Homesteading, nature, and all that granola…
Geez… Where to start? My name is Lindsay Karchner Michael. I’m from a very small town in the mountains of Pennsylvania. I grew up in nature. My family built a small log cabin in the woods and we lived a natural way of life. Dad hunted a great deal and sometimes we kept a garden.
We also have a camp further out into the wilderness. Everyone up there has a camp. In case you aren’t sure what in heck I’m talking about, camp is a little run-down shack of some sort that your family owns to vacation in. To relax. To hunt and fish. To do work on the camp. To make things harder on yourself in some ways. That might sound silly. When I’m at camp there are few worries, but the few that I have are big – fresh water, firewood, rattlesnakes, and bears. There is no cell phone service and the nearest hospital is 45 minutes away. Planning is a huge deal. But I’m getting off track here…
Once my family’s business grew, we moved closer to town. I went off to college and trips back home grew less frequent. I moved to North Carolina, where I live today. As time went by I started going home more. Going back to camp. Getting into healthy foods and back to a more natural way of life. I realized I just felt better in the woods.
In the last six years or so I have been striving to get back to a permanent “camp” situation. During these last years, I have wanted to put up this site and just keep not getting to it. Today’s the day. 🙂 I’m a web developer and print artist, so my fun projects always go to the back burner. I’m reviving this project because I’m seeing things are happening in favor of achieving my permanent homesteader lifestyle. I want to keep that going.
The second reason for this site is that in the near future my husband will go on a deployment for a long time. There is a very good chance that I will be able to get internet at my camp this summer. If that is true, I will be staying up there for a whole season while he is gone. I wanted an outlet to post my adventures.
My last reason is that I have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). My nervous system doesn’t like synthetic chemicals or pharmaceuticals. I’ve had numerous allergic reactions to man-made drugs. Heck, I can’t even go in a shopping mall anymore because the perfumes, candles, plastics, etc. make me ill within a few minutes. I’ve spent years gathering information on how to alleviate this. I still have OCD, but the anxiety is gone. I retained the cool stuff about it (being organized), but the other stuff just went away. I no longer have to count everything or avoid cracks in the sidewalk. When I still used a microwave, I had to turn it off at the 6 second mark because that’s my favorite number. If I missed it, I had to let it finish even if something was boiling over. Those days are gone (and so is the microwave). All I can tell you is that it has been worth every minute and dollar spent. After getting my diet right I have never felt better in my entire life. I want to continue this journey. I want to know what you know, and maybe I’ll help someone along the way, too. 🙂
I want this site to be a place where we come to support one another on the subjects of natural living, wellness, and health. We can always be humbled by remembering we don’t know everything, but we can keep learning!