About
Homesteading, Herbals, and Homeopathy

  I grew up at my grandmother's knee, gardening and canning, being taught to do these things by her and with her little lady friends.  I played under her makeshift quilt frame made from 1x2s and C clamps which sat on saw horses in the middle of her dining room.  Wall to wall quilts and old ladies watching their stories while hand quilting on chalk lines free-handed onto the fabric by my Mawmaw.  Her specialty was star quilts, her diamond shaped piecing template made from a textured thick material that I am pretty sure was a scrap from some building project in somebody's house she knew or was related. 

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I would spend hours during the summer under the quilts like it was my tent, playing with whatever, maybe even the box of buttons she had in the box my Bug Bunny electric toothbrush came in because she used everything that seemed useful.  It's where I got my hobbit-like hoarding I suppose because I also use anything remotely useful and have boxes full of bits and bobs "just in case."  I call it controlled hoarding.  But I digress.  I would get bored under my tent and come out to sit next to some old lady, I had my pick (funny, now I am probably close to the age of some of those "old" ladies at least within 10 years).  They would show me how to quilt more than one stitch at a go.  To this day I am still amazed at the dexterity and quickness with which these ladies could bang out a handmade quilt from a few yards of fabric to a full on pieced and finished work of art.  And make no mistake, it is art. Even now with machines it is, but without machines and nothing but some sewing needles, thread, and 10 fingers working every stitch in the actual quilting.  It's a labor of love, and Mawmaw loved, A LOT.  Everybody she knew had one of her quilts.  I still have several finished and some tops that need finishing, but I have trouble hiring it done on a machine.  It seems blasphemous.  It's in my wheel house but my true love is, ironically, the gardening.

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I was in the garden, whether I liked it or not, with Mawmaw all Summer long.  I got to pick the cucumbers, which I hated and griped about at length.  She told me she hated it too which was why I got to do it.  They are prickly and you had to turn the vines to grab the fruit and there might be a snake (which she would make me kill- I guess to build character or something, but I won't now unless it is poisonous).  I remember swearing that when I got older, there was no reason to grow stuff because the grocery store had all of it already canned and ready to go, no planting, no watering, no picking, no snapping or shelling, just open the can and voila!  Boy did I ever misjudge myself.  My entire adult life, I have found some way to garden things whether vegetable or ornamentals or the combination of the two.  Crawling around under bushes never considering that a snake might be there until I am usually in so far that I realize, "You better take a gander around you RIGHT NOW."  I have planted vegetable amongst my ornamentals, built raised beds in wrong and right places, dug a spot behind a building in place only used to collect pots or other things so why not till it.  I even once grew a pumpkin vine from my compost pile behind a shed because it volunteered, and why not just let it grow and see. I stopped using chemicals once I realized just how bad some of them are and my son was diagnosed with (what I think is toxin induced) autism, and injury exacerbated by environmental toxins and inoculations.  To say I didn't know how much I didn't know would be a vast understatement.

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Fast forward through 4 years of Bio-med and enter homeopathy.  A whole new world to try to understand, but I started to research.  I read, I researched, and I found a classical homeopath.  It was all out of pocket, and it was not cheap. His only issue was when he stopped talking, regressed (I will do an entire blog post on it). However, he had rarely been sick, ever   No colds really, no ear infections but that was because his immune system was so overactive, and suddenly we had an ACUTE illness..  Now after beginning homeopathic remedies, he got something like the second fever of his life and what seemed a pretty bad cold.  Maybe the first fever that amounted to anything.  It was 101 and he was six and all I had ever know was get a fever DOWN.  Frantic I called our homeopath, and he calmed me somewhat by saying "fevers are normal."  Well, that was just crazy, right?  You get fevers to go down, PERIOD, right? He warned me that Pulsatilla might make it spike (and it did) but not to worry continue to give him a water dose every 30 minutes fo a while and call back if I needed to.  So, I did what he said, and when his fever spiked to an unheard of in our house 103, I called him back, frantic, at like 3 a.m.  He reassured me it was normal and to continue and to alternate the 3 remedies Pulsatilla, Belladonna, and Hepar Sulph. 

 

I did this and oddly, my son was sick for a few days (remember he was rarely sick) but the fever spiked a few times and evened out.  He slept, a lot, which was also strange.  The cold got better and we resumed Constitutional remedies.  He said his first complete sentence, spontaneously, without prompting since before his regression shortly after the fever.  I was fascinated since I used the Waldorf model to homeschool him, AND I had read a fair amount of Steiner.  Steiner talked a lot about fevers and what they were and what they did not only physically but existentially.  I had just encountered how good a fever could be. I had always felt luck that he wasn't ever sick, and now my paradigm had changed. 

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Our homeopath suggested Echinacea tincture when ACUTES happened to boost immunity.  We chelated with cilantro and chlorella, rather than the Bio-med IV infusions (far better from a standpoint of having to get a child okay with needles who was terrified of them).  All of these things, the homeopathy, the herbal tinctures fell right into growing up with my grandmother and gardening and being given honey and lemon juice mixed with a little Rocking Rye for coughs (which had far less alcohol than Nyquil I assure you).  It felt like I was going home, and it was working on more than one level.  We have been using homeopathy Constitutionally and Acutely for 14 years. 

 

I make tinctures from medicinal herbs that I grow on our farm.  When I came here I began populating the grounds with medicinal herbs and what others would consider weeds.  I use permaculture practices and am chemical free unless ABSOLUTELY necessary which is rare.  The only chemical that I keep on hand is hornet spray because we have the largest hornets around here I have ever seen in my life. Literally as large as my thumb and I have large hands for a "lady" (quotes because I may not be considered very lady-like).  I populate my land with things that the wildlife will enjoy, my family can enjoy and benefit from, and I use as much of even the refuse that I can.  For example, logs and branches whether cut or that have fallen, I use in hugelkultur beds and if we burn any of the wood we use the ash in the beds or gardens.

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Everything that I have spent my life involved in, that I loved, enjoyed has culminated into this, my homestead healing journey.  I want to share these loves of my life with others.  I want to show people that a simpler way of life can be rewarding and productive.  Our work can be pleasurable and rewarding and also fulfill us in ways that a "job" cannot.  I want to help people realize the value of Mother Nature and all she has to offer us  whether her bounty comes in the form of food, "medicine", or just the enjoyment that the land has to offer us.

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