Wanda Farther is a pseudonym for the author, who grew up in a large Italian family where food was at every celebration, and lots of it! Through a college degree and starting a business in the early 80s related to the medical industry, my knowledge of microbes, germs, and medical conditions fascinated me. My lifelong love, however, has been for plants: learning how to grow and harvest them, how to cook with them, and preserve them for herbal medicine.
Always wanting to learn more, I became a Master Gardener in the early 2000s. Through this public service organization, I spent years learning and teaching others about herbs, growing and maintaining them in the desert, and then harvesting and making many personal care products from these herbs. At the same time since 1997, I've been a chef and caterer with my own catering business in Nevada.
During this time, I began to explore locations where I could become a true 'farmer' with property and livestock. This desire led me to Oregon, where I have been living since 2014. Again knowing that there was so much knowledge I needed, I attended many courses, classes, and workshops through Oregon State University and other institutions directed at beginning farmers. We also experienced a great network and support through friendships with farmers. Our farm was heaven on earth, with a dash of life and death sprinkled in by mother nature, just to remind us who's in charge! During my time as a farmer, I learned many of the skills that are valuable to those people seeking self-sufficiency, including baking, cheese making, preserving, dehydrating, making personal care products from my own herb garden, growing mushrooms, and my personal favorite... foraging. I've told people my farm property was "a medicine chest". There were so many wild medicinal herbs and plants that it took me several years to document them all, learn their uses, and start to use them in recipes for my health. Creating a farm from scratch, I also studied extensively permaculture and regenerative agriculture, as well as growing food for my family and as a business while reaching and achieving certified organic certification.
Having this wealth of information I've gained throughout my life, and especially the last 15 years, I've had a burning desire to share, teach, and support others who could also benefit from knowing how to do these skills. It was this desire that led me in 2021 to begin to write my first book: A Starting Point for Urban Homesteading. That book is written from the perspective of offering someone who might have no (or very little) knowledge the confidence and support to dabble in learning some of the easier skills of self-sufficiency. I tried to present the information in an easy-to-understand, non-threatening environment, and in some cases, I paired videos with the recipes in the book. There are an overwhelming number of homesteading books out there, but very few of them seem to understand how hard it is to get started, to” dip your toe in the water”, to try it out, without having to purchase a book that is large and intimidating. We hope you find my first book simple and straightforward, as it was written from my heart.
Social Media: (copy & paste into a browser)
Youtube (recipes & how to's)
www.Youtube.com/@WandaFarther
Facebook
www.facebook.com/WandaFarther/
Instagram
www.instagram.com/wandafarther/
Pinterest
www.pinterest.com/wandafarther/
Read more
Read less
