J.L. Noakes

"There are two important days in your life the day you were born and the day you find out why." Mark Twain

Alone and nearly broken after a nasty divorce, I was wandering out in the woods one day to clear my head when I stumbled across a wilderness cabin by shear accident in 1995. It was a dirty, critter infested tar paper covered cabin sitting in silent destitution in the middle of a 1000 acres of forest, it had been built as a hunting camp in it's previous life. It needed me!

The poor thing had been for sale for so long the locals and realstate people had forgotten all about it. Generally, camps in the backwoods of Michigan's Upper Peninsula came with no electricity or plumbing and so my new home had none. I had to haul water from 2 miles away. As I look back on those first few years of living alone in my isolated little cabin I wouldn't trade those memories for all the money in the world. It is amazing how much you learn when there is no one but you to rely on. That first winter taught me survival skills I never knew I had.

20 years later and now with a new, loving husband, we have continued building our beautiful working homestead in our forested wilderness. Along the way I earned a Bachelors in Nutritional Sciences graduating in 2000. It was a natural progression then into studying herbs and herbal remedies. Today I educate students in health and wellbeing with an emphasis on self-reliant living, in the not so wild Michigan's Upper Peninsula.