Written by Megin Potter
Photos provided
[From the 2026 Home & Garden Magazine]
In a modern reimagining of ancient wisdom,
Althine Health & Home is bringing plant-based wellness and sustainable wildcraft back to the
Spa City Farmers’ Market this summer.
From the kitchen of her husband’s generational home on a wild 30-acre expanse in Greenfield, Jaclyn Cotter-Older, founder of Althine Health & Home, is reclaiming age-old knowledge that today, has largely been lost.
Six years ago, Jaclyn was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes. Already an avid forager for wild edibles in the Adirondack Mountains, she fine-tuned her skills for a new healing purpose – plucking plants and mushrooms primarily for their medicinal benefits.
Althine Health & Home is a traveling apothecary named for Jaclyn’s husband Darbe's Great Grandmother, Althine Denno, that pays homage to his family’s Nordic ancestral roots. Like so many generations before her, Jaclyn is sustainably harvesting, ingesting, and sharing plants and fungi with the community. With its rich culture, captivating mythology, and vibrant traditions, Jaclyn respects and reveres plants, mushrooms, and the lore that surrounds them. She believes this knowledge can reshape our lives and the way that we relate to nature.
“That these plants – ones you might think of as weeds - are actually edible and medicinal must be made known,” she said.
Natural Goodness
By creating healing remedies and nourishing skincare for herself and others, Jaclyn is helping to spread the word about all the natural world has to offer.
Althine Health & Home’s booth is stocked with small batches of botanical salves, tinctures, teas, artisanal soaps, and handcrafted goods.
The combination of black walnut, wormwood, elderberry, and clove found in her Antiparasitic Blend tincture cleanses and repairs the digestive system. The rich, earthy flavor of dandelion root, stinging nettle, and burdock come together in a robust tea blend that promotes overall health. When the moisturizing creaminess of goat’s milk meets the exfoliating power of charcoal, and the nourishing benefits of the antioxidant-rich chaga mushroom, you get Althine’s gentle soaps that protect the skin and prevent the face from drying out.
Bionic Benefits
In addition to the abundance of natural materials grown in her garden, Jaclyn carefully selects wild edibles from her property’s patch of reishi mushrooms and along the path she has affectionately named “Turkey Tail Trail.” Turkey Tails are considered a medicinal superfood that boosts the body’s immune response. “I think everyone should take Turkey Tail mushroom every single day purely for the benefits it provides,” she said.
Jaclyn has experienced first-hand how much better she’s felt since adding herbal remedies into her diet. She’s also witnessed how much they helped her father, Scott Sacala, cope with the side effects from three years of cancer treatments before he passed in January. To target a customer’s unique needs, Jaclyn is happy to create custom blends, such as the therapeutic body oil she made with a blend of Calendula, rosehips, yarrow, and lavender to treat scarring.
Everything that Jaclyn creates, she tests on herself first.
“I’m bionic now,” she says with a big beautiful smile.
