Freedom Farmstead

The journey towards Freedom continues to be just that -- A JOURNEY. Before we began to understand the SCIENCE behind raw milk and pasture raised animal products, much of our conviction about food was based on a very basic understanding of a God who created things a certain way for a certain reason. Romans 1 says, "For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them (v. 19)," but "claiming to be wise, they became fools (v. 22)." We believe a lot of our sickness, obesity, depression and general lack of energy stem from just that -- losing sight of the simplicity of food and the God who created it. In our pride, we began to pack our animals into crowded quarters feeding them unnatural feed, and now we've gone so far as creating lab-grown "meat." Why? All for the almighty dollar! And at the expense of our health. Now that reports are beginning to reveal the tip of an iceberg of scientific data that proves pasture raised animals as healthiest and their products the most nutrient-dense, many of us nod in agreement like we somehow knew that all along... But there is an agenda to silence these truths and to portray them as dangerous misinformation. We still remember the moment we found out that some wheat farmers used glyphosate, a weed killer believed to 'probably cause cancer' according to the WHO, to speed up the harvesting process, improve their yield and cut costs. We thought there were organizations in place to ensure things like this didn't happen -- someone to stand up for the people and protect the health of the nation. But we soon discovered that many things were promoted or silenced based upon $$$$$$$. Since then, we haven't been so surprised to learn more and more of the lies in the food industry. There seem to be practical answers for a lot the mysterious health issues popping up, and most of them are due to man's interference with food. The two that really got our wheels turning were dairy and wheat. We knew that these were two food sources that most cultures ate and some even subsided upon completely at times. So, what happened in the past few centuries that made these foods the evil that many of us consider them? WHEAT: Aside from the glyphosate used to harvest the field for the biggest buck, we have also ignored the traditional art of bread making -- fermentation. That may sound intimidating, but it's just a fancy way of saying that you let the dough sit for a while using wild yeast to predigest the phytates -- a special coating on nuts and seeds that allows them to pass through the digestion system of a bird or an animal in whole form to be planted elsewhere. DAIRY: Pasteurization and homogenization destroy the enzymes necessary to breakdown the milk and absorb the nutrients in a time-released fashion.  These processes also completely denature and kill off the life-giving nutrients that milk contains in its purest form. We are also discovering more about the difference between A1 and A2 milk. It doesn't stop there. Refined sugars, artificial sweeteners, commercial vegetable oils, MSG, soy, sugar, food coloring (i.e. red 6), sulfites, nitrites and nitrates, artificial sweeteners, BHA, and BHT.... The list goes on! We recognize that reading a list like this can seem daunting especially when you have been eating the Standard American Diet (SAD) your whole life. (Psst... You're in good company!!) When all of this started to unravel for us, we felt convicted yet overwhelmed. Did we need a PhD in food science just to nourish our family?? So, to start, we would ask ourselves this very simple question:Did God make it? Or did man make it?If it was made it in a factory, then chances are they probably don't care about the health of us or our children. Look at the likes of Steve Jobs and other tech execs who make their millions selling screens and social media, all the while they don't allow their own kids to take part in it or at least limit it drastically. I often wonder if the producers o