About the Farm

Hannah and Jodi
Jodi (YoYo) and her daughter Hannah at our FarmHomestead

Greetings from our FarmHomestead!

Welcome to the farm! This is where you’ll find more information on who we are and what we do! Organic gardening and wild-crafting herbs has been part of my life since I was a little girl and my grandmother made us all pull over on our way anywhere to pick “a mess of poke” or the occasional, “Oh heavens! Pull over James! There’s a whole stand of Lambs Quarter out there, I can see it from here! We can use that for dinner!” (yes! she lived on a Farm Homestead!)

Without regard of the reckless abandon with which she allowed me to jump out of the car to help, she turned it into lessons I was never to forget.

Organic gardening has been an ongoing project in my life since I was twelve and my mother let me dig up a ten by twenty foot section of the backyard to put in what was to be my first gardening failure er, learning experience. My wise Mother knew more about composting than I did. I had no idea I was going to have to save all that icky stuff in the kitchen for that nasty pile in the backyard! (Well, that was my young 12 year old mind’s thought at the time.)

As a child, I watched my mother busy herself in her flower beds. And I was proud of our yard. It was colorful, beautiful, and it came back year after year. I watched my grandparents come inside with the most beautiful vegetables I had ever seen… from a spot where there had been nothing just weeks before. (I guess burying the fish heads where the tomato plants were going to go next spring DID help.) I was always simply awed by what happened in a garden.

I can’t say I’ve always been a good gardener. I cannot say I was always an avid gardener. I just knew that somewhere inside, I was A gardener. I have often been mediocre at best. But I have planted things no matter where I’ve been. I have watched the way people do things; asked a LOT of questions. I haven’t always followed suit… I mean planting beans under the moon light naked in June just really is not my thing; but everyone has a little gardener in them. And this site is built for those of you who know that without a garden we are just somehow, more vulnerable.

I feel stronger when I garden and use the herbs I grow. I feel more accomplished when I grow my herbs myself and I feel happier selling organic homegrown herbs and hand-made botanicals from our farmhomestead to people. I feel more peaceful when I garden. I feel more comfortable in my own skin in the garden. (Just not naked! ha ha ha!!) How do you feel? Does something always nag at you, urge you? … to go out there and DO something, to be responsible for your own health? but you are just not sure where to begin? Do you feel there is simply a way to feel better; more energetic? Healthier?

I KNOW that feeling. And I have tried to harness it here. There is a reason you feel that way… it is up to you to decipher exactly what it is that compels YOU, but there IS a reason. Some of it is very tangible. Our food supply is in peril. Pesticides are damaging us in ways we are only beginning to understand. People die every single day by the thousands of diet induced disease. This begs the question, “Is it our food supply?” or “Is it the irresponsible way we put anything down our throat without fear of consequence?”

I think it’s a lot of both.

I was at a garage sale the other day and spoke with a woman age 70 plus. She made a comment that has stuck with me for a while. She said, “I think people were healthier when they all had their own gardens.”

I couldn’t agree more.

Years have improved my knowledge and my skill has followed suit. I have moved many times in my 60 plus years and I have started garden after garden. If I’m not an expert on anything, I AM an expert on how to get a garden going, amending bad soil, etc! I’ve lived in apartments and done a lot of container gardening. I’ve been very poor (was that past tense? ha ha!) and I have made do with what I found in an old dump I found on the property. My point is, I have covered a lot of ground and hopefully you can benefit from my experience.

My wise grandmother knew more about gardening and herbs than I did. I had no idea you had to boil poke before you could eat it or it could poison you. (BTW, Green Deane wrote more than I have ever known about that herb, see the Poke page.)

While a young mother living on my first own farmhomestead, with a budget of $50 a week for eight, I learned to scavenge what was in the woods around our home. I met up with a local folk herbalist and we made fast friends. With her help and guidance, we ate extremely well for “poor folk”.

(INSERT: a fellow herbalist friend and I were talking recently and she made a comment that stuck with me. She said, “Throughout history there was no governing body or corporation; an herbalist was an herbalist, they were all “folk herbalists”. I think she’s right!)

I can’t say I’ve never been interested in herbs that didn’t come in pill form. I cannot say I always wanted to know every single plant that grew within walking distance. I just knew that somewhere inside, I knew I would come back to “the old ways”. During various times in my life I have often been “intellectually interested” at best. But I have watched the plants that grow on every property I have ever lived on and planted things no matter where I’ve been.

I have watched the way people do things; asked a LOT of questions. I haven’t always followed suit… I mean am sincerely NOT a fan of chickweed tea, I don’t care how good it is for me; but everyone can develop a tolerance for what is good (for you!) and it becomes better tasting the better you feel. This site is built for those of you who know that without the use of herbs we are just somehow, more vulnerable.

I watched my grandmother a lot when I was a young girl. She was walking around barefoot in the yard with her hands out to her side, looking up at the sky. I asked her what she was doing. She said, “I’m grounding myself.” I thought my grandmother was weird till the day she passed from this world. It was only after she was gone that I picked up on her innate wisdom. It somehow thankfully stuck in my brain’s hard drive. She knew about “Grounding” before grounding was a “thing”.

Years have improved my knowledge and my skill has followed suit. I have moved many times in my 60 (gasp!_ years and I have become intimate with many herbs. If I’m not an expert on anything, I AM an expert on how to find and grow an herb I would like to use. I’ve been very poor and I have made do with what I could find growing in the woods and prairie about me. (sometimes I had a makeshift farmhomestead!) I have friends that have given me seeds and starts… one plant at a time.

I’ve spent the last forty years growing and using plants and pursuing my somewhat formal education. I’m currently an obsessed colorado potato beetle picker, bee tender, and avid wild crafter. I’ve taken herbal correspondence courses, miscellaneous herbal courses from some of my favorite herbalists, canning, food and nutrition classes, aroma therapy classes, attend bee keepers meetings every second Thursday of the month and get in on any and all herbal webinars I can. I am currently attending The Herbal Academy looking to finish my clinical herbalist classes.

Oh, and I was the founding president of the Oklahoma Herbalists Guild a state chapter of the American Herbalists Guild. 🙂

Fay Boulet – FarmHomestead Assistant

fay boulet
Fay Boulet
Farm Assistant

Okay, here’s Fay…. “Herbs? Like the kind you put in your soup? or the “funny” kind?”

That’s Fay. She’s funny. She is fun to work with, does anything you ask her to do (like even spending hours de-seeding all those itty bitty basil seeds to make Nam Mengluck). She was not impressed with vitex tincture results, but came quickly to realize the power of bitters. She values the fragrance of rosemary in the garden and she loves growing tomatoes. It is her specialty.

After living a crazy life, like we all do, she came to respect more wholistic healthy lifestyle choices. Her childhood memories of climbing the fruit trees in her backyard and eating fresh fruit was always with her, making some of the choices later in life a bit easier to swallow ;). She came to the farm willing to work, willing to help, and willing to learn. Everything about Fay screams helpful and kind.

We are very blessed to have her assistance. And all of you that buy our herbs can feel oh so good knowing her loving hands probably touched the nutritious, organic, hand processed plant material; helping it make its trip from the soil in which it grew at our farm homestead and into your hands.

Hannah Knight – Daughter & FarmHomestead Assistant

hannah knight
Hannah Knight
harvesting, processing, & research

Then, there’s my charming daughter, Hannah. She is the happy wife of Jonah and mother to my grandson Sebastian (aka, Bash) and she does a lot of the harvesting, washing, and processing. This, straight off her facebook page, “her desire set her apart from the pack, and now she has an aura that floats around and that’s intimidating”. Yes, that would be Hannah. A fav quote of hers, I really like (and think you will too!) is…

“Be a mess. It’s fine. The universe is a mess. Galaxies are drifting all over the place. To be tidy is to be out of tune with the cosmos.”

I guess that’s why she named her own business, Wildly Cosmic 😉

She home schools Bash, studies a lot, uses herbs daily, and works on the farm when I need her. I had to have surgery on my hand a couple of years ago (in MAY, no less) and she managed the garden, harvesting, canning, bagging, boxing, orders and “Yes you did TOO let the weeds get the best of you!” But we all survived it, through thick and thin around here. We are a team!

Our Purpose

Our goal is to acquaint you with common herbs and what they can do for you and to give you the gardening know-how to know HOW.

We hope to do this by…

    • Providing organic herbs and herbal products for you to use; enhancing you and your family’s health through education on what herbs can do for you and helping to promote an all around healthy lifestyle.
    • Providing detailed information about the herbs we grow organically, or responsibly wild craft and how they can improve your health.

And….

  • Remaining in operation, which means we have to make a profit! We encourage you to buy our herbs and use them, subscribe to our newsletter and purchase the various publications and materials which are available on this site.

I am sort of old-fashioned I guess. I don’t think that personal service is a crutch for a bad product. I believe personal service is the bedrock that any business sits on. Why? Because the business of health is the most personal business there is. And often, by the time a person has begun to search for herbs, they are already in need of help. I want to help. Whether curative or preventative, I believe that taking responsibility for our health is the most personal and necessary action one will take on in their lifetime. (well, right next to choosing a mate or having and raising children!)

I invite you to browse around our FarmHomestead, comments are always welcome. Be proud of the achievements you have reached thus far and the goals you have set for yourself. You deserve to come home to your own beautiful garden; eat from it, learn from it, grow in it.

The internet is full of so much marketing hype and promises that make us hopeful. I hope that it can be restorative for your heart, mind, and spirit to find a place that is simple, straight forward, and down to earth: I have worked terribly hard to make our Farm and Homestead that kind of place.

It is my sincerest hope that it is that kind of place for you too.

Are You Ready To Join Me and Learn to FarmHomestead?

Jodi
Never underestimate the value of what you do!

The Ready Store
"The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will interest his patient in the care of the human frame, in diet and in the cause and prevention of disease" ~ Thomas Jefferson