From Scratch

Yesterday, I made 2 loaves of bread, "from scratch".  In other words, I mixed together flour, yeast ect.... (alright i did use an electric mixer) to form a ball of dough, which I then hand kneaded and set asisde to rise, then put in the oven and then 30 minutes later voila bread.  It was quite yummy too.  I made one "traditional" loaf in a loaf pan and then the other I seperated into 3 parts and braided them together, tucking the end underneath so it would not come unravleled while baking, it makes terrific "tear part" bread.  The sections of the braid pulled apart nicely and where just awesome dipped in the Guiness Stew I made to go with it.  The whole meal was "made from scratch" as they say.  Which got me thinking what exactly is meant by the phrase made from scratch?? Does it mean that I went to the grocery store and purchased the ingridents and then cobbled them together to make the meal, or does it mean that I grew, proceseed, stored the food before making into a meal?  Perhaps it means both, to the pioneers it meant growing and sowing and processing and storing and hoping that you harvested enogh to last the winter, but then they knew how to grind wheat into four and probally even had there own hand crank flour mill.  I have no idea how to do this, save for the litle bit I read in the "Little House on the Prairie" books.  Is it still possible to even buy one of these?  Do they even still make home wheat mills?? I don't know but now that I had the thought I might look it up.  However, my made from scratch meal just meant that I used ingridents from the grocery store to pull the meal together.  In the future I hope that more of the ingridents I use come from my garden or animals we raise, but for now I'll have to make do with the grocery store. 
PS does anyone have a recipe for pumpernickel bread that does not require one to have a bread machine?