I get asked so many times how I started Dirty Girl Farm...
I had severe asthma as a child. My mother learned quickly, the importance of a simple chemical-free and pesticide free environment. We farmed a little of this a little of that, growing all of our foods organically. We canned fruits and vegetables that we produced, made wild grape jelly and tapped trees for maple syrup- cooking it on a stove in the middle of the woods. My Dad always took me with him, wild-harvesting. I learned at a very young age, how to find wintergreen berries. I loved crushing them between my fingers and smelling that sweet “gum” scent. My Mom always said, there wasn’t a plant within 5 miles that I didn’t know the name of. My Dad was an award-winning winemaker. We would pick and clean elderberries for days for the seasons best elderberry wine! You might think my family was a bunch of commune living hippies…NO, they were both quite modern college graduates, my Dad, a commercial artist and my Mother a stay-at home mom. This life was just our “way of life”.
In my 20’s climbing the corporate ladder I realized I just wasn’t fulfilled. I needed to do something with my life that “mattered” but what, I didn’t know. I began traveling, mostly out-west finally ending up in Bush Alaska. The land was beautiful and untouched, it was so clear, the importance of a natural lifestyle with low environmental impact. It was a way of life here, when I looked back at my childhood, it all made sense! I didn’t even realize what I was doing, but now it meant so much more. Keep the land and your body pure….. I began school, studying local wild plants, sustinance living, soil science and horticulture. When I learned that I was pregnant, I returned home to Michigan. (There were no doctors in our village. To deliver, it was a med-evac flight over two mountain ranges in the un-predictable spring weather to Anchorage.)
After my daughter was born, as fate would have it, she had a genetic auto-immune disease. Her skin was so delicate and easily irritated so I began dabbling with herbs, making salves and creams to treat her many rashes. She began getting very sick around the age of 4 with a mystery illness… never gaining weight, pale, listless. After many trips to doctors with no answers I began researching on my own. I went to her Pediatrician and said “have you thought about Celiac Disease?” With reluctance, he ordered yet another test. She was positive. With strict diet and lifestyle changes, her health immediately improved and in just one month she was gaining weight and her cheeks had color in them again.
14 years ago the natural body care industry was almost non-existant. I couldn’t find many of the herbs I needed for the recipes I was experimenting with, so I began growing them. One greenhouse turned into two, one garden plot turned into acres and my house had dried herbs from one end to the other. My “hobby” was out of control. My family gave me orders, start selling this stuff! My first farmers market was outdoors, I think my baby gear outnumbered tables and actual product, but I sold out the first day and I realized that this must be the thing that I was meant to do!
Boo Boo Balm was my first product mass produced and to this day it’s a best-seller. My daughter loved it because it was “green goo” and it “made her boo boo’s feel all better” I also heard many other people with mystery conditions and frustration finding things that they needed and little by little the business expanded into what it is today. Many of our products have come from listening to our customers and filling in the gaps. My mission is to have head-to-toe natural, chemical-free, plant-based bodycare.
Today my asthma is in remission, my daughter is a healthy typical 14 year old high school student, and I know in my heart my lifestyle and childhood are responsible.