There is mud on the boots by the door and something steeping on the stove. That is usually where you'll find me.
I'm Caitlin Hall — herbalist, teacher, and writer working from Elder Creek Farm in Scott County, Indiana, in the Ohio River Valley. I tend a small piece of land where the creek runs cold, the elder trees are older than the county records, and the growing season decides what gets made.
I didn't arrive here by intention. I arrived by necessity.
My body broke down the way bodies do when you ask too much of them for too long — chronic illness, a nervous system ground past its limits, the accumulated weight of a life spent producing. I turned to plant medicine because nothing else was answering. The plants did. Elder Creek Apothecary grew from that — slowly, without a business plan, the way most things worth having do.
The Apothecary
Small-batch folk remedies for everyday woes. Farm-grown and responsibly sourced from growers I know by name.
Every remedy begins in the same three places:
the folk record
the land
my own body's hard-won knowledge
What did the Appalachian tradition carry forward?
What is Elder Creek growing well right now?
What has my own nervous system learned from needing this?
I call it slow herbalism. It cannot be rushed. It cannot be scaled past the capacity of the hands that tend it. Nothing here is made fast. Nothing is made without a reason.
The apothecary is open 7 days a week, 8 AM – 7 PM.
The Teaching
Every month at the Scott County Museum, I teach herbal history rooted in the folk traditions of the Ohio River Valley and Appalachian heritage.
No background required. No degree necessary. The goal of every class is for you to leave feeling that this knowledge was always yours to reclaim — because it was.
Herbal care is people care. It is our birthright.
The Writing
I write under the name Hag Under the Wood.
Creekside Correspondence is my monthly newsletter — market dates, seasonal updates, what's been made and what's coming. The Substack goes deeper: essays on Appalachian folklore, botanical history, neurodivergent care, and the dark feminine. The Field Notes from the Shadowroot live there too — archival fiction records from the world of my novel-in-progress, free and public.
Every product label carries the Substack URL. The essay is the lineage document for what's in the jar. If a product brought you here and you want to know where it came from — the plants, the tradition, the reason — that's where you'll find it.
The Philosophy
I live by what I call the Nine Steps to Elevensies — a personal framework for returning to a slower, more embodied life. Walking. Tending. Resting without apology. Eating something real. Moving at the pace of something worth keeping.
It is not a productivity system. It is the opposite of one.
If you are tired of synthetic answers to embodied problems — if you are looking for something that came from a specific place, made by a specific person, from a tradition with a name — you are in the right place.