Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 1258 | Raising Entrepreneurs & Real Food: A Christian Homesteader’s Journey | Michelle Visser
Episode Date: October 24, 2025We dive into Michelle Visser’s story of homesteading and homeschooling, trusting God’s call to leave suburbia for self-sustained living. Discover the health dangers of processed food and the joy o...f real, nutrient-rich alternatives. Tune in to reject worldly convenience, pursue godly wisdom, and nourish your family with faith-rooted practices for body and soul. Check out Michelle Visser's blog and podcast here: https://soulyrested.com Check out Michelle Visser's Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/souly.rested Watch the full replay of the 2025 Share the Arrows conference exclusively on BlazeTV today. You can get a discount on your BlazeTV subscription now by going to BlazeTV.com/Allie. Buy Allie's book "Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion": https://www.toxicempathy.com/ --- Timecodes: (00:00) Introduction (06:00) Life on the Homestead (18:30) Dangers of Processed Foods (26:20) The History of Flour (41:00) Gluten Sensitivity (54:30) Dispelling Myths --- Today's Sponsors: Good Ranchers — Go to https://GoodRanchers.com and subscribe to any of their boxes (but preferably the Allie Beth Stuckey Box) to get free Waygu burgers, hot dogs, bacon, or chicken wings in every box for life. Plus, you’ll get $40 off when you use code ALLIE at checkout. Jase Medical — Go to Jase.com and enter code “ALLIE” at checkout for a discount on your order. Hillsdale College — Hillsdale College is offering more than 40 free online courses they offer on History, Economics, Politics, Philosophy, and more, all available for FREE. Go to https://hillsdale.edu/relatable to enroll. Pre-Born — Will you help rescue babies' lives? Donate by calling #250 & say keyword 'BABY' or go to Preborn.com/ALLIE. Carly Jean Los Angeles — Go to https://www.carlyjeanlosangeles.com and use code ALLIEB to get 20% off your first CJLA order, site wide (one-time use only) and start filling your closet with timeless staple pieces. --- Episodes you might like: Ep 810 | Detoxifying Your Life: Birth Control, Cleaning Chemicals & Fake Food | Guest: Shawna Holman https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-810-detoxifying-your-life-birth-control-cleaning/id1359249098?i=1000614201869 Ep 741 | How to Realistically Live Toxin-Free | Guest: Taylor Dukes https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-741-how-to-realistically-live-toxin-free-guest-taylor/id1359249098?i=1000595318788 Ep 687 | When God Tells You to Sell Meat, You Listen | Guests: Ben & Corley Spell (Good Ranchers) https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-687-when-god-tells-you-to-sell-meat-you-listen-guests/id1359249098?i=1000581068327 --- Buy Allie's book "You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love": https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise – use promo code 'ALLIE10' for a discount: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey
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Bring peace to your home through the food you make. Today we are talking to Michelle Visser. She is the author of the blog
Sully Rested 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. And this is not a conversation just for people
who live on a farm. This is for people from all backgrounds in all different kinds of communities.
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. I loved, loved this conversation
and you're going to too. If you love this podcast, please subscribe on Spotify, on Apple podcast,
on YouTube, wherever you watch or listen.
We love for you to be a part of these conversations to discuss and to share your thoughts.
And it just, it means so much to me that you're here.
So if you haven't subscribed already, please do so.
This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers.
Go to Good Ranchers.com.
Use Code Alley at checkout.
That's good ranchers.com code Alley.
Michelle, thanks so much for taking the time to join us.
Can you tell everyone who you are and what you do?
Of course.
First of all, thank you for inviting me.
I'm thrilled to be here.
Me too.
My name's Michelle Visser.
I am, I guess I should say, first and foremost, I am a wife to my high school sweetheart.
I met Billy Visser in fourth grade, actually.
So what do you call that?
Can you call it an elementary?
Lifelong sweetheart.
Yeah, was it love at first sight at nine years old?
Actually, it's so funny.
Billy was very quiet.
And Michelle was very talked to everybody.
Yes.
And I remember my first memory wasn't until seventh grade.
That's how quiet he was.
And his pockets were sticking out. And he was a little nervous because somebody was taking a picture and his pockets are sticking out. And I looked over and I thought, he's such a cute little guy.
Yeah. Like he kind of felt for him a little bit. I did. And I thought, I wish he would talk to me. Eventually he did.
Yes, I didn't know that we were going to start with a love story, but now we got to hear more about it. Okay. So when did the sparks fly? Well, we were actually in 11th grade. So knew him that long and it took that long for him to ask me out. It was actually,
before algebra class. And he was at the door in the hall not like kind of doing this. And I very
quickly was asked if I would like to go to the junior prom. And then I had to run back to my seat before
Mrs. Allborn yelled at me. Yes. And you obviously said yes. And then from there, was it like,
okay, this is it? Well, kind of. We were a little fickle. We were young on and off. But at seven
and a half years, we dated. And then we got married. Looking back, I have no idea why I thought it was
good to date seven and a half years. We could have got married so much sooner. But it was good. But it
all worked out. It did. And how many kids? We have four adult daughters. Okay. And I got to homeschool them
for 20 years from kindergarten through 12th grade. So that was such a blessing, all four of them.
And that was. And they turned out okay. They turned out okay. There's one here. She looks
completely normal to me. And obviously that sarcasm. I'm a big, big fan of homeschooling.
Okay. So that was back in the 90s that you were making the design.
decision to homeschool, correct?
Let me think about that.
80s, 90s, maybe?
She was born in 95.
Okay.
So yeah.
Yeah.
So in the 90s, when it was maybe less popular, less common than it is today.
Right.
So tell me how you made the decision to homeschool your kids.
Honestly, it wasn't something I had even really heard about until Logan, my oldest daughter,
was four.
And I was at just a woman's like a luncheon and we had a speaker.
and it was somebody in our church, and I didn't even know, shout out to Judy Brearley, didn't even know she homeschooled or what it was about.
And she just got up and started talking about it.
And I thought, that's what I want.
I want to be with my children.
I want to be part of their everyday life and learn with them.
And sure enough, Allie, kindergarten on, I was learning with them the whole time.
It was such a blessing for me too.
Yes.
Okay, four girls.
Tell us, can you give us some advice for those of us who are girl moms?
I would say to not put yourself or your daughters in a box because we didn't have a whole lot of tea parties.
We didn't do a whole lot of nails.
It wasn't a typical people here.
I have four girls and they think, oh, all you did was tea parties and paint your nails.
And that's not what it was.
Each girl is very unique and different.
And none of them really were girly girls.
But the biggest advice I would give, honestly, is to pray for their future spouse from the moment your child is.
is born, especially I feel like with a girl it's more important. I don't have a son, so maybe I'm not
speaking. Maybe I'm speaking out of term, but I just feel like with a girl, it's so important for her
to have a godly leader of her home. And that starts when they're young for God to be training
them up that way. So the first time that I realized I had my first son-in-law, I started crying and I
hugged Alex. I've been praying for you for so long. You know, and it finally hit me, this is who I've
been praying for. Yes, without even knowing, without even knowing his name.
That's amazing.
Yeah.
So you're here to talk about homesteading, but I guess that homeschooling and homesteading are intertwined,
especially with you raising four girls in your home.
So before we get into bread and all of the things that you know about bread,
let's talk about maybe how you did that.
How did you make sure that the keeping of the home and your home education of your kids
were interconnected?
it? I would say everything comes back to the home. And, I mean, for me, I was so blessed to find a
Bible study when the girls were young that all of us could be involved in at the same time. And even
when they were very young, they were studying the same passages at their level. So all week long,
you know, it would just come up because there was a daily lesson for all of us, not the really
little ones, but when they got old enough to do a daily lesson. So all week long, you
it would just come up in our everyday conversation and it was just a natural part of our education.
I actually didn't even do like a Bible curriculum because the curriculums I did choose were Christian-based.
And then I had this Bible study that we would talk about throughout the week.
So what better curriculum than to talk about God's Word on a everyday basis?
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
And when did you start homesteading?
Was that in the very, very beginning?
It's funny.
because I still to this day, I don't say to somebody, hi, I'm a homesteader. It's not a term I use for myself.
And to be honest, we were accidental homesteaders. Okay. Because God called our family to move from the
Mid-Atlantic area. We were about 30 minutes outside of Philly in a very busy chaotic suburb. And he called
us to move to New England. We didn't know why. We didn't understand what was going on.
And it took quite a few years to get there with a lot of open and closed doors and really just following God's direction and every way we could with scripture and with godly leadership and with prayer.
And we just knew for sure we were supposed to.
We knew he had jobs prepared for us ahead of us in New England and we just were supposed to get there at the right time.
Okay.
So you moved without knowing what those jobs were.
We did.
We really did.
Which looking back sounds crazy because Bill and I both are very plan everything out to a T kind of people.
And that wasn't the way God wanted us to do this.
We bought the house we did.
Somebody just asked me last week about, wow, they had never been to our home.
And they stepped in and said, wow, no wonder you wanted to buy this home.
And I'm like, oh, no, if you knew what it looked like, it wasn't something I ever would have been drawn to.
And she said, well, what led you to buy this home?
Honestly, looking back, the Holy Spirit.
That's all I can say, because he put the desire in Bill and my hearts for this home.
And we didn't know at the time it had, we knew it had 14.
but we didn't know what that was going to mean to us. We had no clue. God did. And it's uphill,
covered in trees. We had no idea what it was like to make to do sugar making. Yeah. But here we
moved into a sugar bush and we started tapping trees. That was one of the first things God
called us to do. Okay. A lot of people listening have no idea what you're talking about. Oh, really?
Yes. What's a sugar bush and what is tapping trees for sugar? Sugar bush just means a bunch of
trees that are tapable. It's that simple. And you tap in the early spring, late winter,
early spring, the tree becomes, it leaves its dormant state and it starts becoming alive for the
spring and sending its sap to the leaves and everything that needs to get going for the spring.
As it does that, you have a window. For us in New England, it's about a six-week, maybe eight-week
window, that there's a lot of sap moving and you can collect it relatively easily just from the
pressure of the tree and the sap moving. Well, God is so good that he gave us from the beginning
of time, delicious sweet sugar. All we had to do was literally tap into it because the tree has
2.5% sugar in the sap. So if you have patience and a way to boil it down and get it down to 66%
then you have maple syrup. And it's my absolute favorite sweetener in the world. Of course.
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Okay, so you moved to this place, Sugarbush, and neither you nor your husband were raised in a farming community or rural community?
Correct. I did have the background from my childhood. Both of my parents were rural family, they were from rural families that farmed.
Yeah. My mom lived in the panhandle of West Virginia, and my dad lived in a little teeny piece of Maryland that's tucked into the panhandle.
I used to say they both are from West Virginia, but dad would always correct me. I was from Maryland.
But they both were actually one of 10 kids.
Wow.
True story. I think I was about seven or eight years old when I realized every parent isn't one of 10 children.
Like I really thought that was just a given with a parent.
So they had a lot of mouths to feed and they did it all off of the land, both of these families.
And so I have a rich heritage in that. And I would go to Butcheringdale on my grandparents' farm.
Looking back to think that like a six-year-old and an eight, 10-year-old loved it, but I did. I loved it.
It was so much fun. And you can feel the energy and the excitement. And I think it's partially because
we were thankful for what God had given us. 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. 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.
Loving it.
Yeah.
So good.
I did not know it would be so.
I wasn't expecting it to be so good.
But for me, it's so much actually my family from the hills of West Virginia.
And I didn't know there was a hillbill.
I didn't know it was called the hillbilly highway.
J.D. taught me that.
And literally, industrial, the industrial age of factories up north brought a lot of true
hill bellies from the backwoods up to.
up to modern day.
I mean, that's literally what my parents did.
They left the backwoods.
My grandmother was still using a wood stove
to cook the meals on when my mom moved out.
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.
Yeah.
So, yes, we had the background,
but not the personal hands-on knowledge.
Yes, it's not like you were raised, butchering.
Correct.
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.
So that's why you call yourself an accidental homesteader.
So after you moved into the home, what did life look like?
Well, we still lived life as normal at that point.
I didn't even realize for quite a few months that one of these kind of dilapidated falling down out buildings that we had was a chicken coop.
And we, that following spring, did bring home our first chickens.
soon after we got ducks and meat rabbits.
And 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.
Like I said, I knew that from my childhood, but it wasn't ever part of my everyday life.
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.
And maybe I could be doing more to have more.
real food. And those eggs were so different than the eggs you buy at the store. So Bill had already
tapped the first trees. He did that our first winter. We moved in in late spring. He tapped
trees that winter. We got chickens right after that. And the idea that we could make our own sugar
was mind-boggling to me. So how did you learn how to do that? Nowadays, you can watch a YouTube video
or Grok will tell you. So did you buy a book? Did neighbors tell you? There were YouTube videos. It was only 11
years ago. So there were YouTube videos.
Oh, okay. So this is not.
I think I just want to clarify the timeline.
This was not before you had kids. That's what I was imagining.
It's my fault. I didn't explain that correctly.
No, that's okay. This was not the 90s. This was just...
We moved in 2013, I believe.
Okay, so the homesteading while you were raising your kids was not really something you're
doing. Your homeschooling before you were homesitting. Got it.
Okay. So then about 12, 14 years ago, it's
like that's when you moved to move to the sugar bush.
11 years ago, yeah.
Okay, okay, got it.
Now I have a better kind of understanding.
So there were more online resources and things like that that you could learn from.
But there was no, there was no book.
And there were very few, very few blog posts and they weren't detailed.
So I actually had already started a blog because when we first moved, I just was so filled with thankfulness with so many things that I, you know, when you just follow God's direction, not sure where it's going to leave, but you're confident.
You're doing the right thing and you just need to go, just step out in faith.
When you're surrounded with blessings, it's overwhelming.
Because you didn't know what you were stepping into and to see, oh, God, this wasn't, this was also for me.
It wasn't for whatever job you have for me to do.
But it also was for me.
Like, this is good for my soul.
This is a real blessing.
So I was putting it on social media.
Now I went to Facebook and every day I'm putting, and my daughter's very kindly said,
Mom, come off of Facebook a little bit.
Let's help you start a blog.
So that's why I started my blog.
And I named it solely rested, S-O-U-L-Y, rested, from Jeremiah 6-16, which says, stand at the crossroads and look.
Look for the ancient pass.
Ask for the good way and walk in it and you will find rest for your soul.
So God calls us to jobs and to work, whatever he's prepared for us.
And it's not usually easy.
In fact, sometimes it's really, really hard.
but he does promise us rest for our soul.
It's not a rest of sit back and enjoy the easy life and retire now,
but it's a rest for our soul and that that's enough.
Yeah.
Okay, so tell me what else you learned because it started with the sugar
and with the chickens and with the rabbits,
but then you learned more and more about making your own food.
So what did that journey look like?
Well, it expanded outside with dairy cows and we became pig farmers.
And I mean, things I would have never expected that I'm a sugar maker
a pig farmer. Like, only God would have pulled little Michelle this or out of the suburbs and did that.
Yeah. But, and inside, things really started changing in our kitchen and on our table because the more
I realized the goodness of real food, the more I started looking at the ingredients. And I started
realizing I had been a junk food junkie my whole life. And I had been eating processed food my whole
life. My mom knew how to cook from scratch beautifully, but we're attracted to convenience. And if she
had the convenience of a box mac and cheese, heck, why not go with that, especially because she was
working full time. And my dad knew how to organically garden. He learned from his grandfather in the
hills of Maryland, but he discovered chemicals and herbicides and pesticides. And that's how he
gardened when I was growing up. So it was a whole new thing to garden on my own in this new place
organically and to raise food to put on my table that was organic. I had to learn it all because
dad had always just used his pesticides. I knew those well. And then I started looking at the
ingredients of the processed food and I started realizing, well, instead of using this little pack of
taco seasoning, I could make my own taco seasoning. And instead of buying this ice cream that has
like anna-freeze as one of its ingredients, I could make my own ice cream. So little by little,
it took, I would always recommend to people never to just think you're going to do it all,
to just jump in and throw away all the processed food and do all real food. I'm still not there
after 10 or 11 years now. But step by step, one thing at a time, we started improving our
pantry and our kitchen table, and it felt really good. So I just kept going. What differences did
you see in your own body and in the health of your family when you started making those changes?
A lot, actually. Nothing, you know, I don't want, I don't like it when people sit back and say,
well, I did this one thing and I saw this result because it's all so intertwined, but just so much
more energy and just zest for life and a really good feeling about food that I had never had
before because it doesn't feel good to open up a cardboard box and open a little packet of something
and mix it together. It just doesn't give you the satisfaction and the creativity that real
food can give you. So I started feeling much better in that way.
way, just more energy, sleeping better, just really good overall.
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when people have some kind of like chronic illness that when they start making their own food
and they start taking out the process stuff, that a lot of times those symptoms will alleviate.
Like you said, it's not just one quick fix.
But, you know, a lot of the things that people in America struggle with today when it comes to our gut,
when it comes to our skin, a lot of the things that start with our digestion,
they can be alleviated or helped a lot by what we do in the kitchen.
For sure. And so how did you kind of adjust to the lack of convenience of making your own taco seasoning?
Because a lot of people might be thinking, that sounds awesome. I would love that.
But I don't have time to make my own ranch dressing and taco seasoning and all of that.
So how do you organize your time and adjust to putting all the effort into that?
There's so many things I could tell you. I would say, first of all,
to never be a purist because you will make yourself actually more unhealthy than striving to
eat all pure, real food. So little steps at a time and bulk, everything in bulk. I mean,
if I make taco seasoning, I'm not making it just for dinner. I'm making it to last me for a year.
I'm mixing it up and putting it in my pantry. Also, be organized. I actually started a pantry checklist
for myself years and years ago, and I decided, oh, this is probably something my followers would like,
so I put it out there. To this day, it's still my number one requested thing.
People are always grabbing my pantry checklist because I'm always changing and adding to it.
But stay organized and have a list of what you order and know what's running low so you know what to have on hand.
And really stick to things that your family, like people will often ask me, where do I start?
What's the one thing I should start with?
I can't answer that.
It's different for each one of us.
For me, one of the very first things that I changed in our kitchen was our tea we were drinking because we have a lot of iced tea, sweet iced tea drinkers.
And I was making my own kombucha, talking about the gut health.
I wanted to improve my gut health.
So I started making kombucha.
And I realized I'm feeding it with bleached, processed bags of tea.
Like, that doesn't seem right.
So I started kind of researching that a little.
And then I found out that the staples on the tea bags that I was putting in our compost pile for our gardens was killing the worms and hurting our compost.
Because when the worms eat the staples, they die.
Yeah.
So then I started cutting off my staples.
And then I realized, well, wait, I'm still, like I still am getting the tea out of this
bleach bag.
It's been sitting in that for all this time.
And then I started researching tea.
And it turns out it's one of the most heavily unregulated yet heavily sprayed with
pesticide, food or drink that you can eat.
Oh, no.
I drink tea probably every night.
I'm in the South.
That's right.
I just remember it.
Oh, no.
Yeah.
Well, it's different.
I actually don't really like iced tea that much.
But like tea at night.
Yeah, like a cup of warm tea.
Yes. That's my love language. I love it. You know, it's the organic kind and all of that. Okay. Well, if you're drinking organic tea, then you don't have to worry about the pesticides. So, but even the bleached, the bag. The bleached bags. It's just so maybe loose leaf tea is the way to go. That's what I recommend. It also has much better flavor. And then you're not getting the little tannins and pieces of leaves off the floor, which is what they do when they put the tea in the tea bags. You're getting the leaves, the bigger uncrushed leaves. So you're just getting a better taste all around. Okay. Okay. So you'll start in.
making your own kombucha when you realized, okay, all of these different components of the, I guess,
processed tea that you were buying are not really good for you. Yeah. So I discovered two different
tea blend or two different tea leaves that I could combine to taste a lot like Bill's Lipton. And I
decided to just try it. And he didn't even notice it wasn't Lipton. So I realized, okay, I'm on to
something. I really can make homemade that my family is going to like instead of the process stuff.
So I just went on a roll from there and I started writing all about it on the blog and sharing all the recipes.
And then I realized that I needed to look at my flour because, I mean, this is like the number one ingredient that we all use in our kitchen.
We all use flour.
And I was shocked when I started looking.
I mean, honestly, I would say flour today.
If you're going to your store and you're buying a bag of enriched bleach flour off the store shelf, it's a lie.
It's actually, they're lying to us because it's no longer what it should be.
Originally, wheat berries were a valuable commodity from all of time they have.
And we have records from the Fertile Crescent that they had grain banks and they had
kuneoform tablets that we can still look at today that show us they had pretty much a banking
system of wheat back in the Fertile Crescent.
It was almost like our current modern day checking system that they could exchange wheat
to others and send it to them like we write a check. And then, you know, in medieval times,
the feudal lords controlled the grain mills. And they, the peasants were not allowed to have any
kind of a even crude elementary mill. It simply was illegal because they had to go to the
Lord's mill and pay him. They would pay him with a portion of their wheat. And it was called actually
a banality. We still have the word banal in our words today, which means common. And banality was
for the common, the communal mill that they were paying the fee.
And then in Italy, during the Middle Ages, a wheat merchant would set up a bench in the market
to do their wheat dealings.
And it's an Italian bonka.
And if the wheat merchant ever went out of business, then they would actually break the bench.
And the word for that is something like Rapta.
If you put it together, Bonca Rapta, that's where we get a word,
bankrupt and we get our word bank from that original time in Middle Ages where they were trading
and dealing in wheat because it was the number one commodity. It was so important. And then even
in 1914, modern time, when we set up our Federal Reserve banks, one of them was set up in
Minneapolis because it was a center of wheat trade and they wanted to be able to regulate it
because it's an important trade. So it's always been valuable. But then we have done so much to it,
Ali, that it's no longer valuable. What's sitting on the store shelf is simply giving us no nutrition
at all, which was never God's intention. I mean, Jesus himself said, I am the bread of life. There's
great value in bread. There's great value in the wheatberry. And unfortunately, in modern day,
we've stripped it of that. Next sponsor is Good Ranchers. Y'all, we need to get back to the
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Okay, tell me what else you learned about flour. Because now
Yes, there is that enriched bleach flower, which is what I think, you know, my grandmother, she lived with us and she baked a lot. I'm sure that's all she was using and Crisco and all of that.
But now there are healthier options, it seems like, in the grocery store. Can we trust that?
Well, there's a lot of things we can't really trust. I mean, the problem, the real problem goes back to when they change the way Gray Mills were grinding the flour with a,
Typical in ancient times grain mill, you had the two stones that they would grind together and turn the wheat berries into flour.
And that was taking the whole wheatberry.
So I have to tell you quickly what a wheat berry is for this to make sense.
A wheat berry has three parts.
There's the outside edge, which is the brand.
It makes up about 15% of the wheatberry.
And then the very internal area of the wheatberry is the germ.
The germ is that tiny little part of the wheat berry that's going to become the plant.
So it is loaded with nutrients.
Do you ever get sprouts at the grocery store or ever grow sprouts?
My mom does.
Yeah?
Yes.
You should eat some.
I've never done it.
They're delicious.
You can even just put them on sandwiches.
And I just grow my own.
In the middle of winter in New England, I can have fresh food.
And what's so good for you about them?
Because they are that little part of the seed that has germinated.
And every nutrient needed for that plant to start thriving in the ground and producing more food,
all those nutrients are in that tiny little seed.
which is what you're eating with sprouts because they're like three or five days old out of the seed.
Well, with a wheatberry, that's called the germ.
Okay.
It's loaded with good stuff.
Around it, which is like 80% of your wheat berry, is the endosperm.
And that's this white starch.
And it's the way God designed it for the wheatberry to give the food to the germ as it's growing.
Okay, gotcha.
So it's a lot of starch and a little bit of protein.
Well, in the way it used to be done, you would grind that whole wheatberry into flour.
And everything was mixed together.
They would sift out some of the brand because the brand is harder and you're not going to get a nice soft flower with it.
But pretty much the whole wheatberry was there in your flour.
Well, then in 1880 in Wisconsin, a grain mill owner, James Stevens, decided that he was going to really work at perfecting this because he wanted to,
more output. He wanted more money, as all business persons do. Yeah. How can we make more of this for
cheaper? Exactly, exactly. And he wasn't the person to actually invent the idea, but he was the first one
business savvy enough to go get a patent for it. So he's known as the inventor of the steel roller mill.
So he sent away to Connecticut and had them forge some steel rollers. And he set up a system of rollers
and a system of sieves and some air current going through it that made it so he could remove
all of the bran and all of the germ. And it left this wonderful white end of sperm flower,
which is what everybody wanted because the brand, it's a sharp, jagged thing, even if it's
like microscopic level. It's going to be sharp. It's a hard outer coating. And that breaks
into your gluten as you're trying to make your bread. So it's just not going to be a light,
fluffy, airy, nice rising bread if there's a little bit of brand in it. So everybody went crazy
over this white flour because they could make such wonderful airy pastries and cakes and everything.
And it became extremely popular. All of a sudden, all the mills were switching over to this
other kind of milling. And within about 10 or 20 years, we started noticing lots of diseases.
And there was no correlation that anybody knew.
This is like early 1900s.
Correct.
It was actually 1904 that the first case of Pellegras was noted in the U.S.
And it came to a portion, it began to begin epidemic.
It became very widespread.
And it was a really bad disease.
People would get these red rashes that would turn into like very leathery skin that was very
hurt, like harmful, hurt, itchy.
But then they'd get boils.
And they thought it was leprosy.
It was that bad.
And they'd get it on their faces.
And they thought it was contagious.
So people were separated from loved ones and family quarantined away.
Then it led to horrible diarrhea, dementia, and eventually death.
It was really, really bad.
And we didn't understand what was causing it.
So 1920, Dr. Joseph Goldberger started really investigating this.
And I think he had a real heart for these poor people that this was, you know, they were getting torn from their families and dying in solitude.
and in pain.
And he noticed that in prisons it was different because the inmates, they weren't, it didn't seem to be contagious.
They were living in close quarters and it wasn't spreading that way.
So he said, this has got to be nutrition-based.
And it took him a long time, a lot of different attempts.
But he finally realized if he fed yeast to someone with Pallagra, it would cure them.
And he actually died before he knew what component of the yeast was needed.
but his colleagues determined that it was niacin.
Vitamin B3 was missing in their diet,
and it led to all this horrible things and to death.
And guess where you can find a lot of niacin
in a single wheatberry in the germ that had been taken away?
So our flour no longer had these nutrients.
In fact, literally the flour had no nutrients,
just starch and protein.
So that's why they put the niacin back in.
Exactly.
And you see that and the ingredients on the back of bread,
packages now. Exactly. In 1940 something, early 40s, the government. It did. I mean, that's a long time
from 1880 to 1940 for us to be malnourished and not understand why. It's very sad. But there were other
diseases, not just Pellegras. And when they combined all the knowledge that they could, they figured
out four different ingredients that they wanted to enrich flour with. So they put B1, 2, and 3, an iron
back into flour in the 40s. They also were motivated by the fact that the world was at war. And we
had food shortages. So the government really, I think rightfully in a good way, wanted to make sure we
weren't malnourished as a nation. Yeah. So I think can all those things be found in a wheat germ?
Like can iron and all the things that they had to re-insert back into bread be found?
What they put back was not even 20% of what's been taken out. Yeah. And what they put back was
synthetic. So it's different. Our body, it's not as bioavailable to our body. Maybe okay in a crisis.
Sure. But not ideal. Correct. Okay. So what?
happened after that. Then in 1998, the government realized if they added folic acid to the flower,
that that might help with birth defects. There was quite an outbreak of spina bifida and a few other ones.
And it appears when you look at the numbers, and I think most people say, yes, it made a big,
big difference. We saw a decrease in birth defects. But what they were adding back in was folic
acid. Not folate. Exactly, not folate. And folate is very needed in our body because it
literally repairs our cells. And if the cell goes unrepaired without enough folate, it leads to,
you know, it leads to cancer eventually. And the folic acid they were adding back in, first of all,
was synthetic, so not as bioavailable, but shelf stable. It has to be shelf stable, which is why,
back in 1880, by the way, flour, this white flower was so, the millers were so happy, because
now it can sit on your shelf for two years. It used to be you had to go to the mill every two weeks
to get your flour because as soon as the wheatberry is opened up and that little germ is exposed
to air, it starts to deteriorate. And within a few weeks, you're going to have rancid flour
if you don't use it. So it's just, it's a live food and that's the way it's supposed to be.
Right. So they out of the folic acid back in and they couldn't do full later. It wouldn't
be able to stay on the shelf. But we also had to do quite a big educational campaign because
women couldn't just be using the flour. That was going to give them about a hundred
micrograms of folic acid a day. If a woman is in the process of conceiving or in her first
trimester, they recommend 400 micrograms of folic acid. So she still needed education because
she needed to know, okay, you need to eat nuts and eggs and leafy greens. You need to watch your
diet and eat better. Right. So in the 90s, there was a widespread education of pregnant women,
which is fantastic and great that they were learning to eat better.
But I would argue, I mean, do we really know if it was the folic acid?
Because that was only one-fourth of the requirement they needed for that day anyway.
Right.
And unfortunately, they have found that folic acid can itself lead to cancer.
There have been studies that have shown that it can cause that in the certain cells.
Every cell is different.
It depends on the state of the cell.
But Tufts University did a study for over 20 years.
They followed the cancer.
where there was a cancer registry, but they followed the cancer registries in the U.S.
And they noticed this unusual thing that for 15 years, there was a dramatic decline in colon
and rectal cancer.
And then in 1998, which is when we added the folic acid, suddenly that changed.
And it went on the incline.
It seems to be going up right now, too.
Yeah.
I don't know.
I just, and that's just anecdotal.
But I've just heard of a lot of young people over the past few years getting colorectal cancer.
Yeah.
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And you know what else we hear a lot of? We hear a lot about gluten these days, right? And gluten is an evil
villain. That's what I want to ask you about. So we can talk about that. And if we want to keep
going on the part that you were just explaining as well, we can. But I have Hashimoto's,
as to do a lot of people diagnosed when I was probably 19. And it's only, you know,
only in recent months that I've actually taken an official food sensitivity test where they draw your
blood and all of that. And it comes back that I am very sensitive to gluten. And I've actually been
having just like gut discomfort for the past couple years. And so I caught gluten out. I do think
it's helped. A lot of people with Hashimoto's are sensitive to gluten. But then I also hear that,
well, if you go to other countries and you eat bread or you eat pasta, that you don't have the same
bad reaction as you do over here. And I'm wondering if it has something to do with what you're
talking about. Absolutely. Yes. In fact, talking about other countries, back when we were
adding into our flour and enriching it, other countries didn't do that. In fact, in Italy,
they had a Pallegra outbreak around the same time that we were dealing with it here, but they
responded completely different. In little towns in Italy, I think this is great. They literally
built communal ovens, bread ovens, and they encouraged them to use good grains, which had not
gone through the green revolution of our country, which we can get to that in a second,
but good grains and make whole wheat bread. Here's the ovens to get together.
They knew that at that point, they knew that it was related to folate, and they knew that
it was dietary. And they said, what can we do? We have in these small towns a lot of poor
people who can't necessarily afford good food. So one thing is, let's at least give them the
equipment to make the bread. And they encouraged them to, like, get meat rabbits. This was back
1920s or 30s, probably, get meat rabbits because there's a lot of protein. And if anyone in the
family was sick, they encouraged the children to go to school for meals. And they set up a program
where the children could be well-nourished because they knew it was coming down to nutrition.
Right. So instead of manipulating the primary thing in our kitchens and changing the
flour and you don't really know what the results might be with that. Instead, they took really
hands-on real food approaches to it. And they also wiped out Pellegras, as we did. So both approaches
worked. Okay. So do you think gluten is unfairly demonized? And if so, why? I think it is. Norman Borlaug in
1970 was given the Nobel Priest Prize for basically feeding the world, is what they said, because he
had figured out how to manipulate wheat to give it a higher yield and to just simply grow more wheat
for your buck. And while there's definite advantages to understanding plant science,
unfortunately, every time that we genetically change or we breed certain characteristics into any
of our food, we are losing some nutrition. And he figured out how to breed wheat so it grew very
short because that would allow the plant itself to have more wheat on each stock. And they figured
out how to make the brand that 15% on the outer edge tougher, which was great for the millers
because then the brand has, you have to sift it less because it breaks off in bigger pieces
and it's really easy to just get it out of there and get rid of it. Oh, by the way, all those
things that they took out, even back in 1880, they figured out they didn't waste it. They made even more
money because it made great animal feed. So when they took out the brand of the germ, they were selling it
as animal feed. Yeah. Yeah. And when they, um, when they started milling it in this with the steel
mills, they went from 20 barrels of flour a day to 500 barrels of flour a day with no extra energy,
no extra expense. So there's definitely money involved in the whole story is what I'm saying.
Okay. So what is it about the wheat germ that can help, well, if I'm understanding, maybe I'm not
I'll just say it correctly, so I might not explain it correctly. What is it about the wheat germ that
helps a body you believe break down gluten? Because you're saying gluten is not necessarily in and of
itself bad, but maybe in combination with this bread that has been stripped of the good stuff,
inserted with the synthetic stuff, that that is maybe what's causing the problems, especially in
America. Yeah, it comes back again to the Green Revolution, which started in like the 1950s, went
through the 70s and 80s that, I mean, it's still going on. I don't know why I act to like it
had an ending point. But one of the things they did with weed, another thing they did was they
enlarge that endosperm. They figured out a way to grow wheat that had a larger endosperm,
that white starch, I told you it had starch and a little bit of protein, and less of the germ and
the brand. So now we have a wheat that is, it has, it's oversaturated with that protein.
and the protein when it's exposed to water, the proteins will combine and make gluten.
So we now have wheat that has more proteins.
It's just more than was ever intended.
We've just made like a franken wheat.
Yeah.
And the gluten is excessive.
But it gets worse because part of the Green Revolution, we want to make enough food to feed
the world and we want to make sure we're producing more and more.
We started using pesticides and herbicides.
glyphosate, if you are not buying organic flour, glyphosate is in trace amounts in your flour.
It's just, it's there.
And we mentioned gut health and me making my kombucha, I'm working on my gut health.
If we are exposing our gut to glyphosate, we are killing the good bacteria.
We've had gut problems in this country for many decades.
And I think it goes back.
I think a lot of it has to do with this glyphosate in our flour, because we're all eating flour.
And of course, if your microbiome is not healthy, then it can't do its job.
And one very important job of our microbiome in our gut is to digest gluten.
So we have more gluten than we're supposed to in our flour, and we can't digest it.
I learned from a friend who is very, like, actually has celiacs.
Okay, so she cannot eat gluten.
But she started making her own sourdough.
bread from a very, very old sourdough starter that she had been given a long time ago and it's very
fermented. And she is able to eat that. No problem. And I'm guessing it goes back to what you're saying
there. It's just there are different components. It's a different nature when you are making
your own bread. Now, I don't think this person is milling their own. I was just going to ask you that
because that's a huge. And when you said that you're having difficulties, I'm going to say, we need to get you a
grain mill, Allie. Okay. Because I love bread.
Like one of my favorite things we would buy so I don't make my own sourdough bread, but there's a bakery that makes their own, that's pretty close by.
And when I was postpartum, the thing that I felt like helped my milk supply the most was the sourdough bread with butter.
And grass-fed butter and when I would have two slices of that and it would like really help me.
It just helped me, I don't know.
I can tell you why.
I can tell you why.
You were getting all of your essential nutrients.
Because a wheatberry, okay, a wheat berry has protein and fiber and complex carbohydrates and minerals and vitamins and healthy fats and polyphenols and antioxidants.
All of that in one wheat berry.
Wow.
And it is 40 of our 44 essential nutrients in a wheat berry.
If you are eating dairy or butter, you know, dairy, butter is dairy.
If you're eating that with your bread, you're getting the other four.
It's in dairy.
I mean, God is so good.
He gave us bread and he gave us bread.
us dairy. And literally all of our essential nutrients are in those two things. Wow. Okay. If it's the good bread.
If it's good bread. So tell us about milling your own flour. How do you do that? You know, it's crazy
that you used to have to get buckets, put them in the back of your wagon and drive to the local mill.
By the way, back in 1870, fun fact, we had 23,000 grain mills in this country because this was
something people did. They would take their wheat every few weeks. My grandfather still did it in
rural rest Virginia in the 1930s and 40s. He would go every couple weeks to the local grain mill
and take his wheat. They would grind it up and he'd take it back home in flower sacks. My grandmother
would tell him, I'm told, pick out a pretty one because I have a special blanket to make and he'd
come home with the pretty flower sacks and he'd do that every couple weeks.
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preborn.com slash alley. So because we had a local mill in every town, it wasn't a problem. You go every few
weeks and get your your flower. Well, today you don't have to go to the gray mill and wait for the
course or the water to turn the stones to get your flour. You can put a grain mill on your counter.
It stands, you know, yay tall. It's not even big. They are a little loud. It does make a little
noise. But it's crazy to me that we can have that technology in a little appliance on our
counter now. And it's amazing. And tell me about the grains that you choose. How do you choose which
grains to use? There are so many choices. I would recommend going, well, I mean, anyone who wants
to get my pantry checklist. I have a lot of stuff on there about the different we
berries and where I source them, but definitely find organic because you don't want that glyphosate.
You don't want to go to all this trouble and be putting glyphosate in the flour.
And we can trust that if it says organic, that it's glyphosate-free.
That's what I'm told.
I always question that, but I am told that there is generally really tight, stringent regulations.
Regulations over that, yeah.
So, I mean, you got to get to a point.
At some point, you just have to trust, right?
Yeah, you do.
You do.
You do.
Right.
So get organic wheat berries.
And if you have any sort of gluten sensitivity, by the way, see,
Celiacs, one in 133 people have celiacs today. Back in 1950, that was a lot less. In fact, we are five times more celiacs today than back in 1950.
And one in three people are gluten sensitive like you are. I mean, one in three people. Yeah. And I feel like for me it's gotten worse over time, actually. Yeah. Yeah. Which I think I've heard a lot from people. Yeah, because your gut is trying to recover. And it just gets harder for it if it's not.
getting fed the really good stuff. So I would recommend if you have any sort of gluten sensitivity,
you might want to look at ancient and heritage grains because we do have ancient grains like
they were in ancient times that have not been altered. They weren't part of the green revolution.
Thankfully, it's because they had an extra hard hull, which the hull is the part around the
wheat berry when it's in the field. Is this like spelt? Yes. Okay. Yeah. Yes. Spelt is a great
wheat and I love to use that for cookies because it's slightly nutty. That's another thing. If you're using
real wheat berries, they all have different taste, different color, and just such a variety and you get
a lot more flavor. I really love Eincorn for an ancient grain. And all of these ancient grains
had this harder haul around the outside, which made it that much more complicated to, to bother with.
And if they had other ones to play around with an altar to make Frankenflower out of,
why use the ones that were hard, you know? So they didn't even touch all those ancient grains. So thankfully for us today and anyone with gluten sensitivity, we do still have grains we can go to that are not overwhelmed with gluten. In fact, the ancient grains have less gluten naturally. Yeah. So you know what? I'm going to try this. And see, this is funny because I've been saying for a long time, I just did not get on the sourdough trend of making it myself. I like sourdough. I just never got on.
it, but now I might be milling my own flower. Okay, so let's dispel any myths that people might have
that you have to be rich, that you have to have all the time in the day just to do all of this,
you know, don't have any other responsibilities. You don't work. You don't have kids. It's the only
way you can do it or that you have to live on 14 acres. Yeah, absolutely not. I'm glad you asked that
because everything, even if you're a homesteader who has a huge working homestead, it all comes back to
the kitchen. All of us have a kitchen. And all of
us in our kitchens can make changes. There's a real thing to food synergy and the fact that it really
works together. The ingredients work together and different foods work together in a way that makes
everything more bioavailable if we're eating real whole food. And I mean, in Colossians,
it says that he holds all things together. And I believe that has a lot to do with atomic
structure even. I believe without Christ, we would all be chaos. He's holding even. He's holding even
ourselves together. He holds the food together. He holds the food system together. So you don't
have to be rich if you can simply find a way to access real food and just have more real food.
Not everything. But when you have a choice, like when we were going to the airport and I was
looking at my choices, I grabbed a couple apples and I went to the garden and got a couple
cucumbers because they have the natural packaging. It's easy to take them. And they're real food
with real ingredients. Yeah. So it's just when you're presented a choice,
if you can go with the less processed or unprocessed option.
Exactly.
And the more of those choices we make every day, the better it is for our bodies,
because God knows what he's doing.
He knew what he was up to.
Okay, can you tell us a little bit more about where we can go to find you
and to find this information?
Because this is just kind of like scratching the surface.
It really is.
And people are like, okay, I want to start.
And you have a whole blog dedicated.
to showing people in very simple ways how to start.
So tell us again more about that.
Okay.
You can find me at Sully Rested.
I named that after Jeremiah 616, S-O-U-L-Y-Rested.
And there I write about not just fresh flour,
a lot about fresh flour,
but all things about whole food and just simple living.
And I have a podcast,
the simple doesn't mean easy podcast,
where I talk about this every single week.
And please go to solelyrested.com slash fresh
because they are anyone who would like that pantry checklist and my recipes for fresh flour,
everything, I'll send it to them.
Okay.
Well, thank you so much.
This was such a peaceful and helpful conversation for me.
I learned a lot.
I know everyone's going to feel the same way.
I really encourage everyone to go to your blog.
There's a lot on there.
It's not just about this.
You talk about motherhood and homeschooling and your faith.
And I just, I love it so much.
We need peace and stability and to bring things.
more into our home in this very chaotic age.
So I just appreciate you.
So thank you for being here.
Thanks, Sally.
