In Honor of Earth Day: Here are some tips to help you live a cleaner life, leave less of a carbon footprint, and do your part to help keep our earth beautiful and healthy…. I am a bit ashamed to admit this, but there was once a time when "green" living and helping the environment was not on my mind. I admit to once having been a complete consumer, and not a producer. Well, times have changed! Here are ways you, too, can live a greener, healthier life on your own homestead, no matter where you are. Just four decades ago, and other than the “Stop Littering” campaigns that ran when I was a c ..read more

Inside: When it comes to timing the harvest of your medicinal herbs, questions always arise: When do you harvest the roots? The flowers? The leaves? Are all the plants the same? Do some plants have different harvest methods? Here are your answers—-find out the best time to harvest your herbs to get the strongest medicine power from the plant. Timing is important for herbal harvesting in order to obtain the highest quality herbs for your teas, tinctures, infused oils, and salves. If you’re going to harvest and prepare herbal remedies, you want them to be as effective and useful as they can be ..read more

I created this herbal tea for male health and performance several years ago for my husband. I’ve updated it to include scientific and clinical studies to support my choice of plants included in this recipe. If you need energy, are looking for general male wellness and help for the reproductive areas, this is a wonderful tonic tea to drink daily! Note: Women can enjoy it too! One day my husband asked me to make him an herbal tea that would help him with his hormone balance, give him some energy, support his prostate gland, and other reproductive organs and general performance. I was only t ..read more

Note: This article is about how and why you can and should easily make your own healthy calcium powder using eggshells from chickens. Find out the science behind eggshell calcium and simple directions for making calcium powder to support your bone health, teeth, and body. I am a midlife lady, and I have watched the enamel wear painstakingly off my teeth over the years. Also, as women (especially) age, the threat of osteoporosis is real. I had no idea you could actually remineralize your teeth and bones with the right diet and supplements---but you CAN! According to the NIH (National Institute ..read more

NOTE: This article is a tutorial on how and why we use the scientific, or Latin, names for plants, especially for plant identification of food and medicinal herbs. Find out what some of the names mean, and how they relate to you! Oh, those fancy Latin binomial plant names….Do you really need them? After all, can’t I just talk about elderberry and everyone knows what I mean, don’t they? Before I really understood these scientific plant names, I thought they may be just a little….I don’t know….overdone? But then….I had a light bulb moment…and it all happened because of elderberry. And yes. We DO ..read more

Essential oil safety is an important topic to know and understand well if you’re interested in using aromatherapy in your home around children. More and more people are working with essential oils as a natural wellness choice, and for good reason: They work. However, essential oils are powerful. These beautiful smelling concentrated volatile oils from various plants and plant parts can be extremely helpful, but keep in mind that the organ systems and immune system of young children aren’t fully developed. They’re also much smaller humans! And weight matters. Thus, they’re more susceptible to p ..read more

Do you suffer from allergies or know someone who does? These seasonal allergies can be crippling, and here's how I know: It’s called personal experience. LOTS of personal experience. When I was a child, I suffered terribly from extreme allergies that lasted from spring through summer, all fall, and only stopped during the wintertime, and that's when I'd get ear infections, sinusitis, tonsilitis, bronchitis, and many times, pneumonia. Looking back, I guess you could say I was a respiratory system wreck even as a very young child. And....nobody knew what to do about it other than remove my tonsi ..read more

This article is about how to make your own aloe vera gel, benefits, and also how to use it! When my oldest son was a teenager (about 20 years ago), he was too cool for school, and didn’t listen when I told him to wear a hat out to Lake Mead, where we were spending the day. All my boys wore their hair really short, since they were athletes, and that was the style back then. Can you guess what happened? He got the WORST sunburn on his head. It was horrible. It hurt to look at it! He was in misery. So, I popped open a section of an aloe vera leaf to rub on his scalp several times over the next da ..read more

NOTE: This is a research article regarding using essential oils as a helper for supporting cardiovascular health and managing hypertension, otherwise known as high blood pressure. If you have high blood pressure, you should seek medical advice. You’ll find a list of excellent choices for essential oils to use to support your heart in the appendix at the bottom! As a certified aromatherapist and herbalist, I am not a medical doctor. However, I’ve had experience using natural methods, such as essential oils and herbs, as well as lifestyle shifts, to help myself and many clients either manage blo ..read more

Find out how to improve your mental focus and add some clarity to your thinking with these sweet herbal treats made with important adaptogen herbs. These candied walnuts with eleuthero are perfect for gifting at the holidays, a Fall spicy treat, or to enjoy any time you want a mental pick-me-up! And now I am officially addicted! What is an Adaptogen Herb? Herbs with adaptogen actions help your body react and balance in healthy ways to different kinds of stressors. They help the body adjust to stress from the typical day-to-day work, the stress athletes' bodies endure from physical stressors, s ..read more