This story is part of a recent episode of Inside Appalachia. Click here to listen to the entire episode.
Crystal Wilson's small garden beds and animal cages stretch out on either side of a dirt driveway on the side of a ridge south of Knoxville. She has been gardening and tending herbs on the forest floor of her Rockford home for a quarter of a century.
Today, herbal medicine is experiencing a renaissance. Industry trackers reported explosive growth in sales and prices last year. But this “new age” trend has been a source of traditional Appalachian health and independence for centuries.
Wilson grew up in southwestern Virginia, learning about wild plants on long walks with her father, a factory worker. Her grandparents collected plants to earn extra money and sell them at their Marion herb house. They dried them and sold the ingredients to pharmacies.
“Appalachia was once America’s pharmacy,” she said. “Here we harvest the plants, we go to the compounding pharmacy, and there the medicine is made. So people could collect things and sell it to make extra money. It's always been about us here. We just forgot about it.”
Wilson didn't forget. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Wilson sold her medicines on her farm and at farmers markets, primarily to women.
She learned skills not only from her family, but also from the women of Appalachia who taught her reading during her first job out of college.
Crystal Wilson picks elderflowers from a bush growing on her Rockford farm. Due to the mainstream popularity of elderberry syrup, she calls elderberry the gateway to herbal remedies for many.
“They were all working women,” she says. “Things weren't as bad as they were 30 years ago in Appalachia, but (illiteracy) was real. At the grocery store, you have someone sign your check. So I taught them, and… They taught me through it.”
As a writing exercise, the women wrote down the home remedies they knew. Wilson brought people participating in a literacy exchange program to the Bronx to share it. The Puerto Rican and Dominican women there wrote about themselves. Wilson was struck by the similarities in folk wisdom among women from different environments and cultures.
Historically, women have turned to herbs when they need help with health issues such as menopause and family planning, Wilson said. Today, many people also use herbal medicine for several other problems of our time, such as insomnia, anxiety, and depression.
“This says a lot about who we are as a people and what we are fighting against,” she added.
Elderberry is a gateway
For many people, elderberry is a gateway to other traditional remedies, Wilson said. In late spring, she makes a tincture of elderflower and honeysuckle steeped in vodka. She said it helps lower elevated body temperatures such as fever and hot flashes.
“This is what keeps me grounded here. Herbs have different cycles,” she said. “My year is planned around what is harvested and how it is harvested.”
It starts with spring violets, followed by honeysuckle flowers.
“Then we make leaves during the summer,” she said. “In the fall, the plant's energy returns to the ground and roots, so it's a good time to harvest roots, preferably during the waning moon.”
After a cool spring day, she was searching the blooming elder bushes when a flock of noisy and angry guinea fowls followed her on the prowl. She picked her way through the cage of goats and chickens and scolded her child for running away. It yelled at her unimpressed.
As her guinea pigs fuss at her feet, Crystal Wilson adds elderflower to her fever-reducing tincture.
After the hunt, Wilson broke the elderflower clusters off like little lace doilies. After checking for bugs, she placed a few elderberry and honeysuckle flowers in a metal bowl filled with water from one of the giant square rain barrels built on a platform in the corner of the house. I put it in and washed it.
This is just one example of how much Wilson values what modern science can teach us about conservation, climate change, and medicine. This summer, she is receiving advice from the nonprofit organization Appalachian Sustainable Development. The group plans to visit the farm and recommend improvements to make the forest better for deep forest plants like golden seal.
Wilson, an insulin-dependent diabetic, stresses that herbal medicine is not a replacement for modern medicine. She has also taught workshops for nurses on how to avoid interactions between herbal remedies and prescription drugs.
“For tinctures, they're plant- and alcohol-based,” she explained. “I usually use potato vodka because a lot of people have wheat allergies. So next time I'm going to bring potato vodka and cover this problem.” I poured it over the flowers that were in it.
When someone buys a tincture, Wilson personalizes the dose using a formula based on age and weight. She is aware of the challenges of our time.
“We have a lot of opioid addiction, so you don't want to give alcohol to someone who is struggling with it,” she said. “So for those people, I use glycerin or apple cider vinegar.”
She puts the bottle on the windowsill and shakes it every day as she passes by. After six to eight weeks, she strains it and puts it into a small amber dropper bottle. Dark colored bottles can be stored for several years.
“Everything is behind on this, from the plants to the patio,” Wilson said. “Nothing is fast. There is wisdom in it.”
Wilson said she worries that the growing mainstream popularity of herbal remedies could lead to overharvesting of Appalachian forest plants, as was the case with ginseng and ramps.
But she said she's excited to see the suburb's enthusiasm for traditional healing actually bring more Appalachians back to traditional healing.
“It's so great to see people say, 'I know that!' — and to turn that light bulb back on,” she said.
From the old era to the “new era”
Wilson said college-educated suburban women helped popularize herbal remedies, which can now be found in drugstores and grocery stores. Jill Richards, a mother of six who lives in suburban Knoxville, echoes this trend.
“I think there's definitely been an increase in the number of average suburban moms wanting to do something natural in recent years,” she says.
Jill Richards drinks fire cider every day at her West Knoxville home to boost her immune system.
Richards started creating home remedies in Florida about 25 years ago because she didn't want to feed her newborn baby anything unnatural. She learned recipes from books, her chiropractor and her other mothers. Women gathered together to make ointments and diaper rash creams while their infants played.
As her children grew, Richards began to rely on other remedies for her family, such as cider.
On her counter is a large glass container with a spout, the kind most of her neighbors use to serve iced tea at parties. But hers contains a thin amber liquid with floating white shards and flower-like pepper slices.
“So we take things like horseradish root, onions, garlic, habanero peppers, herbs and spices, and we put them in apple cider vinegar and let them ferment for four weeks,” she said. “I drink it every day during the winter, and I think it helps with some things.”
She poured some into her shot glass and tossed it back.
“It's so hot,” she said, wincing for a moment. “But I'm telling you, if you drink this, I don't think anything bad will settle near you!”
Richards sold some of his remedies in his store. But in recent years, she's only been selling elderberry syrup, which has gained mainstream popularity for preventing the flu and colds. Some medical studies seem to show that it may strengthen the immune response and shorten the illness.
Richards posted about it on Facebook as she prepared a dish using the dried berries she ordered online. (Sometimes, she makes it into gummies for her kids.) She says herbal remedies are part of a holistic approach to health.
“It's interesting that we call antibiotics 'alternative medicine' because this is how people have healed for thousands of years,” she says, noting that overprescription of antibiotics can make them ineffective. says a concerned Richards. “This is the real medicine: plants, fruits, oils, extracts.”
gardening for independence
Modern women like Richards can now learn skills in formal classes. In the rolling fields of Clinton, Tennessee, a dozen members of the local Red Hat Society sit in chairs around a bar in a greenhouse, clinking china teacups. They just held an herbal tea workshop at Erin's Meadow Herb Farm taught by farm owner Kathy Burke Michalzo. Although she grew up primarily outdoors in nearby Oak Ridge, she first learned about herbs from a colleague at her garden center.
Michalcho said the increased interest in herbal remedies among her customers, who mostly live in Knoxville, reflects a broader trend of wanting to know where their food and medicines come from.
Erin's Meadow Herb Farm has begun limited private sales of immune-boosting ingredients like elderberry and echinacea to prevent hoarding during the COVID-19 pandemic.
This accelerated during the coronavirus pandemic, when more people turned to gardening.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Erin's Meadow began selling out of immune-boosting products like dried elderberry and echinacea. Michalzo said some online buyers were stocking up. She stopped selling more than one bag at a time.
“I think it made people think, especially when stores and restaurants are closed… 'What if I get hurt or sick and I can't go to the store to get my medicine?' “I want to know something that I can quickly grow in my backyard and use if my child has trouble sleeping or has a small burn,” she said. “And I think people realized that they were relying on commercially available products and maybe they didn't need to do that.”
This article is part of the Inside Appalachian Folklore Reporting Project, a partnership with West Virginia Public Broadcasting's Inside Appalachia and the West Virginia Humanities Council's Folklore Program. The Folkways Reporting Project is made possible in part through support from the Margaret A. Cargill Charities to the West Virginia Public Broadcasting Foundation. Subscribe to our podcast to hear more stories about Appalachian folk life, art, and culture.
