Beyond Existing - Beyond the Small Talk
Has life's struggles left you feeling like you were going through your days "just existing?" In this podcast you will hear stories/testimonies from myself and others who have dealt with the struggles life has to offer and getting to that place in which life is being lived "beyond existing." I appreciate all of those who have been willing to "put themselves out there" to open up and share personal information for the betterment of others.
Beyond Existing - Beyond the Small Talk
Healing Without a Prescription; How Homeopathy and Regenerative Yards Can Build True Health with Melissa of True Cut Ranch
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Trading a Charlotte business for a quiet patch of land wasn’t about escaping the city; it was about building health from the ground up. We sit down with Melissa of True Cut Ranch to trace a clear path from raised beds on a two‑thirds acre lot to a regenerative farm where soil leads, animals thrive, and medicine gets gentler. The surprises are practical: chickens as fertilizer, daily moves to lower stress, and a hard pivot to selling only animals born on their farm so health is bred, not bought.
We unpack how small changes compound. Melissa explains preventing cattle pinkeye and treating minor issues with homeopathy and herbs, then draws a sharp line between herbalism’s roots-and-leaves and homeopathy’s pharmacy-made microdoses. Her most striking story is a guided protocol that resolved her child’s severe dairy allergy, paired with a careful approach to testing and safety. From there we get tactical: comfrey for tissue repair, calendula for skin, burdock for gentle liver support, plus essential oils like lavender, geranium, and yarrow for simple care.
In addition, learn how to turn an HOA yard into an edible landscape with berries, rosemary, strawberries as groundcover, and grape arbors. No yard? A sunny windowsill grows sprouts year-round. We tie symptoms like inflammation and neuropathy back to everyday levers—better protein, seasonal sleep, less stress, quercetin-rich foods, pineapple’s bromelain, and pantry planning that beats the drive‑thru. Melissa shares how workshops, study groups, and a textable resource list make learning simple and cheap, so you can act fast when it matters. https://www.truecutranch.com/
If this conversation helps you think differently about food, farming, and gentle medicine, follow the show, leave a 5‑star review, and share it with a friend who needs a hopeful first step. Your support helps more people move beyond existing and toward real health.
Hi, and welcome back to another episode of Beyond Existing. I'm very excited for a guest joining us today. Her name is Melissa, and she is a homesteader who practices homeopathy or homeopathy, however you want to say that. She and her husband, they actually had a lucrative business in Charlotte, but they sold it and moved to the country just to live a simpler life. Her passion is in homeopathy, natural healing, and wellness. She and her husband are the owners of True Cut Ranch in Claremont. There's a couple things that they practice. First, they practice regenerative farming. And um, Melissa, do you mind explaining a little bit about regenerative farming? Oh, I'd love to. Uh also, thanks for hanging out with me.
SPEAKER_00:Uh, you're welcome. Thank you. And we both enjoy these topics. It's good to have an excuse to talk more about it. Our farm makes effort to try to bring in as little input as possible. We use the chickens, for example, to fertilize the fields so the grass grows for the cows instead of bringing in synthetic fertilizer. And we use um just different ways to have healthier pastures, focusing on the soil instead of quick fixes and bringing in things that we're not so comfortable with.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and you made a good point. You said that you guys try to copy nature.
SPEAKER_00:I live a pretty low-tech life, but but I'm so grateful for things like electric fencing. Right. That lets me have sheep and move them every day without being a shepherd, a sticky, humble shepherd that's in the fields with them. You know, letting the cows mob an area and then move on. Move on, yeah. Yeah, having the birds following behind the cows. It all comes from watching nature, just trying to see how we can apply that to our farm.
SPEAKER_01:Another philosophy you have is um animals and uh no antibiotics or drugs used on your livestock. Can you just explain briefly about that?
SPEAKER_00:I think all of that originally just came from fear, thinking I'm not so sure about what's in these tubes and pills and tablets. But we can't just remove the drugs, right? We have to um really focus on the the cows having a low stress environment of good nutrition, good forage. We can't just skip the drugs and and hope for the best. So it's it I think people often think that when we're not giving antibiotics or we're not using the vaccines on our animals, that either they're suffering or that you can just remove those things and things are okay, but we we have to farm differently if we went without the conventional drugs. We farm conventionally, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So, what do you do with your animals if they're showing any signs of illness?
SPEAKER_00:It's been really interesting how we we're new, for example, at cattle. That's new for us. It's only been four years since we got our first cows. So I certainly don't don't claim to be an expert over something who's done it for generations, but just watching them and realizing, first of all, that a lot of those animals when we purchased them were not healthy to begin with. Already needed regular doses of medicine to uh mask long-term respiratory illness, things like really, yeah. That's why we quit buying cows and why why we cannot provide enough beef for the True Cut Ranch customers because we just decided we're only going to sell beef, pork, and lamb that's born on our farm. Yeah. And when we focus on breeding the best animals, the healthiest animals, we deal with a lot less sickness. They're in a low stress environment, they've got great food, um, fresh spring water, plenty of sunshine, they're not indoors. So we face a lot less illness to begin with. But then we try to not let calling the vet be the first step. So sometimes, for example, if a pig is limping, we can go bring it comfrey with some vitamin knit bone. And often you, if you if you take some to the cow, they'll know. They'll know they need to eat it. It's hard to tell with pigs, they seem to just eat everything. Um yeah, we'll we'll try that, or we'll use homeopathy, which is something I've only been doing a few years, but I've been just seeing such great results that we've only had one time where we had to call the vet and say, we don't we can't figure out what's wrong with this cow. Since we started using homeopathy, we've been able to take care of um contagious skin infections, uh, wounds, limping.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. Your husband Fred, he'll give farm tours. And we took one of those tours, and like, you know, there's flies just hang around cows. Yes. I didn't realize that the flies actually cause can cause pink eye in cattle. Yeah, and so that's neat that you even figured out approach of an approach to deal with pink eye, you know.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. That was something, honestly, pink eye seemed like not something to fear to me. It didn't seem like I didn't realize as someone new at raising cattle that pink eye can cause blindness. And like, how we just know that. And if the neighbors cows have it, it's it spreads very easily. That comes from my lack of experience. So we had to react. We saw and we have found quite a few things. Actually, you and I were talking earlier. You brought up bilberry. Uh, you can make delicious jams out of a bilberry, you can use that in herbalism, and then in homeopathy, everything's in the Latin name. So we uh euphrasia is what it's called. So we were able to treat a lot of the cattle with that. We did have to give antibiotics to some, which meant we couldn't sell their meat to move them on to a different farm after they had that. But then we were able the next summer to prevent that using homeopathy. That's not interesting. That is, that is interesting. And we're talking about a little tube that looks like chapstick that has these tiny little sugar pills in it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:They are delicious. How did your interest first start with with homeopathy?
SPEAKER_00:It it came to me uh through a friend. It was not something I sought out for myself. Oh. We'd already been on this journey, and I think you have been too, where it started with the food. We're trying to just live better, to feel better, to get sick less, to enjoy our time on earth uh more without getting sick all of the time. And herbalism was interesting to me. It still is first aid, um, different lifestyle changes. And then I then I met a homeopath. Just felt like God put her right in in my life. And I didn't know what it was, did you? Did you know what homeopathy was when we first started?
SPEAKER_01:Uh, only because of that big thick book I showed you that I had of natural cures, yes. But I only knew of a few things like Arnica and Poultilla and Nuxvomica, you know, the more popular things. I didn't know about all these others.
SPEAKER_00:It's a whole big world, isn't it? Yeah, I just assumed it was the same as herbalism or home remedies or supplements. I had no idea. It's just a totally different form of medicine that's gentler. It doesn't cause side effects. And at least for acute issues like strep throat and uh sprains, fevers, allergies. It's possible for us to learn enough to help ourselves and our loved ones at home. And I think that's what got me the most excited.
SPEAKER_01:I'm going to rewind a little bit. Y'all are living in Charlotte on two-thirds of an acre. And I want you to explain to the listeners like how you were able to grow your own food and and still follow the rules that I'm sure the city had set for you.
SPEAKER_00:Kind of uh unraveled one bit at a time. We started with a box on the deck of herbs, few tomatoes, and then added some fruit trees and then chickens, and then it just kept leading to the next level, and suddenly we had pigs in our backyard. It just we just kind of pushed, probably, what the limits were of our property. Now, looking back, now that I'm on the farm, looking back on our life in the city, which I I did enjoy a lot, by the way. I wasn't trying to escape. I felt called to to do something different, but we could have even grown more there. But I couldn't have had cattle.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, you couldn't have had a cattle. That might have been the scope of two-thirds. Not your own steak.
SPEAKER_00:But we did have some delicious pork chop. I'm grateful for that. Yeah, I I didn't ever see myself as someone who would be harvesting pigs for from my backyard. But I knew I wasn't okay with the way food was grown and raised. And I also knew that what I could grow in my yard, and you know that too, your tomatoes. Right? You can only get them at certain times of year, but they're amazing. You can't buy that. Same with strawberries. Absolutely. It would taste better. At that time, you know, when we were newlyweds, we just couldn't afford to buy the kind of food that we wanted to eat. Got our hands in the dirt.
SPEAKER_01:Can you give some examples of what you did in your yard, like how you had it set up if people want to do this?
SPEAKER_00:We what we focused on first was the fact that our house was in the middle. So we had pretty much equal parts front yard and backyard. I couldn't exactly get away with row crops in the front yard. Right. I didn't have rows of tomatoes or corn patches. But we could have fruit trees, which are beautiful. We could have a rosemary bush, which is evergreen. Could get away with some strawberries as ground cover and some things, medicinal plants like echinacea. That's a beautiful flower. People grow that just because it's pretty. So that's what we focused on for the front yard. The fruit trees, rosemary was a big one for us for herbs, um, some medicinal plants, and then some ground covers like strawberry. And then in the backyard, we just had raised beds and not a lot of them. It's amazing how much food you can really pack into a small space that could plan. And then we had the ducks and turkeys and chickens and pigs running around. So that was interesting for us. And it it wasn't even that we knew anyone who was doing that. We didn't have a single friend in 2010 who had chickens. Yeah, now that seems so different. And YouTube was not the resource that it is now. YouTube was not the part of how like YouTube is such a great resource for me right now. We learned everything the hard way. Those lessons stuck with us. Yeah. We learned the hard way, and we didn't get discouraged.
SPEAKER_01:We just kept kept trying. So with the the hogs, how many of those did you have?
SPEAKER_00:Only four was the max that we ever had. Oh, a mama and four piglets. That was the thing we ever had at one time. So it wasn't a huge operation, but think of how much food you can get just from harvesting one or two higgs in a year.
SPEAKER_01:So I do have a question. How did you harvest them in the city limits?
SPEAKER_00:And the kids butchered in the backyard. Okay. Yes, that that did happen. I don't think that that's for everyone. Something I've gotten used to over the years. Yeah. I used to cry every time. My husband just set up the equipment and got it done, and then we brought the meat and salad. That was my role, and flavored our sausage and packaged everything from the freezer and had hams and capacoles hanging from the ceiling.
SPEAKER_01:What did you say you had hanging from the ceiling? What was it?
SPEAKER_00:Ham, cappuccito, capricol.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, Capricole. Okay. Right.
SPEAKER_00:He calls it capcole. Other people call it capcolo.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, yeah. I love it. It tastes so good.
SPEAKER_00:Depends on where you're from in Italy, and I'm certainly Italian. So I don't know, but we know it's delicious and so fun to either grow or raise your own food or connect with the farmer who grows it. Your food has a story behind it, and it can be so much more nutrient-dent, though delicious, and it just feels so human to be involved in producing your food.
SPEAKER_01:Yep. So you said you had chickens too and ducks. Did you start with check? I guess you started with chickens. Yeah. Yeah. That's still all I got. The bunny's just a pet. There you go. So you had ducks and you had chickens and you had pigs, but you said it didn't smell. So that's what's so interesting about farming.
SPEAKER_00:I guess I don't know that I'm right to say the correct way, but the way it feels like God wants us to do it, just by copying nature, is that good farming doesn't have to smell. Yeah, it can be very pleasant to live near the gardens and the animals. That didn't mean they could get on my back deck and you know sit on the chair next to me. They had their place and I had mine, but living near the animals doesn't have to be unpleasant at all. It would be wonderful.
SPEAKER_01:Now, there's a lot of people that live in neighborhoods that have HOAs. So I would like to talk about examples that people can do if who live in that kind of environment where there's rules that they've got to follow. I know one thing I used I um up until recently worked at a landscape supply and we would have people approach us and we sold blueberry, blackberry, raspberry bushes, and rosemary, like you said. Is there anything else that you'd like to add to that? I've always been one to figure out a way.
SPEAKER_00:So HOAs, I've never lived with an HOA. Mm-hmm. My husband, I don't think, would ever he's just not an HOA kind of. Not at all. But I've I would I would just not let that be an excuse. If you want to grow more of your own food, there are things that you can grow that can be beautiful. You and I both think that blueberries are beautiful in the winter. The dishes have that beautiful. Right.
SPEAKER_01:In the fall, they're yeah, the red is really pretty.
SPEAKER_00:Rosemary is a wonderful plant to grow. There are so many things that can be beautiful. And so I would really read those guidelines and see what you can get away with. I can understand why the neighborhood association doesn't want a farm in the front yard, a bunch of tea posts and rows of garden. And you can see where they're coming from. So, what can you plant there that does provide food?
SPEAKER_01:Or structures you could build, like we talked about arbors, putting up an arbor and having grapes grow on that. Yes, hops.
SPEAKER_00:A lot of ways. And if you were facing that, you are not the first person. And we live in this wonderful age where we can go online and find lots of inspirational ways to tuck in some food. Even a couple herbs, a couple of straws.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, especially if you got a flower bed, you can mix that stuff in with it. Easily now tell us tell us about your cousin in Manhattan. What does he do?
SPEAKER_00:Let's use uh him as an example when people say, I I don't have a farm, I can't grow anything. Even if you live without even a balcony where you could put a pot and some herbs in it, you can grow sprouts in a jar on a sunny window sale. You can do that even in the coldest, grayest parts of the year, like February. And there's just no excuse. If you want to grow something, there's something you can do. You don't have to be a good gardener to sprout alfalfa or mung beans, and you can use them hot or cold, and add them to a stir-fry. And even if your meal is mostly a sauce that you buy at the store and a bag of frozen vegetables that you buy at the store, and and chicken that you buy at the store, you can add in that one element, the mung beans that you grew on your sunny window sill. And that can be so satisfying.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it is. Oh, I totally agree. It's like, oh yeah, this is a basil I grew. It tastes so good. Absolutely. All right, let's get into using uh nature for medicine. What advice do you give how to start with this?
SPEAKER_00:It can be really scary to step away from the conventional medical system or try to find ways on your own to add to that. It can be scary. But what's so interesting is if we really just listen to what our bodies are telling us or what God's telling us. Sometimes the answers are a weed in a ditch by the road. That is true. Something that's growing in your backyard and you are literally poison poisoning it with stuff you buy in the garden center. And so there is quite a lot that grows right where you are. There is. And I think for me with herbalism, I just took it one plant at a time.
SPEAKER_01:I just got really deep into learning about comfrey, really deep into learning about plantain, learning about and wait, not the plantain like similar to the banana. What's the plantain? Do we call it broadleaf plantain? Is that whatleaf weed, actually?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that a lot of people want to kill. Elderberry. Elderberry is our molin. There are so many things that are growing in your yard.
SPEAKER_01:And we have molin tea is great, and it's a weed, right? It's so interesting. Yeah, and it's real good for breathing. Yes, it is.
SPEAKER_00:So we have we have these phones that can take a picture of a a weed and tell us what it is. And then we have books and the internet that can tell us all about the plant's benefits and then the things to avoid, contraindications on certain medicines. And I think it's just really interesting to just see what's already there by what is available right outside our doors.
SPEAKER_01:So it's interesting. You said to take one plant and do a deep dive on it.
SPEAKER_00:That was how I got started. I I think Comfrey probably was the first one I got very serious about it. So Comfrey is C-O-M-F-R-E-Y, and it will take over a yard. So you want to go in a pot for confine space, and it has very, very deep taproots. It digs deep into the earth. Its nickname is knit bone. And it's so interesting. You can watch you can watch a cow. You can learn a lot from cows. And you can watch a cow who's limping walk over, struggle over to the plant, to the comfrey plant, and eat it down to the ground.
SPEAKER_01:That's interesting. I've always heard that about dogs. Like when you see them sniffing around, like and if their stomach seems that like they know what weed to eat or grass to eat. Now, Comfrey, you've used in wound healing, right?
SPEAKER_00:Oh goodness, that is a big one for us. I think if I were to, I'd be curious about what yours would be. If I were to say these are a few herbs that I would not want to be without, Comfrey would be one of them for sure. Sure for any bruises. Not not a bone that might need to be set. Is definitely to go see the the dark stream. Right. You wouldn't want to use comfrey. See, that's the thing about herbalism is you have to really dig deep into it. You can't just casually grab a plant because if you take it before your bone has set, if it needs surgery, then it can actually heal it too fast.
SPEAKER_01:Really? So you can use comfrey on broken bones. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I didn't realize that. And then if you use comfrey topically on a deep wound, like a surgical wound, it could heal the top too fast, and then you'd have an abscess. So that's I say with herbalism, it's fascinating. I get results from it, but it it's not something we can just casually grab at. Yeah. And then my other example that I use all the time is calendula to apply to a wound, which mostly the dogs, they're my most common teachers that need wound care. Calendula is so accessible. It's a beautiful flower. You can grow it in most areas of the United States at least. And you might even be able to get away with it in your front yard. It's a pretty flower. And then dry those flowers. Make a calendula oil? Calendula tincture.
SPEAKER_01:It smells so good. It's one of my favorite smells. It's property on it.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, those would be two of mine that I wouldn't want to be without. And then burdock for for uh liver health and uh just in general, burdock would be my number one thing that I wouldn't want to be without. I think burdock. Burdock root tea. That's one you some things you have to use really sparingly. Doesn't seem like that's the case with burdock and a lot of culinary.
SPEAKER_01:Now I know you told me that uh rosemary was another one you did a deep dive on, and you guys actually used that as a natural dewarmer.
SPEAKER_00:We did use it with our hogs. I don't remember what they had. I don't know, was it mites? I don't I don't know what it was, but we Google, found that rosemary and garlic could be remedies, and we thought, well, we have that. We have garlic in the kitchen and rosemary in the front yard. And all we did is go get the pruners out and clip off some branches and throw them in the big it's not easy.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. The hard cinnamon is as well. It's probably clothes.
SPEAKER_00:There's quite a big list, and that's where it gets really exciting. So anytime I want to research something, I look for the things that I'm already familiar with, or and or you can get at the grocery store or in and start there.
SPEAKER_01:Let's go to homeopathy then. How is that different than what we were just talking about with using herbs?
SPEAKER_00:So when I first heard about homeopathy, I didn't understand what it was. I'm thinking it's home remedies, essential oils, supplements, herbs. And it's just a totally different thing. And it really was very hard for me to grasp. The idea of like heals like, I could I could grasp that, but the idea of these nano doses of the way that it's prepared. We you and I can't make homeopathic remedies. We can grab herbs and make tea and tinctures and oils, but infused oils. But homeopathic remedies are made in professional pharmacies. The idea of how they're diluted and they increase in their power. I didn't know about that until I saw it work. Yeah, they sleep little beads that tight-sized sugar pellets. And that's definitely when they got their reputation as being these silly sugar pills because 1800s, Germany, where it was created, uh they couldn't see under a microscope these nano articles that that modern scientists can see. And it seemed like nothing was there, but it's enough to give our bodies a message as well to act. And I'm certainly not a doctor. I think to be a proper homeopath, you have to have a postgraduate degree. I I'm not that, and even if I was for anyone listening, I I'm not your doctor. So I'm just someone who wanted to be well, decided I needed to take more responsibility for that. Yes. And that meant looking at all of the things that are available to me. And what's so interesting about homeopathy is you can grab these remedies on Amazon and at most health food stores. And a lot of people can learn how to use this at home, especially for acute illness.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, can you tell about your first experience with using it with your son?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I'd love to. So I did use Arnica kind of casually, not understanding those to use it for, but my friend who is a homeopath said, you know, we can cure that in homeopathy when we were talking about one of my kids who had an anaphylactic food allergy. If you Google how to cure a food allergy, you'll see there is no cure. Right. It's just a void. That's all you can do is avoid it. And that's no fun.
SPEAKER_01:No, no, especially when things are, you know, it could be a hidden ingredient. It's it was so hard to navigate. Trigger same.
SPEAKER_00:So it was a milk allergy. It was diagnosed. He had an epi pen. We still, fortunately, it's just still sitting in the whole closet. But yeah, we had some very scary reactions. A lot of, a lot of times where accidentally he he got dairy. It was so hard to navigate. Even turkey legs at the NASCAR races can have milk in them. So many things I just didn't know. And that I am grateful that we dealt with that allergy because it did really open our eyes to what is in food and it forced us to cook at home more to keep our kids safe. But our homeopath friend said, you know, we can cure that. She just very casually mentioned that. And I pounced. Yeah. Tell me what to do. So I spent maybe$8, got a tube, and followed the protocol. So in homeopathy, not to dig too deep into it, but there's classical homeopathy and then there's practical homeopathy, which says, if you have this, do that. And that's where you start, is with these proven uh protocols. And so we did the protocol just maybe two weeks. And I thought, well, what do we have to lose? Not r not actually expecting it to work, but hoping maybe it could make his reactions less severe. That was probably all I actually dreamed of getting of it. I never thought that he would be completely healed. And so about two weeks in, he got very exhausted. And what happened was the worst thing that can happen in homeopathy is called a proving, which is not a big deal. It's nothing to fear, it's very temporary. You simply just stop taking the remedy and and move on. But the principle behind homeopathy is a remedy can cure in a sick person what it can cause in a healthy person. That's very hard to grasp. So an onion, for example, when you're chopping an onion, it makes you cry. But if you have maybe a hay fever or some sort of allergy issue where your eyes are just watering uncontrollably, as if you had just chopped an onion, then onion, right, can be the cure. That's so wild to me can be the case. So that's called improving when you take a remedy too long, either because it's the wrong one or because you've healed. That's how it's always been explained to me. But how do you know if the food allergy is cured without potentially killing your kid? Yeah. Casually say, drink a glass of milk and look at it. So how did you do it? Um, well, we had that proving. And then we thought, okay, maybe, maybe he's cured. So we had that we had the epi pen on wrap. So we had that and we just gave him, I I don't remember what it was, a little bite of or a little sip of something that was dairy, and he was fine. Oh, I bet you held your breath. It was just terrible. Oh my gosh, pins and needles. We felt so hopeful that we we tried it. And so I remember this kid, uh, we were like, okay, we'll just have a little bit over the next few days, just tiny little bits, supervised, just because we really didn't believe that it was healed. And it was right before Christmas. It was like at the beginning of December, because we had those little advent calendars. And because I was a I'm a hopeful person, I had bought this kid an advent calendar. You know, the ones with the little bitty chocolate day, yeah. So each of the kids had one. And this guy uh ate his chocolate and he was fine, and he was so excited. He said, uh, you know, he was just so happy to finally be able to have milk chocolate. So we all went to bed and woke up, and his advent calendar and his brother's advent calendars were empty. He had stolen his brother's chocolate and eaten all of it. With just milk chocolate. He was just so happy. Dude, stealing's wrong. He said, You just don't understand. He had a lot of time to make up for. So we did make him buy his brother a replacement chocolate. Yeah. We laughed, then we still laugh now. After that, we realized how powerful these remedies are. And so, could I prove that that's what cured it? No. But I don't think he had a bad reaction just a few months before that. I don't think he just outgrew it so rapidly. And approving was what really approving is what they call it in homeopathy, what really made my husband and I think, okay, these dinky little pills are actually incredibly powerful. And I want to learn everything I can about how to use this for acute and chronic illness. And I haven't stopped learning about it, and I haven't stopped questioning everything about what the world tells us we need. Because maybe it's just these little bitty hints to our body. Maybe um our body's ready to listen to just these tiny little things. Need to use a sledgehammer, you know, we can use these really gentle remedies. And I did, I would not have believed it if I hadn't seen it work and seen it work so many times since then.
SPEAKER_01:What's funny is how homeopathic remedies come from some of the most toxic plants on the planet. It is very interesting to think, you know, venom from arsenic, you know.
SPEAKER_00:You would not want to hold in your hand, right?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, or like roost roostal, is that how you say that? R-H-U-S-T-O-X. It is like one of my favorites to take um just from playing sports. Like my joints ache, get sore. Yes, you know, and um what'd you say the nickname of it is? Oh, the rusty or the ten man's oil can. Yes, the ten man's oil can.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's poison ivy when I lit it up. But and if you've ever had an allergic reaction to poison ivy, you know, it's tempting to think, why on earth did God make poison ivy? Yeah, yes. It seems like such a terrible thing when you encounter it on a hike. Yeah, yes. Homeopaths love their toxins, and some of the things are also we talked about allium sepa, onion. Onion, yeah. Very normal things. Some are are herbs.
SPEAKER_01:Mm-hmm. Yeah, like a podium, that's club moss. And I've, you know, that's just the ground cedar. I mean, I've got that growing here on the property. Yeah, you know.
SPEAKER_00:Interesting.
SPEAKER_01:But uh, can you explain how they dilute this to where we don't have to worry about, you know, if we have a breakout with poison ivy, we don't have to worry about that when we take something like Roost Tox.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so in a professional pharmacy, which uh the big examples would be boron, B-O-I-R-O-N. Yeah, that's the maker. That would be a big one. There are definitely um some reputable pharmacies, and those would be the only ones I would buy from. I wouldn't try this at home or just find some off-brand on Amazon. But uh, they make something called a mother tincture, which we talked about tinctures with Angela earlier. And then I think it's like one drop of that goes into 99 drops of water and then it's shaken. It's um succussion, and then one drop of that goes into the next file with 99 drops of water and it's shaken. And then it keeps going. And the more times you do that, the more powerful it is, which that was so hard for me to grasp. That the further you get from that original substance, the more potent it can be. Yeah. I wouldn't believe that still. So when you see something like a three, that's closer to the original form, practically. But as far as its power, it gets more powerful. And I'm generalizing the the more potent it is, is like a 1M, which is 1000. You would think that would be nothing. Right. But that's the use only under homeopaths care. So interesting. I'm just absolutely captivated by homeopathy. Even though I can't make it myself, the remedies never expire. I think that's so cool. I can stockpile these little bitty tubes. You can get uh on my link, you can get a kit that's under 80 bucks. It has like 36 remedies. These are not expensive things, they're not patented. No one has the patent on poison iD. Lots of pharmacies can make them. It's not going to be something that costs thousands of dollars. Learning how to know where to go has been such a game changer for me.
SPEAKER_01:I know I had sent out a Facebook post asking, you know, telling people about this recording we were going to do together and just asking uh different ones what they were interested in or wanted to hear. And there were a couple of people who wanted to know about nerve pain or neuropathy, and then also inflammation. And the funny thing is, is that with those two, there's a lot of things that overlap, a lot of remedies that do.
SPEAKER_00:And it's so upsetting to see people spending so much time and money trying to get well. And there's a lot we can't control, right? It's not just, okay, I have this symptom. What can homeopathy do for me? There's a lot of stuff we have to look at. And yes, homeopathy, uh well, I mean, all all healing comes from God, but the the you the homeopathy, you can open up a book and it'll tell you what to take and and you can get results, which is what I want. I want results. But we have to look at all the things and and what's your body already telling you? What is inflammation? Like let's start there. What is it? Your body's trying to tell you something. Inflammation can uh be there to protect you and heal you.
SPEAKER_01:Nobody talks about that. That is true. Everybody talks about getting rid of it, but you gotta look at why it's there to begin with.
SPEAKER_00:What is your body trying to tell you? I think uh I think that we can figure this out. I think we can decode these messages with prayer, with seeking counsel, with uh doing our own research, with looking at uh our diet, looking at our sleep, looking at the toxins that we bring into our home, looking at our stress levels, and just deciding I'm not okay being unwell, and I can do a little bit to fix this.
SPEAKER_01:We do have some suggestions, you know, for inflammation. I think everybody's got struggle everybody struggles with inflammation. I mean, we can give you some places to start, but um, like Melissa has said, like it's not a one size fits all. You know, what works for some people may not work for you, and it's just it's just a matter of trial and error, right? Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Well, listening, just like just like what is God trying to tell me with the symptom? What is my body trying to tell me? Maybe uh sometimes it'll happen as a response to a medicine. And we can go back to the doctor and say, hey, I'm I'm not okay with the way this makes me feel. I don't want to take another medicine to make this one yeah, like I I want to listen to that symptom. Right. They'll laugh at you, but uh but that's really the key, I think, is just what are we supposed to be hearing right now? And we ignore those symptoms because that's what we're told to do. You know, you push through when you when you're coming down with the flu, you push through until you're done with your work week. Instead of saying, you know what, I'm I I should probably just take a little 20-minute listening is really where it all begins, but you can look in any direction. I I always started with the food. We were not okay with the kind of food we were eating. We started feeling better. And this was my personal experience that that we started feeling better when we ate more grass-fed red meat, when we started using more animal proteins in our diet. We didn't need as many chips and as much snacky food when we had a a really nutrient-dense diet that changed things for us.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, for me, it's quircetant, and I don't mean in the supplement form because when I take it in supplement form, it really messes with my digestion. I don't know if it's just too much vitamin C at one time, but if I eat natural, like if I do my teas, like if I make teas from like strawberry leaf or grape leaves or blackberry leaves, raspberry leaves, that I can tell a difference in that. Or when I just go and I when I buy those table grapes, the black grapes, you know, or the red grapes, I can tell immediately, especially with the nerve pain that I've got from my breast reconstruction. Um it'll like if if I do a lot of yard work, they'll get like really itchy, like a burning pain. But when I go and eat those grapes, like calms it down. And I know it's the Quarcivan probably that's in that. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I don't use any supplements. I just I feel like I have to be able to get it from food or from something that grows or you can raise or hunt or fish or gather. I don't do any supplements, and and I think what you just described is listening.
SPEAKER_01:And pineapple is another one, fresh pineapple, that bromoling. That's delicious. It's really good for information too. And then flaxseed, the ground flaxseed. Do you ever do that? We use it just like in granola. I never take it as a what do you take, a spoonful of it or something? Yeah, I mix it with water and drink. I mean, it does not dissolve in water.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's about to say that doesn't really sound delicious. Yeah, but it works. That's like to look in all directions. Uh just one of the biggest things for us going from having paychecks to being to being poor farmers is uh that we're able to go to bed when it gets dark. I think that's actually made a massive difference in our stress levels and in our wellness. I think maybe could it be that we were meant to sleep longer when the days are shorter? Um that that I think has been really interesting for us. Looking at sleep, looking at sleep and and and when are we when ought we to go to bed? If there was no power, if there was no overhead lighting, would we stay up until midnight every night? Or would we just go to bed when it gets dark? What we're supposed to do. I wonder about things like that, and I try to lean into those ideas while still living a very modern life. I don't pretend like I live in a little house on the prairie book.
SPEAKER_01:You delve into essential oils a little bit, um, but some essential oils that I have found that are helpful with uh neuropathy, maybe, or inflammation, or um gosh, just a lot. Just even just calming down is um lavender oil and geranium oil. And then you s you mentioned calindula.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so I make the infused oil where you're taking the dried flour and putting it in olive oil or something, but you you have a lot more experience with the essential than I do.
SPEAKER_01:Eucalyptus oil is another one, it's great for even um cleaning out wounds. If you've got wounds that'll keep things. infection out.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Was it yarrow oil that you used on everything? Yes, yarrow.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, when I fell and you came and you and Fred came and helped me and yes, I had a cut across my nose and then my eyes were black. And so I had um doTERRA actually makes this this a blend with yarrow in it and that really, really helped speed up that wound healing. I think that's awesome. And you already had that. Mm-hmm. Yeah was something already had it right yeah that's the score. I haven't got something extra people want to know more about that they should come to you. You can help them with that.
SPEAKER_00:I think that's great. Yeah yeah and uh something else I I really enjoy is um a remedy is like a podium for some homeopathy and we can make our own our own notes about what works so well for us and what doesn't and and if somebody wanted to get started with homeopathy um there's some books I suggest and some blogs that have been great resources for me.
SPEAKER_01:Do you want to talk about those?
SPEAKER_00:Or the uh phone number fit yeah so if if you want to know more about it I don't sell homeopathy right I do I do lead study groups on Zoom and at our people who want to do book studies about this but I'm not a homeopath I I I I'm fascinated by it and I don't want to just take on my friends' cases. I want to show them how they can take care of themselves. That's been so empowering for me. It's saved me so much time and so much money and it's made me feel capable instead of just being panicked while waiting on the ambulance to arrive or being panicked while waiting on the doctor's office to open on Monday. I I feel like I can do something I can control something. And I've enjoyed that a lot but yeah at our at our farm we have a phone number or a text number that you can just send a keyword to an example is the keyword homeopathy. So homeo and then pathy p-a-t-h y you can simply send that word to 704 686883 and it will send you back my top resources and the things that have helped me. And so that's just the word homeopathy to 704 686 8883. And that can be just one way to lead you in the right direction to get started with that.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. And then also if they want to learn more about true cut ranch, right? Same number.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah that same number just the word true like true cut ranch uh just the word true T-R-U-E we'll we'll tell you about our farm and our growing practices and of course what we do for a living is we sell our meats beef pork lamb chicken duck and turkey so just the word true will tell you about that. And then it's been so interesting to me because I never I never expected teaching classes and workshops at the farm to be a big part of my week. I never expected that but I just noticed that I just started listening when people multiple people would ask me the same thing uh about what I do for this or that that I should just offer it to put it out there for the world and just or for the community instead of just waiting for people to ask. So we teach a lot of skills classes like how to make tinctures how to make soap how to make tallow lotion and um the homeopathy study groups cooking classes it's it seems uh I I didn't expect to do this but it's been so much fun. So all we're doing is just taking the few things we know and and teaching that and you can just send the word skills S-K I L L S to that same number to find out about our different workshops at the farm. And you've been to some these are fun. These are fun workshops in a beautiful place and we're just sharing what has been working for us and what we have experience with and feel like we can share with others. You teach canning preparing when when you decide that you want to eat real food okay you want to eat real food at home that doesn't magically give you more time and energy than anyone else has. So having a pantry that's ready to help you get meals on the table is really the only way to do that without losing your mind or giving up and going to Chick-fil-A. Having a pantry that's ready to serve you that's ready to help you get meals that you'll actually want to eat on the table is absolutely key to us living well. And I I see how it gets in other people's way. So if you don't have uh some quick meals that you can pull together faster than you could go pick up pizza then it's going to be hard stay on track with living well. So I love helping people build up a pantry and I think the reason I like teaching it is because it didn't come naturally to me. I had to learn it. And I didn't find any resources that helped me. I had to struggle and and uh learn things the wrong way and start stockpiling the wrong foods that I didn't actually want to eat or storing things improperly and then they would get wasted or uh having too many things so I couldn't keep up with what I had and then food would spoil which would work against me. I would lose money or uh if have a cluttered pantry so I really enjoy that showing people how we can we can have freezers and pantries full of food that nourishes us that helps us get winning meals on the table whether it's you know just frozen corn dogs and peas, whatever it is that your people will actually eat to keep us at home more to keep us eating at the table instead of always eating out just because it's five o'clock and we didn't have a plan and we don't really know what to do. So we waste money we eat food that doesn't really nourish us.
SPEAKER_01:Also I think the quality of the food matters too I can definitely argue that not all chicken is the same.
SPEAKER_00:So a chicken raised on pasture with really good forage and and chickens they can't live off of just grass but they do they do eat grass and bugs and so a chicken in a low stress environment outside seeing the sunshine you know feeling the sunshine their feet on grass that chicken's gonna offer something different to our bodies when we eat it than stuff raised more conventionally grow hunt fish farm gather uh yeah things or try to get the foods from real humans when possible and I know that's hard to get started with people will say well I can't afford to buy at the farmer's market and I get that when we started when I started eating meat I would go to the farmers market and I went to a grass fed beef farmer got to know them over several weeks asking them questions and then decided I was ready to trust them and buy one pound of ground beef for six dollars and the stuff at the grocery store was was 99 cents at that time. And so I couldn't buy a lot of it. But I noticed that's a big difference it really was 99 cents versus six dollars. Yeah now it's not as dramatic but I get that that that was an obstacle but I noticed the more really good protein I ate the less I needed to spend on snacks to satisfy between having a really good breakfast from some really healthy uh pork and eggs that kept me full until lunch it was a trade-off I spent more money on meat but less money on snacks and Starbucks frappuccinos to pick me up when I crashed at three o'clock in the afternoon. So I didn't need all of those things that that really did make a difference for me and just re thinking how much money we wanted to spend on healthcare pays and prescriptions and instead spending money on food that that made a big difference to me and talking to our former customers at the farm and at the market a lot of them feel the same way that they would much rather eat good food than spend all of their time at the doctor and so that's a that's a decision to make but if you're just trying to get started I would go to one farmer's market or one farm and just just buy one thing. Stick with that one thing every week or other week for a while and just see if you if you feel a difference. Buying lettuce bags of lettuce from a local farmer actually I think would be uh the the number one thing I would say if you buy bag lettuce try buying it from a local farm instead oh it tastes so much better. It does and it lasts longer. It does well think if you have lettuce that comes from a farm 30 minutes away versus that wheat we are sitting here in North Carolina one that comes from California or Mexico like how far it has to travel and lettuce is so perishable. Yes and I won't talk about lettuce too much you know I am a meat farmer. Yes but growing your own lettuce that is a very easy thing to become self-sufficient in you can have lettuce in like a month or two and grow it in the spring or the fall. Absolutely and then that's one of the things that you can do to save money is to grow lettuce and there are so many types of uh lettuce that you can grow.
SPEAKER_01:Let's see before we go there's just one thing I want to talk about and that is the different teas that you make. Her teas that was the class I attended the other day and it was I really enjoyed that.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you for saying that I I didn't come to herbal teas because I enjoyed drinking tea that I was not a natural tea drinker. It never appealed to me until I just learned how much how enjoyable they can be and how healing they can be and chamomile is one that I just absolutely love drinking in the evenings to help me relax and to promote good rest. You and I both love Tulsi so it's right that's holy basil basil T-U-L-S-I for those listening if you want to jot that down Tulsi is a wonderful herb for anxiety and just sadness right then it's not the only one lemon balm there are so many herbs that are beautiful to grow and one plant would give you way more than you could possibly consume even flying those leaves to use over the winter it is so easy to make your own herbal teas and that would be a great challenge to take on if you're deciding hey I want to live better I want to feel better in my own body I want to take charge of the things I can control growing one or two herbs and then using them to make iced tea with some honey over the summer and drying those leaves to use for hot teas in the winter that can be so satisfying it can save you money and it's just something I really love in hospitality too. It just feels like it cost me nothing to make up a big pot of Tulsi tea with a little plant that you can start from a a seed packet you can get free at the library or you can buy at the Dollar Tree.
SPEAKER_01:And I think that's neat how you have just such a passion for all this just natural healing and uh you're just so willing so giving as far as uh sharing this and helping anybody that uh comes to you again if for any of you that have questions you can text that number 704 68683. Also Melissa you teach online classes and I think it's neat that you're invited to teach classes.
SPEAKER_00:It still blows me away when my kids and my husband will be like somebody wants to hear you talk especially my teenager right so yeah it it every time somebody wants me to come speak at a conference or garden club or a women's group at church I think it's just it's very humbling honestly I don't take it lightly the opportunity to just try to connect people and try to love people and just try to encourage anyone I come across who who wants to ask questions I I don't know a lot of things but I I have unlocked some ways that have made me feel better. Most of them now looking back feel like common sense but they're definitely against the flow.
SPEAKER_01:How can someone attend your online classes?
SPEAKER_00:So if you just text the word skills to that number that's the keyword skills to 704-686-8883 it'll show you our our current list of events and you can just sign up online and a lot of them are in person where you're next to me in the kitchen or next to me in the garden or next to my husband learning how to raise pigs whatever it is but with the homeopathy study group that's something where we get to learn together using a wonderful book uh called Gateway to Homeopathy you you have ordered this book and we're getting to spend six weeks uh going through that really gentle easy to digest practical book that you can immediately apply you will very quickly find opportunities to practice your uh new skill new knowledge with homeopathy and then we have a membership group it will it will send that back to you right now it's just it's five bucks a month and it's just everything I teach in person with unsophisticated lighting and camera equipment. You know following me I'll I'll try to do workshops online about sourdough and uh rendering beef tallow for cooking and skincare and a lot of just kind of here's what I'm doing in my kitchen right now I decided to turn the camera on and then people can comment.
SPEAKER_01:Well this has been fun and uh is there any last comments or suggestions or anything that you would like to add I think that all of us have faced sickness.
SPEAKER_00:All of us love someone if it's not us we're hurting for someone right now who just isn't uh who's just existing right who's just going for emotions. And I think that we're capable of saying you know what I'm not okay with just staying alive another day right that's your your title of this podcast is so beautiful beyond existing and uh healing really only comes from one place. But we can do things as as mere humans right with eating well and spending time outside and saying no to bringing in poisons to our yard and to our home we can we can let go of bitterness and we can start with prayer. We always we always act like we should go to the doctor and get the diagnosis and then when it's really bad that's when we start praying. That's when we put in the prayer request right yeah that is true and um and the Bible tells us uh you know if anyone among you is sick you you go to the elders and and you pray over that person and I I think we could we could choose to start there.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah I think so uh this has been fun and uh appreciate you coming on to this podcast. Thank you my son.
SPEAKER_00:Always nice to hang out with you and I'm honored to be here with you.
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