Building Health, Business Idea, and Community

Here at Four Flags Journal we are flag planters. We plant financial flags, often in more than one jurisdiction and often more than one type of flag. We plant personal flags in our lives—the things that we stand for . . . and stand by. Our families, our faith, our community.

In our personal lives, one of those flags is our commitment to health. Part of the reason for that is that we love freedom as we oppose dependence. We do not believe that freedom and dependence coexist. So the path to real freedom is also the path to good health. I am not free and independent if my survival depends on my next trip to my doctor or my pharmacy. I may have to do that for now, but the good news is that for 99% of us we can rebuild our health and our immune system. It is amazing what our bodies will do if we just return to God’s plan for health. God always gets it right!

And age does not seem to matter. One woman that we know of, at age 85, having been on three blood pressure medications for 30 years, experienced normal blood pressure, without medication, in a few short weeks after she changed her diet and lifestyle. During the process she was monitored by a medical doctor as a safeguard. But she did it.

For most of us, our problem is that we are so well-marketed by corporations that we truly don’t realize how close at hand genuine and even robust health would be if only we quit taking in the toxins and start nourishing ourselves in the way that God intended.

Every time we publish an article like this we get letters about how “my high blood pressure is in my family and there is nothing I can do about it” and related comments. Here is what we hear from Dr. Loraine Day in that regard. It is true that genetics play a part in health. In every family there is a weak link in the chain. In my family it might be heart and blood pressure, in another diabetes or cancer (believe it or not the two are related). If I am from a family for which cancer is the weak link, then if my immune system becomes compromised, I am likely to develop cancer—because that is where the family weakness is. But if my immune system stays strong, that genetic code will never be triggered.

This should make clear how important it is to protect and build our immune system. Although it is better to begin before we develop symptoms, we still can return to health. Is that chocolate cake with all the icing on it really worth sacrificing my health freedom? That’s the question we each have to answer for ourselves.

Some of you are reporting progress in this regard and we love to hear it. One way to add super nutrition is with sprouts. You can sprout just about any vegetable seed except for the nightshades (tomato, potato, and eggplant are examples of nightshades. The sprouts of nightshades are toxic). When you sprout the seed, you increase the nutrition exponentially. You can add the sprouts to salads and smoothies. In fact, although we frown on cooking (heat destroys nutrition), if you plan to cook beans you will increase the nutritional value several times over, and make cooking faster, if you sprout the beans first.

Our thanks go to David Chanley for this account of his beginning experiments and success with sprouting. David mentions selling sprouts in his area. This has been a recurring thought with us here at FFJ. We have observed a huge market for organic produce in Buenos Aires. We know of at least three suppliers who will deliver your order to your home and one that will deliver a week’s supply of prepared organic meals to your door as well. And yet we know of no supplier of sprouts. We see them in the grocery store occasionally. This, together with the fact that the growth of the organic and health market is predicted to be in a major uptrend for many years to come indicates that this could be a very good overlooked niche business opportunity. So David may be onto something and we join him in sharing his first efforts.

Congratulations, David, on selling your very first sprout experiment to a bona fide restaurant!

Sprouting Serendipity
by David Chanley

When I got some bean sprout seeds the supplier said I could make money sprouting and selling them. The seeds cost triple what regular beans cost, so farming them should also be more lucrative than farming regular beans. But that is another story. I needed a sprouting system. I didn’t want to get a bucket and put holes in the bottom and have to tend to a drippy bucket. So I improvised with what I already had.

I put some seeds in a pitcher of water and soaked them overnight. Then I strained and rinsed them, returning the moist seeds to the pitcher. They required soaking and rinsing about every four hours. After two days the soaking was floating the seed shells to the top. So I scooped them up and ate them while soaking the seeds.

But the sprouts didn’t look happy in the pitcher getting tumbled around when I was handling them. So I transferred them into a bowl. There they put their roots down and their shoots up and grew like happy sprouts. They still wanted to be soaked and rinsed every four hours or so. But quickly they had intertwined their roots and the strainer to catch them in the draining rinse water was no longer needed.

In the bowl they looked like a little hydroponics culture. So I treated them like a hydroponics culture. Sometimes I even left some water in the bowl for their roots. But fearing infections I still rinsed them and changed their water regularly and let their roots air out at times. A day or two before harvesting I put them at a window so the light would help develop the green parts. There they all grew straight and parallel toward the light. Before harvest they got a good soak to plump up to stay moister longer.

The local gourmet burger restaurant placed an order. So I sold them my very first trial batch. They were very pleased and placed a steady order of three batches a week. The shoots were straight and parallel. They even asked how I got the sprouts so clean. They cut the clean, straight shoots from the roots and put them in their topping display case. They used the clean roots for the veggie burger and as a topping. The extra they took home to go into a stir fry for dinner.

The sprouts looked so good many customers commented about them. So the burger place is also going to be a retail outlet for my sprouts too. I was pleased. The results of my improvised sprouting system got me a good customer, market, and made me look like an expert with my very first trial batch. What serendipity.

I applied more of my aquaculture experience to my sprouting project to make it even better. I knew microscopic infecting organisms can bloom exponentially as time passes. I also knew they have their greatest population densities on the surfaces of things. So good rinses and complete water changes would help keep infecting microorganisms from blooming. Cleaning or changing the container would also help.

So I further developed my gourmet seed sprouting system. The first stage is sprouting the seed. This I do in a pitcher of water. The seeds soak overnight. The next morning they begin the rinse-and-leave-moist steps for two days. After rinsing the old water out, the seeds are allowed to soak in the new water a few minutes. Then that water is also dumped out through a strainer to catch those that could have gotten away. The moist seeds are then left to air out and grow. Airing out the sprouts helps minimize the infecting microorganisms’ ability to bloom. This water change and rinsing is repeated every four hours or so.

After two days and three nights the seeds, after rinsing, are transferred to a smaller bowl to air out. This puts them in a container with a new clean dry surface. The microorganisms that could be blooming on the surface of the pitcher no longer can risk infecting the sprouts. In this bowl the sprouts intertwine their roots as they grow. And the shoots of the sprouts begin growing upward. They still get the water change, soak, rinse, and air out every four hours or so. I fill the bowl and let them soak a few minutes. Then they get drained, and rinsed, and drained again. After that they are left to air out and grow. Before long their roots are sufficiently intertwined so you no longer need a strainer to catch any sprouts floating out in the rinse water.

After four days and five nights the seeds, after rinsing, are transferred to a bigger bowl to air out. Once again the sprouts get a new container with a new, clean, and dry surface. So again the ability of the infecting microorganisms to grow and bloom is cut short. They also still get their water change, soak, rinse, and air out every four hours or so. This bowl is placed at a window so the sprouts can grow toward the light. The light also helps develop their green parts. The shoots grow straight and parallel, while the roots grow intertwined. During the day some water can be left in the bowl to keep the roots wet as the shoots grow and air out. But to help control infectious things from blooming this should not be done over consecutive water changes, or over night when there is more time between water changes.

On the sixth day after seven nights the gourmet sprouts are ready for market. After the morning water change, soak, and rinse water is left covering the roots to help the sprouts build up hydration. Then after a rinse, soak, and rinse the sprouts are ready for market.

(End)

Good job, David. David is a marine biologist and, as you can tell, is applying some of those methods. For a family, sprouts are very easy. They require an initial soaking, which we do at our house in glass jars, then just drain and after that rinse and drain the sprouts twice a day. For our personal sprouting we buy plastic screen, cut it to cover the tops of the jars and fasten with a rubber band. Then it is easy to just run water through the screen at the top of the jar onto the seeds, rinse, upend the jars in a dish drainer and we are finished. Less than one minute per jar is all the time it takes! For some seeds, rinsing three times a day is a good idea but if you miss one rinse, they won’t die. No soaking is required except initially. It is amazing to see the jar fill up with little green sprouts. At one point we usually screw a lid on the jars and put them in the refrigerator and as we take sprouts out for salad, the jars magically begin to fill up again.

Also you do not have to buy special sprouting seeds. We do buy organic (untreated) seeds but any organic seed that has not been mishandled will sprout nicely. At one time we bought the expensive sprouting seed as well but it is amazing what experimenting will teach you over time. So we hope you’ll all get started if you haven’t already. As with most things, experience counts. But it is not difficult to do. We’ve done a lot of sprouting over the years so if you try it and have questions, don’t hesitate to ask. For a commercial operation, it would be wise, we think, to set up an automated sprouting system. But that is another subject.

Incidentally, we also think this is a wonderful idea for those who are storing emergency food supplies Several buckets of viable seeds, stored properly, can provide a LOT of salad in a relatively small space—for years to come.
And while we are on the subject, Rebekah Kelley this week also sent us a picture of her latest sprout project which is featured at the top of the page. Thanks, Rebekah. Good job! Looks like we have a few people taking up sprouting. Thanks so much for sending us the photos.

For those of us who eat mostly fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds and grains, and mostly raw, sprouts are a great source of protein along with all the other super nutrition that they offer.

Opting for good health has several benefits. First, it enables us to live where we want and do what we want. Next are the economic benefits. Not only do we pay less for doctors and nothing for prescriptions, we are much less likely to be in an assisted living facility with someone taking money from our wallet every month. Far better to enjoy that money or leave it to our children instead of gifting it to the medical industry. And we have yet another reason. We have political reasons for maintaining excellent health. We hope that if you have not already joined us in this project, you will do it soon.

This video, Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead is guaranteed to inspire you. It is the true story of the return to health of two men from an autoimmune disease. We think you’ll like it! We did. We watched it twice!

Building Community

We conclude with a great, true story of community, also contributed this week by another of our fantastic subscribers.

You know how we say cut out the corporations and deal locally? Buy from our neighbors, keep our money in our community, support our local farmers and businesses? Well we had a conversation with one of our friends and subscribers this week that is the kind of thing that does NOT make your day, it makes your whole week! What a great example of this principle.

He needed to borrow $10,000. Did he go to the bank for a loan? He didn’t need to. In true bypass-the-bankster form, another Four Flags Journal reader loaned him the money he needed at 10% interest. They did everything properly. They had a contract and the buyer provided appropriate collateral. All done legally and above board. One has the money he needs for his current project, the lender is getting 10% interest instead of 1.5%. The only loser is the bank. And here at FFJ we are cheering!

Until next time, here’s to your good health–both physical and financial!

Arlean
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