend.

00:26:17.680 It also has much better flavor.

00:26:19.040 And then you're not getting the little tannins and pieces of leaves off the floor, which is

00:26:23.180 what they do when they put the tea in the tea bags.

00:26:24.920 You're getting the leaves, the bigger, uncrushed leaves.

00:26:28.020 So you're just getting a better taste all around.

00:26:29.700 OK.

00:26:30.540 OK.

00:26:30.920 So you started making your own kombucha when you realized, OK, all of these different components

00:26:36.020 of the, I guess, processed tea that you were buying are not really good for you.

00:26:41.040 Yeah.

00:26:41.600 So I discovered two different tea blend or two different tea leaves that I could combine

00:26:47.680 to taste a lot like Bill's Lipton.

00:26:49.440 And I decided to just try it.

00:26:51.560 And he didn't even notice it wasn't Lipton.

00:26:53.300 So I realized, OK, I'm on to something.

00:26:55.180 I really can make homemade that my family is going to like instead of the processed stuff.

00:27:00.940 So I just went on a roll from there.

00:27:03.620 And I started writing all about it on the blog and sharing all the recipes.

00:27:07.200 And then I realized that I needed to look at my flour because, I mean, this is like the

00:27:14.600 number one ingredient that we all use in our kitchen.

00:27:17.520 We all use flour.

00:27:19.160 And I was shocked when I started looking.

00:27:22.980 I mean, honestly, I would say flour today, if you're going to your store and you're buying

00:27:26.500 a bag of enriched bleach flour off the store shelf, it's a lie.

00:27:30.740 It's actually, they're lying to us because it's no longer what it should be.

00:27:37.280 Originally, wheat berries were a valuable commodity from all of time they had.

00:27:42.520 And we have records from the Fertile Crescent that they had grain banks and they had cuneiform

00:27:47.480 tablets that we can still look at today that show us they had pretty much a banking system

00:27:52.860 of wheat back in the Fertile Crescent.

00:27:55.040 It was almost like our current modern day checking system that they could exchange wheat

00:27:59.520 to others and send it to them like we write a check.

00:28:03.920 And then, you know, in medieval times, the feudal lords controlled the grain mills.

00:28:08.840 And they, the peasants were not allowed to have any kind of a even crude elementary mill.

00:28:13.700 It simply was illegal because they had to go to the Lord's mill and pay him.

00:28:18.920 They would pay him with a portion of their wheat.

00:28:20.900 And it was called actually a banality.

00:28:23.320 We still have the word banal in our words today, which means common.

00:28:27.820 And banality was for the common, the communal mill that they were paying the fee.

00:28:32.500 Um, and then in, in Italy during the middle ages, a wheat merchant would set up a bench

00:28:41.000 in the market to do their wheat dealings.

00:28:45.220 And it's, it's an Italian banca.

00:28:48.380 And if the wheat merchant ever went out of business, then they would actually break the

00:28:53.080 bench.

00:28:53.640 And the word for that is something like rapta.

00:28:56.200 If you put it together, banca, rapta, it's where we get our word bankrupt.

00:28:59.200 And we get our word bank from that original time in middle ages where they were trading

00:29:03.240 and dealing in wheat because it was the number one commodity.

00:29:06.680 It was so important.

00:29:08.420 Um, and then even in 1914, modern time, when we set up our federal reserve banks, one of

00:29:14.180 them was set up in Minneapolis because it was a center of wheat trade and they wanted to be

00:29:17.520 able to regulate it because it's an important trade.

00:29:20.240 So it's always been valuable.

00:29:21.740 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

00:29:30.680 God's intention.

00:29:31.560 I mean, Jesus himself said, I am the bread of life.

00:29:34.420 There's great value in bread.

00:29:36.140 There's great value in the wheat berry.

00:29:38.060 And unfortunately in modern day, we've, we've stripped it of that.

00:29:46.580 Next sponsor is Good Ranchers.

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,

00:30:00.220 right?

00:30:00.420 You want to support American farms and ranches.

00:30:02.760 They've been supporting us for so long.

00:30:04.860 We need to give back and support them.

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

00:30:14.680 an American farmer ranch.

00:30:15.960 It's really high quality.

00:30:17.160 It's really good.

00:30:18.440 This is a way to make sure that you're getting your protein, that you're supporting this American

00:30:21.780 industry makes your life easier.

00:30:23.600 You never have to grocery shop for meat again.

00:30:26.020 Just get sent on dry ice to your front door.

00:30:28.440 We love it.

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.

00:30:34.140 You can even rely on them for Thanksgiving.

00:30:35.980 Of course, it's an American holiday.

00:30:37.260 You should support the American meat industry.

00:30:40.220 Go to GoodRanchers.com slash Allie.

00:30:42.480 Use code Allie for $40 off. 0.93

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. 0.73

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.

00:31:13.700 Can we trust that?

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

00:31:24.400 the flour.

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.

00:31:33.860 And that was taking the whole wheat berry.

00:31:35.720 So I have to tell you quickly what a wheat berry is for this to make sense.

00:31:40.200 A wheat berry has three parts.

00:31:42.060 There's the outside edge, which is the bran.

00:31:45.220 It makes up about 15% of the wheat berry.

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.

00:31:56.000 So it is loaded with nutrients.

00:31:59.120 Do you ever get sprouts at the grocery store or ever grow sprouts?

00:32:02.620 My mom does.

00:32:03.620 Yeah?

00:32:03.960 Yes.

00:32:04.460 You should eat some.

00:32:05.140 I've never done it.

00:32:05.820 I've never done it.

00:32:06.540 They're delicious.

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.

00:32:11.960 And what's so good for you about them?

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.

00:32:33.040 Okay.

00:32:33.280 It's loaded with good stuff.

00:32:35.340 Around it, which is like 80% of your wheat berry, is the endosperm.

00:32:39.240 And that's this white starch.

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

00:32:50.060 growing.

00:32:50.520 Okay.

00:32:50.800 Gotcha.

00:32:51.400 So it's a lot of starch and a little bit of protein.

00:32:54.280 Okay.

00:32:54.420 Well, in the way it used to be done, you would grind that whole wheat berry into flour and

00:33:01.120 everything was mixed together.

00:33:03.100 They would sift out some of the bram because the bram is harder and you're not going to

00:33:07.100 get a nice soft flour with it.

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.

00:33:27.400 Yeah.

00:33:27.520 How can we make more of this for cheaper?

00:33:29.960 Exactly.

00:33:30.560 Exactly.

00:33:31.480 And he wasn't the person to actually invent the idea, but he was the first one business

00:33:36.520 savvy enough to go get a patent for it.

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

00:34:05.080 the bram, it's a sharp, jagged thing.

00:34:08.200 Even if it's like microscopic level, it's going to be sharp.

00:34:11.300 It's a hard outer coating.

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

00:34:23.100 bit of bran in it.

00:34:23.940 So everybody went crazy over this white flour because they could make such wonderful, airy

00:34:29.340 pastries and cakes and everything.

00:34:31.980 And it became extremely popular.

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.

00:34:47.220 This is like early 1900s.

00:34:49.060 Correct.

00:34:49.860 It was actually 1904 that the first case of pellagra was noted in the U.S.

00:34:56.860 And it came to a portion.

00:34:59.040 It began to begin epidemic.

00:35:00.560 It became very widespread.

00:35:02.440 And it was a really bad disease.

00:35:04.280 People would get these red rashes that would turn into like very leathery skin that was

00:35:10.200 very hurt, like harmful, hurt, itchy.

00:35:13.060 But then they'd get boils.

00:35:14.720 And they thought it was leprosy.

00:35:16.320 It was that bad.

00:35:17.120 And they'd get it on their faces.

00:35:18.880 And they thought it was contagious.

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.

00:35:27.800 It was really, really bad.

00:35:29.560 And we didn't understand what was causing it.

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

00:35:51.220 to be contagious.

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.

00:36:13.480 Vitamin B3 was missing in their diet.

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

00:36:26.800 been taken away.

00:36:28.160 So our flour no longer had these nutrients.

00:36:31.100 In fact, literally, the flour had no nutrients, just starch and protein.

00:36:35.280 So that's why they put the niacin back in.

00:36:37.260 Exactly.

00:36:37.860 And you see that in the ingredients on the back of bread packages now.

00:36:41.420 Exactly.

00:36:41.980 In 1940-something, early 40s, the government-

00:36:44.840 So it took a while.

00:36:45.080 It did.

00:36:45.860 I mean, that's a long time, from 1880 to 1940, for us to be malnourished and not understand

00:36:50.580 why.

00:36:51.880 It's very sad.

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

00:37:16.220 malnourished as a nation.

00:37:17.660 Yeah.

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.

00:37:28.580 Wow.

00:37:29.040 Yeah.

00:37:29.520 And what they put back was synthetic.

00:37:31.620 Right.

00:37:31.800 So it's different.

00:37:32.520 Our body, it's not as bioavailable to our body.

00:37:35.360 Maybe okay in a crisis.

00:37:37.480 Sure.

00:37:37.880 But not ideal.

00:37:38.860 Correct.

00:37:39.680 Okay.

00:37:40.020 So what happened after that?

00:37:41.440 Then in 1998, the government realized if they added folic acid to the flour, that that

00:37:46.720 might help with birth defects.

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

00:37:58.180 big, big difference.

00:37:59.100 We saw a decrease in birth defects.

00:38:01.240 But what they were adding back in was folic acid.

00:38:04.740 Not folate.

00:38:05.640 Exactly.

00:38:06.200 Not folate.

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

00:38:17.460 cancer eventually.

00:38:19.080 And the folic acid they were adding back in, first of all, was synthetic, so not as bioavailable,

00:38:25.160 but shelf stable.

00:38:26.200 It has to be shelf stable.

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

00:39:02.440 to stay on the shelf.

00:39:03.880 But we also had to do quite a big educational campaign because women couldn't just be using 1.00

00:39:10.940 the flour.

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 1.00

00:39:21.360 400 micrograms of folic acid.

00:39:24.600 So she still needed education because she needed to know, okay, you need to eat nuts and eggs 0.99

00:39:29.800 and leafy greens.

00:39:31.100 You need to watch your diet and eat better.

00:39:33.380 So in the 90s, there was a widespread education of pregnant women, which is fantastic and great

00:39:38.540 that they were learning to eat better.

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.

00:39:58.720 Every cell is different.

00:39:59.720 It depends on the state of the cell.

00:40:01.640 But Tufts University did a study.

00:40:03.780 For over 20 years, they followed the cancer.

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

00:40:21.360 in colon and rectal cancer.

00:40:24.740 And then in 1998, which is when we added the folic acid, suddenly that changed and it went

00:40:31.020 on the incline.

00:40:31.960 It seems to be going up right now too.

00:40:34.580 Yeah.

00:40:34.760 I don't know.

00:40:35.360 I just, and that's just anecdotal, but I've just heard of a lot of young people over the

00:40:39.560 past few years getting colorectal cancer.

00:40:42.320 Yeah.

00:40:42.460 Next sponsor is Jace Medical.

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.

00:40:54.840 And we don't know.

00:40:55.840 We can't predict the future.

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

00:41:14.760 and your family rely on on a daily basis.

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.

00:41:25.120 So get an emergency stash.

00:41:26.800 You can get a Jace case.

00:41:27.900 That's an emergency stash of antibiotics.

00:41:30.240 You can also get Jace daily case, which is a year long supply of the prescriptions that

00:41:34.040 you and your family rely on.

00:41:35.200 This is a way to love your family well, to serve your family well, and just to be prepared

00:41:39.260 should anything happen.

00:41:40.960 Go to Jace.com, use code Allie at checkout for a discount.

00:41:45.200 That is Jace, J-A-S-E dot com, code Allie.

00:41:53.960 And you know what else we hear a lot of?

00:41:55.860 We hear a lot about gluten these days, right?

00:41:57.800 And gluten is an evil villain.

00:41:59.840 That's what I want to ask you about.

00:42:01.580 So we can talk about that.

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

00:42:19.560 they draw your blood and all of that.

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.

00:42:29.780 And so I cut gluten out.

00:42:31.660 I do think it's helped.

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.

00:42:48.620 Absolutely, yes.

00:42:51.520 In fact, talking about other countries, back when we were adding into our flour and enriching

00:42:55.880 it, other countries didn't do that.

00:42:58.040 In fact, in Italy, they had a pellagra outbreak around the same time that we were dealing with

00:43:03.360 it here.

00:43:03.820 But they responded completely different.

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.

00:43:23.400 Just here's the ovens. 0.99

00:43:24.380 How did they know?

00:43:26.260 They knew that at that point, they knew that it was related to folate and they knew that

00:43:30.880 it was dietary.

00:43:31.900 And they said, what can we do?

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.

00:43:41.140 And they encouraged them to get meat rabbits.

00:43:45.700 This was back 1920s or 30s, probably.

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

00:43:56.920 meals.

00:43:57.220 And they set up a program where the children could be well-nourished because they knew it

00:44:01.300 was coming down to nutrition.

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

00:44:14.380 real food approaches to it.

00:44:16.640 And they also wiped out pellagra as we did.

00:44:19.660 So both approaches worked.

00:44:21.260 Okay.

00:44:21.580 So do you think gluten is unfairly demonized?

00:44:25.000 And if so, why?

00:44:26.120 I think it is.

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

00:44:59.560 food, we are losing some nutrition.

00:45:02.640 And he figured out how to breed wheat so it grew very short because that would allow the

00:45:08.760 plant itself to have more wheat on each stock.

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

00:45:28.180 and get rid of it.

00:45:29.300 Oh, by the way, all those things that they took out, even back in 1880, they figured out

00:45:32.840 they didn't waste it.

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.

00:45:41.280 Yeah.

00:45:41.620 Yeah.

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

00:45:54.500 expense.

00:45:54.920 So there's definitely money involved in the whole story is what I'm saying.

00:45:58.260 Okay.

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

00:46:06.220 explain it correctly.

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

00:46:41.080 endosperm.

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.

00:47:04.860 So we now have wheat that has more proteins.

00:47:07.980 It's just more than was ever intended.

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.

00:47:21.940 We started using pesticides and herbicides.

00:47:26.120 Glyphosate, if you are not buying organic flour, glyphosate is in trace amounts in your

00:47:31.300 flour.

00:47:31.740 It's just, it's there.

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.

00:47:46.260 And I think it goes back.

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.

00:48:15.040 Okay.

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.

00:48:36.460 It's just, there are different components.

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.

00:48:49.800 Okay.

00:48:50.560 Because I love bread.

00:48:52.300 Yeah.

00:48:52.420 Like one of my favorite things we would buy, so I don't make my own sourdough bread, but

00:48:57.040 there's a bakery that makes their own.

00:48:58.920 That's pretty close by.

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.

00:49:14.680 It just helped me.

00:49:15.900 I don't know.

00:49:16.680 I can tell you why.

00:49:17.280 It didn't make like myself feel great, but.

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.

00:49:34.460 Wow.

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.

00:49:47.740 It's in dairy.

00:49:48.240 I mean, God is so good.

00:49:50.020 He gave us bread and he gave us dairy and literally all of our essential nutrients are in those

00:49:54.520 two things.

00:49:55.540 Wow.

00:49:55.920 If it's the good bread.

00:49:57.100 If it's the good bread.

00:49:58.120 So tell us about milling your own flour.

00:50:00.840 How do you do that?

00:50:02.200 You know, it's crazy that you used to have to get buckets, put them in the back of your

00:50:07.580 wagon and drive to the local mill.

00:50:09.600 By the way, back in 1870, fun fact, we had 23,000 grain mills in this country because this

00:50:15.140 was something people did.

00:50:16.260 They would take their wheat every few weeks.

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

00:50:32.500 blanket to make.

00:50:33.260 And he'd come home with the pretty flour sacks.

00:50:35.000 And he'd do that every couple of weeks.

00:50:41.260 Last sponsor for the day is Preborn.

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.

00:50:58.460 It's not going to hurt.

00:50:59.500 You're not going to care.

00:51:00.340 You'll be able to graduate.

00:51:01.320 You'll be able to go back to your job.

00:51:02.560 You'll be able to break up with your boyfriend. 1.00

00:51:03.900 You'll be able to avoid this suffering, this pain, this hardship if you just kill your 1.00

00:51:07.900 child. 1.00

00:51:08.520 But these women need to know the truth. 0.99

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

00:51:20.420 of that life inside the womb.

00:51:22.080 That's why Preborn exists. 1.00

00:51:23.460 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. 0.97

00:51:32.180 And when that woman gets a sonogram and she sees the reality of her child, she is so much

00:51:37.740 more likely to choose life.

00:51:39.220 So by partnering with Preborn, donating whatever you can, $28 is the cost of a life-saving

00:51:44.420 ultrasound.

00:51:45.300 You are not only investing and saving the physical lives of these children, like you are also

00:51:50.760 allowing these women to hear the gospel.

00:51:52.500 This is an eternal impact that you are having just by donating what you can to Preborn.

00:51:58.100 So go to preborn.com slash Allie. 0.99

00:52:00.560 Make your donation today.

00:52:01.860 That's preborn.com slash Allie. 0.81

00:52:03.780 So because we had a local mill in every town, it wasn't a problem.

00:52:12.840 You go every few weeks and get your flour.

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

00:52:20.800 turn the stones to get your flour.

00:52:22.300 You can put a grain mill on your counter.

00:52:24.200 It stands, you know, yay tall.

00:52:26.100 It's not even big.

00:52:27.780 It's, they are a little loud.

00:52:28.940 It does make a little noise.

00:52:29.860 But it's crazy to me that we can have that technology in a little appliance on our counter

00:52:35.360 now.

00:52:35.920 And it's amazing.

00:52:37.620 And tell me about the grains that you choose.

00:52:40.000 How do you choose which grains to use?

00:52:41.620 There are so many choices.

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.

00:52:59.480 That's what I'm told.

00:53:00.480 I always question that.

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?

00:53:12.880 Yeah, you do.

00:53:13.800 You do.

00:53:14.200 You do.

00:53:14.720 Right.

00:53:15.160 So get organic wheat berries.

00:53:16.460 And if you have any sort of gluten sensitivity, by the way, celiacs, one in 133 people have celiacs

00:53:24.580 today.

00:53:25.180 Back in 1950, that was a lot less.

00:53:28.280 In fact, we are five times more celiacs today than back in 1950.

00:53:32.660 I believe that.

00:53:33.800 And one in three people are gluten sensitive like you are.

00:53:36.840 I mean, one in three people.

00:53:38.440 Yeah.

00:53:38.980 And I feel like for me, it's gotten worse over time, actually.

00:53:41.940 Yeah.

00:53:42.460 Yeah.

00:53:42.800 Which I think I've heard a lot from people.

00:53:44.380 Yeah, because your gut is trying to recover.

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

00:53:56.780 at ancient and heritage grains.

00:53:58.940 Because we do have ancient grains like they were in ancient times that have not been altered.

00:54:03.880 They weren't part of the green revolution.

00:54:05.960 Thankfully, it's because they had an extra hard hull, which the hull is the part around

00:54:10.600 the wheat berry when it's in the field.

00:54:12.120 Is this like spelt?

00:54:13.000 Spelt? 0.84

00:54:13.440 Yes.

00:54:13.940 Okay.

00:54:14.380 Yeah.

00:54:14.840 Yes.

00:54:15.180 Spelt is a great wheat.

00:54:17.520 And I love to use that for cookies because it's slightly nutty.

00:54:21.540 That's another thing.

00:54:22.040 If you're using real wheat berries, they all have different taste, different color, and

00:54:26.940 such a variety.

00:54:27.800 And you get a lot more flavor.

00:54:29.620 I really love einkorn for an ancient grain.

00:54:33.000 And all of these ancient grains had this harder hull around the outside, which made it that

00:54:37.820 much more complicated to bother with.

00:54:40.240 And if they had other ones to play around with and alter to make franken flour out of,

00:54:45.940 why use the ones that were hard?

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.

00:55:02.480 Yeah.

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.

00:55:13.360 I like sourdough.

00:55:14.740 I just never got on it.

00:55:15.800 But now I might be milling my own flour.

00:55:18.180 Okay.

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.

00:55:35.180 Yeah, absolutely not.

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.

00:56:14.880 He's holding even ourselves together.

00:56:16.700 He holds the food together.

00:56:18.220 He holds the food system together.

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

00:56:25.020 more real food.

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.

00:56:42.680 Yeah.

00:56:42.860 So it's just when you're presented a choice, if you can, go with the less processed or

00:56:49.620 unprocessed option.

00:56:51.380 And the more of those choices we make every day, the better it is for our bodies because

00:56:56.320 God knows what he's doing.

00:56:58.740 He knew what he was up to.

00:57:00.880 Okay.

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

00:57:12.860 to start.

00:57:13.800 And you have a whole blog dedicated to showing people in very simple ways how to start.

00:57:18.720 So tell us again more about that.

00:57:20.560 Okay.

00:57:21.000 You can find me at solely rested.

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

00:57:33.120 whole food and just simple living.

00:57:35.160 And I have a podcast, the Simple Doesn't Mean Easy podcast, where I talk about this every

00:57:40.120 single week.

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.

00:57:51.060 Okay.

00:57:51.640 Well, thank you so much.

00:57:53.000 This was such a peaceful and helpful conversation for me.

00:57:57.300 I learned a lot.

00:57:58.320 I know everyone's going to feel the same way.

00:57:59.940 I really encourage everyone to go to your blog.

00:58:01.920 There's a lot on there.

00:58:02.720 It's not just about this.

00:58:03.900 You talk about motherhood and homeschooling and your faith.

00:58:08.620 And I just, I love it so much.

00:58:10.660 We need peace and stability and to bring things more into our home in this very chaotic age.

00:58:18.100 So I just appreciate you.

00:58:19.500 So thank you for being here.

00:58:20.800 Thanks, Allie.

00:58:33.900 We'reという.

00:58:35.860 Allie.

00:58:40.420 I love you.

00:58:40.660 I love you.

00:58:42.280 I love you.

00:58:42.600 I love you.

00:58:42.800 I love you.

00:58:42.900 I love you.

00:58:43.180 I love you.

00:58:43.660 I love you.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - October 24, 2025

Ep 1258 ｜ Raising Entrepreneurs & Real Food： A Christian Homesteader’s Journey ｜ Michelle Visser

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript