About Balsam Ridge Traditions | Appalachian Herbal Goods

Rooted in These Mountains

Balsam Ridge Traditions began during the pandemic when empty shelves and shortages made me realize just how dependent we had become on systems that weren't always guaranteed to be there.

At the time, I was a mama to six young children. Seeing medications become difficult to find scared me, and I began researching the plants and traditional remedies people had relied on long before a trip to the pharmacy was an option.

That curiosity soon became an education.

I enrolled in college and began formally studying integrative and holistic health. Along the way I studied medicinal plants, traditional uses of plants native to where I live, and herbal traditions from other cultures, including Native American and Traditional Chinese Medicine. 

Then a college assignment changed the direction of everything.

For a final project, I was asked to design a hypothetical business from the ground up. I chose an herbal shop serving my local community here in the mountains of Western North Carolina.

The reason was personal.

Appalachia has a long history of making do with what we have. Even today many families in our mountain communities live where housing costs continue to climb while wages struggle to keep pace. Sometimes there simply isn't enough money to comfortable cover every bill, every grocery trip, and every need.

I wanted to create something useful and accessible for the community I call home, and for people elsewhere who simply want to bring some of the old ways back into their own homes.

Looking Back to Carry It Forward

At the same time, I was studying herbalism, I was digging into my family's history. 

I discovered that my own family was among the early families to settle theses mountains. Conversations with my Papaw brought that history even closer.

He grew up with very little but the stories he shared weren't stories about people without knowledge. They were stories of people who knew how to use what was around them. They made do. They repaired. They grew. They gathered. They preserved. And they knew that what grew in the fields, forests and mountains around them had value. 

The more I learned, the more I felt called to preserve that knowledge. 

Balsam Ridge Traditions grew from that calling.

More Than an Herbal Shop

Today, I think of Balsam Ridge as part shop and part living archive.

Every balm, tincture, tea oil and remedy gives me another opportunity to study, document, practice, and carry forward knowledge that could otherwise quietly disappear.

Appalachian culture has often been stereotyped, mocked, or reduced to poverty and backwardness. But look beneath those stereotypes and you'll find something remarkably deep: resourcefulness, faith, craftsmanship, resilience, knowledge of the land, and generations of people who learned how to build a life with what they had. 

That's the Appalachia I want Balsam Ridge Traditions to represent.

Everything I make is created in small batches with care, respect, and research behind it. Traditional knowledge matters here, but so does continuing to learn. I don't believe honoring the old ways means refusing everything we've learned since.

It means remembering where we came from while carrying the best of that knowledge forward. 

Rooted in Faith

My faith is part of this work, too.

I believe God called me toward herbalism and gave us a world filled with things worth learning about, caring for, and using wisely. My faith shapes the way I approach the plants I work with, the people I serve, and the responsibility I fell to preserve what previous generations knew.

Herbalism sometimes gets placed into a box that doesn't represent me or this business. Balsam Ridge Traditions isn't rooted in witchcraft or the occult.

It's rooted in faith, family, study, stewardship, and the traditions of the mountains I call home.

Balsam Ridge Traditions helps support my family today, but I hope what we're building lasts longer than that.

Because these old ways are worth remembering.

Rooted in tradition. Carrying the spirit of the mountain forward.