Before the Backroad

I graduated high school at 16 and went into nursing because I knew one thing pretty early in life: I wanted to help people.

Medicine seemed like the obvious way to do that.

I'd also spent plenty of time on the other side of healthcare. As a child, I dealt with severe chronic headaches, spent a lot of time in hospitals and experienced a serious reaction to medication. My parents eventually took me to an herbalist, which was one of my earliest introductions to the idea that healing could look different than what I'd always known.

Still, I chose the medical field.

But somewhere along the way, my relationship with modern medicine began to change. I started questioning more. I became more interested in what grew from the ground than what came from a pharmacy.

And herbalism didn't feel like just another interest.

It felt like something I was supposed to be doing.

Maybe It Was in My Roots All Along

I come from a family history of herbalists — medicine women who knew their plants and passed that knowledge through generations.

The deeper I went into herbalism, the more I felt connected to that history.

There's really no better way I can describe it than a calling. It felt almost like some deeper part of me already knew this work, and I was simply finding my way back to it.

Then I became a mother.

And everything changed.

My oldest daughter experienced a frightening medical event following vaccination. That experience changed the way I approached her health and my own. I began asking more questions, researching more deeply and learning everything I could about supporting my family.

Herbalism stopped being something I was interested in.

It became part of how we lived.

I grew herbs. I studied them. I learned to forage. I experimented with preparations and formulations. I made remedies for my family and eventually began making them for friends.

I certainly didn't know it then, but Backroad was already beginning.

Ten Jars at a Time

There wasn't a business plan.

There wasn't a warehouse.

There definitely wasn't a catalog with 200+ products.

There were things like ten jars of elderberry syrup at a time.

A handful of headache salves.

Backroad Drawing Salve — what many of my longtime customers may remember simply as Black Salve.

Then came Farmhouse Heal-All, cough syrups and more.

I would make a tiny batch, sell it locally, and then make another.

People came back.

They told other people.

And slowly, the shelves started filling up.

By 2017, I was selling my remedies locally. I was still raising my family and figuring out what I wanted my life to look like, but one thing had become pretty clear:

I still wanted to help people.

I just didn't think I needed to work in a hospital to do it.

Backroad Herbal Remedies Gets a Name

In 2019, Backroad Herbal Remedies officially made its way online.

And yes — it has always been Backroad Herbal Remedies.

The name never really needed much thought.

I'm from a small town. I grew up on backroads. Some of the best places I've ever found to forage are along backroads.

Today, I make these remedies from my home on 80 acres, where many of the herbs I use grow naturally or are cultivated by me. There are backroads running through our property where I gather plants, and you'll have to travel a few backroads just to get here.

There probably couldn't have been a more fitting name.

Once the website came along, those little local batches started traveling farther than I ever imagined.

First around Missouri.

Then farther across the country.

Eventually, a Backroad package had made its way to every single state in the United States, along with U.S. territories and even into Canada.

Not bad for something that started ten jars at a time.

Somewhere Along the Way, I Needed an Herb Room

I don't know if there was one exact moment when I realized, Okay...this thing has gotten BIG.

But converting an entire room in my basement into an herbal room because there was no longer anywhere to put everything was probably a pretty good clue.

Those handfuls of products became dozens.

Dozens eventually became more than 200.

My knowledge grew. My garden grew. My shelves definitely grew.

But one thing I never wanted Backroad to outgrow was the way it started.

I still formulate the products.

I still make them in small batches.

I grow and forage many of the herbs I use right here on our property, and when I can't grow something myself, I carefully source it.

I'm still the person experimenting with a formula until I'm happy with it, filling bottles, making salves and somehow finding room for one more herb that I absolutely needed.

Backroad got bigger.

It didn't become a factory.

Building a Business Without Giving Up the Life I Wanted

There's another part of this story that matters just as much to me.

When I first went into nursing, I did it because I wanted my life to mean something. I wanted to help people.

But as I started my own family, I realized I also didn't want building that life to mean constantly leaving my children to go work somewhere else.

My calling had shifted.

I wanted to raise my girls.

Eventually, I wanted to homeschool them — which is exactly what I do today.

And I still wanted to do something that mattered outside the walls of my own home.

Backroad somehow became the place where those things could exist together.

It wasn't easy.

This business was built with a whole lot of time, patience, experimenting, learning, late nights and, yes, plenty of tears.

But it allowed me to build something meaningful without giving up being present for the family I was building at the same time.

And now my girls are growing up around it too.

They're still young, but they're learning. They see the herbs growing. They see what I'm making. They're learning the plants and slowly learning how to help.

Maybe one day they'll want nothing to do with herbs.

Or maybe those family roots will call them too.

We'll see.

Things Are Still Done by Hand Around Here

Today, Backroad Herbal Remedies looks very different from those first batches of elderberry syrup.

There are more than 200 products on the shelves. There are tinctures, teas, salves, syrups, skincare, remedies for women, products for pets and livestock, and plenty of things that didn't even exist in my imagination when I started.

But behind all of those shelves, there's still one herbalist.

Me.

Still growing.

Still gathering.

Still learning.

Still formulating.

Still making remedies in small batches.

And still trying to accomplish the same thing 16-year-old me wanted when she chose the medical field in the first place:

Help people.

I just found a different road to do it.

And, fittingly enough, it turned out to be a Backroad.