Walk With Us: Memoirs & Meanderings

Barbara (Lanning) Keith, aka Mama and Nana, is the matriarch of our herbalist family and the reason we are passionate about the green path. While our family tree contains many healers, our own herbal story begins with her.

Raised on a farm in Cambridge, Ohio, Barb grew up tending gardens, raising and showing cattle, canning harvests, and sewing clothing. Her deep love of herbs was sparked after the birth of her first child, me, in 1981. She was determined to give me a good, clean, and wholesome start to my life. That same year she planted her first herb seedling...

A common question we receive is how long do our products last, and how can I tell? We offer some insights on how to tell when our products have expired on our FAQ page, but the point of this article is to breakdown what we look for in our ingredients.

Do you want to make a new recipe on your own? Did you hear about a herb that sounds interesting and you would like to try it? Have you ever wandered down an aisle of a store and saw loose leaf tea on the shelf, or found a little shop selling herbs in...

For many new to it, herbal medicine can feel like an intimidating subject, and rightfully so, for without proper respect, knowledge, experience and technique, one can wrought much damage. But when it comes to our beloved little people, you shouldn’t scare yourself off, because while bodies of children are sensitive, their systems respond wonderfully to plant medicines. The key is to be informed, be safe, start slow, and trust in the intrinsic wisdom of mother earth...

Your health is a serious matter. We herbalists dedicate our lives to understanding medicinal plants and how they affect the body. In today’s age of modern medicine, it can be a struggle to get real answers, guidance, and clarity when it comes to how we feel and why. It can be difficult to even find an educated ear willing to listen.

We are here to offer some clarity and point you in the right direction to do your...

Our family spends a lot of time answering questions. Friends, neighbors, co-workers, emails, and website messages inquire about our thoughts on a wide variety of health issues and ailments. We are not doctors and we are always careful to encourage people to seek advice from their family practitioner. We do listen, and we do help when we can. Over the years our conversations have covered many things, but one tops them all in sheer numbers. Stressed, anxious, overwhelmed, and feeling blue? It seems most of us are.

We were featured in the Ohio Cooperative Living magazine in May 2023:
Woodland Herbal is a family business based in Warsaw, Ohio, who specialize in plant-based medicines, traditional remedies, and natural body care products like teas, salves, tinctures and extracts, beauty care, and more. Their products are handmade and crafted by their family of herbalists, resulting in a quality you can’t buy in stores. They employ great research, time, love, and positive intent in all of their recipes, using only the highest quality of natural ingredients known to man.

In Woodland Herbal we often mention the many generations of healers in our family. Our Wild Lettuce is an extract originally created by Jeff and Barb Keith at their Ohio home, The Twisted Post Ranch. They are the parents of Jenni, grandparents to Leah, and Great Nana and Pap to little Rowan.

In early spring the couple carefully prepared the soil in their herb garden to plant wild lettuce seeds. While many types of lettuce grow wild in the area, they were careful to plant Lactuca Virosa, the strongest medicinal lettuce.

It’s spring, the most wondrous time of the year, where rebirth is upon us and green things are sprouting. Among our favorite pastimes is wandering the wild wood and foraging for medicinal plants, edible herbs and mushrooms. If foraging is something that sounds fascinating to you, but you don’t know where to start, this article might serve as an ignitor for inspiration.

You might be feeling as though the forest is such a mysterious and strange place to wander, but...

Nymph stage ticks of all types are waking up from hibernation and they are hungry. Like most people in this country, I knew very little about Lyme disease. Had I known just a little more, my Lyme journey may have been a little smoother, and a lot less frightening. For the sake of our big Woodland Herbal family, I will share a bit of what I learned the hard way.

Late spring of 2020, I noticed a red mark on my calf...

It seems as if no one can sleep. Well… We live in a modern world that supposedly makes life simpler and more comfortable than traditional ways of life, yet everybody is too damn busy to slow down to enjoy life. The result is a range of imbalances that take hold, problems mount, then anxieties run amok. Still, people wonder why they can’t sleep.

If you go-go-go all the time, you have no time to decompress, and no time to savor the flavors of life...

Once upon a time, a human watched a bear… Legend has it, native peoples learned the green ways from the bear. They’d watch what plants and root and fungi the bears consumed, and that way they knew it was safe to consume for themselves. If the bear suffered a belly ache, and grazed in a mint patch, they knew that was the medicine to use for such an ailment. Our connection to natural things was stronger then than it is now, because we were one with what was around us. We still have connection to this mother earth...

Once upon a time, Jenni swore, “Oh gods, no! Blogging is a dirty word. It sounds like something you wipe off your shoe. You will never get me to BLOG… Yuck!” When Brandon pitched the idea to Jenni…There was a lot of yelling. Over time, along with your help of asking questions, we wore her down. Good work, fam.

The day has come...