Ep 1258 | Is Homesteading the American Dream? Secrets to Self-Sufficient Living | Michelle Visser

Summary

Podcast Summary:

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey
Episode 1258 | Is Homesteading the American Dream? Secrets to Self-Sufficient Living | Guest: Michelle Visser
Date: October 24, 2025

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Main Theme and Purpose

In this episode, Allie Beth Stuckey sits down with Michelle Visser, author of the blog "Solely Rested," for an encouraging deep-dive into the world of homesteading, self-sufficiency, and reclaiming healthier food habits. They discuss how even small steps toward food autonomy and real ingredients can transform not only physical health but the spirit of a home. Grounding their discussion in Christian faith, they address why and how Americans—whether on a farm or in a suburb—might embrace elements of homesteading in the modern age.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Michelle’s Background and Homesteading Journey

• Introduction to Michelle Visser:

  • Lifelong sweetheart with husband Billy, four adult daughters, homeschooled for 20 years (04:08).
  • Moved from the Philadelphia suburbs to New England, guided by faith and a sense of calling rather than a concrete plan (08:49).

• Accidental Homesteaders:

  • Michelle did not initially identify as a homesteader; the transition started with moving to 14 acres of forested land in New England, which turned out to contain a "sugar bush"—a grove of maples suitable for syrup production (09:43).

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Faith and Family as the Foundation

• Integrating Homeschooling & Homesteading:

  • The home was always the educational and spiritual center; Michelle emphasizes routine Bible study as central to the family's development and cohesion (07:01).
  • “Everything comes back to the home.” – Michelle (07:01)

• Advice for Girl Moms:

  • “Don’t put yourself or your daughters in a box… Each girl is very unique and different...” (05:32)
  • Pray for their future spouse from birth—Michelle shares an emotional moment realizing her prayers were answered in her first son-in-law (06:24).

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Learning the Basics: First Steps in Homesteading

• First Homesteading Activities:

  • Learned by doing; first tapped maple trees for syrup (10:49), started raising chickens, ducks, rabbits (15:31).
  • “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…” – Michelle (16:09)

• Building Knowledge:

  • Relied on YouTube and the few online resources available at the time (16:47).
  • Started the "Solely Rested" blog to document and share her journey (17:28); blog name inspired by Jeremiah 6:16.

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The Connection Between Food, History, and Health

Real Food vs. Processed: Why It Matters

• From Processed to Real Food:

  • Michelle and her family experienced tangible health benefits switching to whole, “real” food—including more energy, improved sleep, and greater enjoyment in preparing meals (20:58).
  • “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.” – Michelle (21:17)

• Making Convenience Work for You:

  • Advocates for bulk preparation and organization to make real food practical; shares about her popular pantry checklist (23:59).

Wheat, Flour, and How American Bread Changed

• The Problem with Modern Flour:

  • Historical shift from stone-ground wheat (whole grain) to steel milled, heavily refined "white" flour beginning around 1880 led to loss of nutrients (specifically, the bran and the germ), and later, related health crises like pellagra (31:15–36:35).
  • “What’s sitting on the store shelf is simply giving us no nutrition at all, which was never God’s intention.” – Michelle (29:35)

• “Enriched” Flour:

  • When the U.S. confronted deficiencies, flour was "enriched" with synthetic vitamins and minerals, but this only replaced a fraction of what was lost (37:25).
  • Folic acid—added for birth defect prevention—is not the same (or as beneficial) as natural folate (38:05–39:55).
  • “What they put back was not even 20% of what was taken out. And what they put back was synthetic.” – Michelle (37:25)

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Gluten: Is It the Real Culprit?

• Why Americans Have Issues with Gluten:

  • Not necessarily gluten itself, but industrial changes since the 1950s (Green Revolution): wheat now has a larger endosperm (more gluten proteins), plus widespread use of pesticides like glyphosate damages gut health (46:27).
  • “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.” – Michelle (47:52)
  • Gut sensitivity is compounded by the way modern wheat is milled and grown.

• Ancient & Heritage Grains (and Sourdough):

  • Michelle recommends organic, ancient grains (e.g., spelt, einkorn) for those with gluten sensitivity—these grains haven’t been subject to the same genetic modifications and pesticide exposure and naturally contain less gluten (54:13).
  • Many people who react badly to American bread do fine with homemade sourdough (especially from old starters and freshly milled flour).

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Reclaiming the “American Dream” of Self-Sufficiency

• You Don’t Need a Farm to Start:
  • Real food and self-sufficiency start in the kitchen; you don’t need land or wealth to make impactful changes (55:34).
  • “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…can make changes.” – Michelle (55:34)
  • Simple, conscious choices (“apples and cucumbers for a snack instead of processed food”) add up to better health and honoring God’s provision (56:42).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Michelle on Real Food:
  “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.” (09:46)

• Michelle on Faithful Living:
  “God calls us to jobs and to work, whatever He’s prepared for us. And it’s not usually easy…But he does promise us rest for our soul. And that’s enough.” (18:17)

• Michelle on Gluten Issues:
  "We now have wheat that has more proteins—it’s just more than was ever intended. We’ve just made, like, a frankenwheat. And…the gluten is excessive, but it gets worse, because…glyphosate is in trace amounts in your flour. It’s just…it’s there.” (46:27)

• Allie on Personal Health:
  “I have Hashimoto’s…and it comes back that I am very, very sensitive to gluten…But then I also hear that if you go to other countries and you eat bread or pasta 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.” (41:59)

• Michelle’s Encouragement to Beginners:
  “You don’t have to be rich…All of us have a kitchen, and all of us…can make changes…Just have more real food…when you have a choice.” (55:34)

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Important Timestamps

• 02:31 – Michelle introduces herself and family background
• 07:01 – Importance of home in education & faith
• 08:49 – Moving to New England, accidentally becoming homesteaders
• 15:31 – First experiences with chickens, eggs, and realizing what real food means
• 23:59 – Practical tips for organizing a real-food kitchen & bulk prep
• 29:35 – Deep dive into the history of flour milling and loss of nutrients
• 37:25 – Problems with synthetic “enrichment” of flour; health impacts
• 46:27–47:52 – “Frankenwheat,” glyphosate, and the rise of gluten-sensitivity in the U.S.
• 54:13 – Ancient grains as a solution for gluten-sensitive listeners
• 55:34 – Final encouragement: small changes in any home make a difference

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Where to Find Michelle Visser

• Blog: Solely Rested – Practical guides, recipes, and resources for whole food and homesteading, grounded in Christian values.
• Podcast: "Simple Doesn’t Mean Easy"
• Free Resource: Pantry checklist and fresh flour recipes at solelyrested.com/fresh

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Takeaways

• Self-sufficiency starts with understanding what’s in your kitchen—not with owning land or animals.
• Small, incremental changes (like switching to loose-leaf tea or bulk-making seasonings) can bring profound benefits to health and spiritual well-being.
• Looking critically at the industrial food system, especially how wheat and flour have changed, empowers families to make informed, healthier choices.
• Ancient faith and “old ways” have a surprising power to bring rest, resiliency, and peace in a chaotic age.

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This summary captures the essential content and wisdom of the episode—inspiring those new to homesteading and those simply seeking a more intentional, faith-filled way of living and eating in modern America.

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

Of course. First of all, thank you for inviting me. I'm thrilled to be here.

[A]

Me too.

[B]

My name's Michelle Visser. I am, I guess I should say first and foremost, I am a wife to my high school sweetheart.

[A]

Aw.

[B]

I met Billy Visser in fourth grade, actually. So what do you call that? Can you call it an elementary school?

[A]

I have a lifelong sweetheart.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Did y'. All. Was it love at first sight at nine years old, actually.

[B]

It's so funny. Billie was very quiet and Michelle was very. Talk to everybody.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And I remember my first memory wasn't until seventh grade. That's how quiet he was. And he, like, 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.

[A]

Like you kind of felt for him. I did.

[B]

And I thought, I wish he would talk to me.

[A]

Yeah. Okay.

[B]

Well, eventually he did.

[A]

Yes. I didn't know that we were going to start with a love story, but now I got to hear more about it. Okay, so when did the sparks fly?

[B]

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.

[A]

And you obviously said, yes. And then from there, was it like, okay, this is it?

[B]

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 all worked out.

[A]

It did. And how many kids?

[B]

We have four adult daughters.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And I got to homeschool them for 20 years, from kindergarten through 12th grade. So that was such a blessing. All four of them.

[A]

And that was.

[B]

And they turned out okay.

[A]

They turned out okay. There's one here. She looks completely normal. She's great. And obviously that sarcasm. I'm a big, big fan of homeschool. Okay, so that was back in the 90s that you were making the decision to homeschool. Correct.

[B]

Let me think about that. 80s 90s, maybe she was born in 95. 95.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

So, yeah. Yeah.

[A]

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

[B]

Right.

[A]

So tell me how you made the decision to homeschool your kids.

[B]

Honestly, it wasn't something I had even really heard about until Logan My oldest daughter was 4 and I was at Just 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.

[A]

Yes. Okay, four girls, tell us, can you give us some advice for those of us who are girl moms?

[B]

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, you know, 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 born, especially. I feel like with the 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.

[A]

I've been praying for you for so long.

[B]

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

[A]

Yes. Without even knowing. Without even knowing his name. That's amazing. 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 Brad and all of the things that you know about Brad, 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?

[B]

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 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 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?

[A]

And when did you start homesteading? Was that in the very, very beginning?

[B]

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 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. 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 in every way we could with scripture and with godly leadership and with prayer. And we just knew for sure. We were supposed, 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.

[A]

Okay, so you moved without knowing what those jobs were.

[B]

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. We knew it had 14 acres, 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 do sugar making. But Here we moved into a sugar bush and we started tapping trees. That was one of the first things God called us to see.

[A]

Okay. A lot of people listening have no idea what you're talking about.

[B]

Oh, really? Yes.

[A]

What's a sugar bush and what is t tapping trees for sugar?

[B]

Sugarbush just means a bunch of trees that are tappable. 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.

[A]

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[B]

I did have the background from my childhood. Both of my parents were rural. They were from rural families that farmed. 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 were from West Virginia, but dad would always correct me. I was from Maryland, but they Both were actually one of 10 kids. Honest, true story. I think I was about 7 or 8 years old when I realized every parent isn't one of 10 children. 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 butchering day on my grandparents farm. Looking back to think that like a 6 year old and 8, 10 year old loved it. But I did. I loved it. It was so much fun and you could 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 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, Hillbilly Hills.

[A]

Loving it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So good.

[B]

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 hillbilly. I didn't know it was called the hillbilly highway. JD Taught me that. And literally industrial, the industrial age of factories up north brought a lot of true hillbillies from the backwoods 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.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

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? Yeah. So, yes, we had the background, but not the, the personal hands on knowledge.

[A]

Yes. It's not like you were raised nurturing and on the. 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?

[B]

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 outbuildings 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 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? 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.

[A]

And how did y' all learn how to do that? Nowadays you can watch a YouTube video. Yeah. Or Grok will tell you. So did you buy a book? Did.

[B]

They were YouTube videos. It was only 11 years ago, so there were YouTube videos.

[A]

But. 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.

[B]

And that's not my fault. I didn't anywhere.

[A]

No, that's okay. This was not the 90s. This was just.

[B]

We moved in 2003, 2013, I believe.

[A]

Okay. So the homesteading while you were raising your kids was not really something you were doing. You're homeschooling before you were home setting. Got it. Okay, so then about 12, 14 years ago, it sounds like that's when you moved to move to the sugar bush.

[B]

11 years ago. Yeah.

[A]

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.

[B]

From, but there was no. There was no book. And there were very few, very few blog posts, and they weren't detailed. 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 lead, 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 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. So I was putting it on social media. Now I went to Facebook and every day I'm putting. And my daughters 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's enough.

[A]

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?

[B]

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 and a pig farmer. Only God would have pulled little Michelle Visser out of the suburbs and did that.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

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 of 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, antifreeze as one of its ingredients, I could make my own ice cream. So little by little, it took I. I would always recommend to people never to just think you're gonna 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.

[A]

What differences did you see in your own body and in the health of your family when you started making those changes?

[B]

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. Just more energy, sleeping better, just really good overall.

[A]

Next sponsor is Hillsdale, y'. All, we know that the university system in the United States, it is so captured by progressive ideology. You might be so scared to send your child to college, or maybe you're thinking about trying to go back to school yourself and you're just afraid of continuing that education because of how hot, hostile this environment is to Christians and conservatives. You should check out Hillsdale. Hillsdale actually cares about our Christian values, cares about the Constitution. And you need to know about where we get our values, why this country is so great. Like, what did the founders actually believe? What did they write? You need to take their courses that will explain that. For example, one of their courses is about the Federalist Papers. You will walk through the key ideas behind our founding documents. 10 lectures each around 30 minutes. And it's totally free and it's completely self paced. They have 40 free courses that they offer on everything from CS Lewis to the Constitution to ancient Rome. If you want to get smarter, you can do that at any time in your life and you again, can go at your own pace, totally for free. What a good deal. Go to Hillsdale Edu Relatable to enroll. There's no cost. It's easy to get started. That's Hillsdale Edu Relatable. You always hear sometimes when people have some kind of like chronic illness, that when they start making their own food and they start taking out the processed 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?

[B]

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 just 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 bit. 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. 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?

[A]

No, I drink tea probably every night.

[B]

I'm in the South. That's right.

[A]

I just remembered. Oh, no. Yeah. Well, it's different. I don't. I actually don't really like iced tea that much, but, like, tea at night? Yeah.

[B]

Like a cup of warm tea.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

It's my love language. I love it.

[A]

You know, it's the organic kind and all of that.

[B]

Okay, but if you're drinking organic tea, then you don't have to worry about the pesticides.

[A]

So. But even the bleached.

[B]

The bag, bleached bags, it's just.

[A]

So maybe loose leaf tea is the way to go.

[B]

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.

[A]

Okay, okay. So you started making your own kombucha when you realized, okay, all of these different components of the, I guess processed tea that you are buying are not really good for you.

[B]

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 onto something I really can make homemade that my family's gonna like instead of the processed stuff. So I just went on a roll from there and I started writing all about it on the blog and sharing all the rest 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 bleached 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 had been. We have records from the Fertile Crescent that they had grain banks and they had cuneiform 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 banca. And if the wheat merchant ever went out of business, then they would actually break the bench. And the word for that is something, something like rapta, if you put it together, banco 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, Allie, 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 wheat berry. And unfortunately in modern day, we've stripped it of that.

[A]

Next sponsor is Good ranchers. Y', all, we need to get back to the dinner table. Those conversations with our kids are so formative and so important and you want to make sure that the American dinner table is filled with American products, right? You want to support American farms and ranches. They've been supporting us for so long. We need to give back and support them. So that's why you should buy your meat from good ranchers. Because every single bit of their meat, whether it's their bacon or their chicken or their steaks or their seafood, it's all from an American farmer ranch. It's really high quality. It's really good. This is a way to make sure that you're getting your protein, that you're supporting this American industry. Makes your life easier. You never have to grocery shop for meat again. Just get sent on dry ice to your front door. We love it. We've been eating good ranchers for years in our home. Another Christian family owned company that you want to support. You can even rely on them for Thanksgiving. Of course. It's an American holiday. You should support the American meat industry. Go to good ranchers.com ally use code ally for $40 off. That's good ranchers.com allycode alley okay, tell me what else you learned about flour. Because now, yes, there is that enriched bleach flour, 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. And. But now there are healthier options, it seems like, in the grocery store. Can we trust that?

[B]

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 grain 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 wheat berry. 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 bran. It makes up about 15% of the wheat berry. And then the very internal area of the wheat berry 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?

[A]

My mom does.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yes. You should eat some. I've never done it. I've never done it.

[B]

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 grow.

[A]

And what's so good for you about them?

[B]

Because they are that little part of the seed that has germinated and. 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 wheat berry that's called the germ, 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 wheat berry to give the food to the germ as it's growing.

[A]

Okay, gotcha.

[B]

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 wheat berry into flour and everything was mixed together. They would sift out some of the bran because the bran is harder and you're not going to get a nice soft flour with it. But pretty much the whole wheat berry 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 more output, he wanted more money, as all business persons do.

[A]

How can we make more of this for cheaper?

[B]

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 endosperm flour, which is what everybody wanted, because the bran, 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 bran 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.

[A]

This is, like, early 1900s, correct?

[B]

It was actually 1904 that the first case of pellagra was noted in the US 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. 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 pellagra, 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 wheat berry? 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.

[A]

So that's why they put the niacin back in.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

And you see that in the ingredients on the back of bread packages now.

[B]

Exactly. In 1940, something early 40s, the government.

[A]

It took a while.

[B]

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 pellag. 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 and 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.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So I think it Would those things.

[A]

Be found in a wheat germ, like can iron and all the things that they had to reinsert back into bread be found?

[B]

What 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.

[A]

Maybe. Okay. In a crisis, sure. But not ideal.

[B]

Correct.

[A]

Okay, so what happened after that, then?

[B]

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 difference. We saw a decrease in birth defects. But what they were adding back in was folic acid.

[A]

Not folate.

[B]

Exactly. Not folate. And folate is very needed in our body because it literally repairs our cells. And if the cell goes unrepaired, without out 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 flour, 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 wheat berry 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 a live food, and that's the way it's supposed to be. So they added the folic acid back in, and they couldn't do folate or 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 flower that was going to give them about 100 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. 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. And unfortunately, they have found that folic acid can itself lead to cancer. There have been studies that have shown.

[A]

I did not know that.

[B]

That it can cause that in the certain cells. Every cell is different. Depends on the state of the cell. But Tufts University did a study. For over 20 years, they followed the cancer. I didn't know 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.

[A]

It seems to be going up right now, too. Yeah, I don't know. I just.

[B]

I know.

[A]

And that's just anecdotal, but I just heard of a lot of young people over the past few years getting colorectal cancer.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Next sponsor is Jace Medical. You don't want to be paranoid, but you do want to be prepared. You want to be prepared for whatever comes next. And we don't know, we can't predict the future. We don't know if there's going to be another, you know, weather catastrophe, if there's going to be a supply chain issue, if there's going to be something that stops you from being able to get the medications you need, whether it's antibiotics because you have some kind of infection, even a life threatening infection, or whether it's the, it's the prescriptions that you and your family rely on on a daily basis. You don't want to have to rely on the supply chain, rely on your pharmacy or even rely on your doctor if you really need those, those quickly. So get an emergency stash. You can get a Jace case that's an emergency stash of antibiotics. You can also get Jace daily case which is a year long supply of the prescriptions that you and your family rely on. This is a way to love your family well, to serve your family well and just to be prepared should anything happen. Go to jace.com use code ALI at checkout for a discount. That is jace j-a s e.com code ALLY.

[B]

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.

[A]

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 do a lot of people diagnosed when I was probably 19. And it's 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, 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 while 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.

[B]

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 pellagra 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. Just here's the ovens. How did they know? 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. 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 pellagra as we did. So both approaches worked.

[A]

Okay, so do you think gluten is unfairly demonized? And if so, why?

[B]

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 stalk. And they figured out how to make the bran, that 15% on the outer edge, tougher, which was great for the millers, because then the bran 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 it of, 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 bran and the germ, they were selling it as animal feed. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And when they. 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, extra expense. So there's definitely money involved in the whole story, is what I'm saying.

[A]

Okay, so what is it about the wheat germ that can help? Well, if I'm understanding, maybe I'm not understanding 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.

[B]

Right.

[A]

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.

[B]

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 acted like it had an ending point, but one of the things they did with wheat, another thing they did was they enlarged 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 bran. So now we have a wheat that is. 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. 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.

[A]

Flour.

[B]

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.

[A]

I learned from a friend who is very like, actually has celiacs. Okay. So she cannot.

[B]

My best friend has celiacs gluten.

[A]

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.

[B]

I was just gonna ask you that because that's huge. And when you said that you're having difficulties, I was gonna say, we need to get you a grain mill Allie day.

[A]

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 this 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.

[B]

I can tell you why it didn't make like you were getting all of your essential nutrients. Because a wheat berry, 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.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

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 dairy, and literally all of our essential nutrients are in those two things.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

If it's the good bread. If it's the good bread.

[A]

So tell us about milling your own flour. How do you do that.

[B]

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 West 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 flour 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 flour sacks. And he'd do that every couple weeks.

[A]

Last sponsor for the day is preborn. You guys know that we are living in a culture where lies are pervasive and lies are celebrated, especially when it comes to the lie of what is happening inside the womb. The abortion industry tries to tell young women, this is just a clump of cells. It's not going to hurt. You're not going to care. You'll be able to graduate, you'll be able to go back to your job, you'll be able to break up with your boyfriend. You'll be able to avoid this suffering, this pain, this hardship if you just kill your child. Child. But these women need to know the truth. They need to not only hear from a trusted person that this life matters and that you matter and you're not alone, but they also need to see and hear the reality, the humanity of that life inside the womb. That's why preborn exists. Preborn supplies pregnancy centers across the country with ultrasound equipment and other resources that they need to show women the truth of life inside the womb. And when that woman gets a sonogram and she, she sees the reality of her child, she is so much more likely to choose life. So by partnering with preborn, donating whatever you can, $28 is the cost of a life saving ultrasound. You are not only investing in saving the physical lives of these children. Like you are also allowing these women to hear the gospel. This is an eternal impact that you are having just by donating what you can to preborn. So go to preborn.com ally, make your donation today. That's preborn.com Allie.

[B]

So because we had a local mill in every town, it wasn't a problem, you go every few weeks and get your flour. Well, today you don't have to go to the gray mill and Wait for the horse 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. 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.

[A]

And tell me about the grains that you choose. How do you choose which grains to use?

[B]

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 wheat 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 in your mix.

[A]

And you can trust that if it says organic, that it.

[B]

That's what I'm told. I always question that, but I am told that there is generally really tight, stringent regulations over that. Yeah. So, I mean, you gotta get to a point that at some point, you just have trust.

[A]

Dress. Yeah, you do, you do. You do. Right?

[B]

So get organic wheat berries. And if you have any sort of gluten sensitivity, by the way, 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, I believe that. And one in three people are gluten sensitive like you are. I mean, one in three people.

[A]

Yeah. So I feel like, for me, it's gotten worse over time, actually, which I think I've heard a lot from people. Yeah.

[B]

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.

[A]

Is this like spelt?

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

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 Einkorn for an ancient grain. And all of these ancient grains had this harder hull around the outside, which made it that much more complicated to bother with. And if they had other ones to play around with and alter to make. Make franken flour 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.

[A]

Yeah. You know what? I'm gonna 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 flour. 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. That's the only way you can do it. Or that you have to live on 14 acres.

[B]

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 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.

[A]

Yeah. So it's just when you're presented a choice, if you can go with the less processed or unprocessed option.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

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 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.

[B]

Okay, you can find me at Solely Rested. I named that after Jeremiah 6:16 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 giving. And I have a podcast, the Simple Doesn't Mean Easy podcast, where I talk about this every single week. And please go to solyrested.com fresh because there anyone who would like that pantry checklist and my recipes for fresh flour, everything. I'll send it to them.

[A]

Okay, well, thank you so much. This was such a peaceful and helpful conversation for me. I learned a lot. I know everyone's gonna 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 homeschool 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. Exactly. So I just appreciate you. So thank you for being here.

[B]

Thanks, Ally.