Part 3: Burn the Blankets!

Nobody warns you about the bugs.

In our first couple of months living in the RV, I woke up one morning, lifted the blanket, and found thousands — maybe millions — of seed ticks piled at my feet. I screamed, launched out of bed, and started ripping every sheet, pillow, and blanket off the mattress. I'm pretty sure one of the dogs went flying in the process. I yelled to Amy to "burn it all!" — and we meant it. We hauled the bedding straight to the fire pit and lit it up. 

When Amy later told her mom what happened, her mom said, "You burned all your bedding?"

Amy didn't miss a beat: "We would've burned the whole RV to the ground if we had somewhere else to go."

I used to cringe telling that story, like a tick infestation meant we were somehow gross. But the truth is, we were essentially living outside in the Missouri wilderness. The bugs weren't a reflection of us. They were just the wilderness, doing what wilderness does.

Spring and Summer 2024 brought many new adventures into the woods. Wildflowers bloomed in abundance, and I couldn't help but tuck beautiful bouquets into every random vessel I could find.

But along with the flowers came an abundance of pests, not only ticks but chiggers, mosquitos, and no-see-ums. At times, it was truly unbearable. We spent nights itching and scratching, sometimes feeling like we were losing our minds. Being from New York, I had never heard of chiggers, much less experienced their wrath. We tried every over-the-counter remedy we could find: ChiggerX, After Bite, calamine lotion. We tried the old wives' tales — white vinegar, clear fingernail polish. Nothing worked.

So I turned to one of my herbal books and found a recipe for plantain salve. As it happened, plantain was growing abundantly on our property alongside all those wildflowers. That's actually an understatement — it is EVERYWHERE.

I picked up a used crockpot at a thrift store, filled a mason jar with fresh plantain leaves and olive oil, and let it steep on low for two days on the cottage porch. Meanwhile, Amy sourced a one-pound block of local beeswax. The challenge? Getting it into usable pieces. We pulled out an old-fashioned cheese grater and got to work. Sore hands, a few blisters, and a good while later, we had enough shredded beeswax to move forward.

Since the cottage had no stove, I melted the wax directly into the plantain-infused oil in the crockpot. It took nearly another 24 hours, but eventually I poured the mixture into small jars and left them to solidify.

When it was ready, we slathered it on our tortured skin. Within minutes, the itching that had plagued us for days was gone. What? It's working? To think that relief had been growing just footsteps from our cottage door — it was almost unbelievable.

That moment was the first real step in my faith in herbal solutions. It eventually became the foundation for our Itch Stopper Salve — a refined formula that is even better than that first batch. To this day, it's still the only thing that helps me sleep through the night when the bugs start to bite. Our customers have shared that they reach for it for all kinds of skin irritation: post-surgery discomfort, aging skin, sunburns, rashes, and more.

After that first successful salve, my herbal eyes were truly opened. That year alone we discovered St. John's wort, yarrow, self-heal, comfrey, fleabane, boneset, lousewort, witch hazel, elderberry, willow, verbena, wild bergamot, thistle, black-eyed Susan, wild roses, mountain mint, hyssop, and mullein — and that's only what I can recall as I write this. The list goes on.

It was in that season that we knew: the plants on this land had to become an integral part of the future of WestLand Farms. We began sketching out a plan, inspired by words we'd heard from one of our favorite creators, Jessica Sowards of Roots and Refuge Farm: "Dream big and the resources will come."

So that's exactly what we started to do.