A healthy lifestyle for Geraldine Peterdy and her family stays rooted in rural-acreage living in the shadows of Mica Peak.

Dr. Peterdy knows about health. She's a pathologist who runs a practice in Liberty Lake called Allied Pathology PC, but she'll also describe important roles as wife to Noland Peterdy and mom to their eight children, ranging in age from 5 to 16. The family lives as close to the land as possible, with all of them employed at helping with multiple gardens, fruit trees, cattle and chickens.

The Peterdy family also uses solar power and recently installed a geothermal system for heating and cooling their home.

"We want to teach our children about how to raise animals and work off the land," said Peterdy, who added that the family tries to eat mostly natural, fresh foods.

"That's important, showing our children what work ethic is," she said. "We want them to understand we don't just go to the grocery store. There's hard work involved getting the food to the table. And then it's just keeping things healthy, and natural, and simple.

"The kids are working; they're not couch potatoes. They're out there working it off. Our kids have learned many valuable skills." 

Peterdy said she believes a lot of health concerns are associated with processed foods, sodas and artificial ingredients, "so we try to stay off of all processed foods because of the ties to diabetes, heart disease and obesity. You see that problem in today's society."

When seasonal colds strike family members, she likes to make a batch of homebrewed rosehip syrup from wild rose bushes.

"We make that, and it's good for providing Vitamin C as an antioxidant," she said. 

A native of Ireland, Peterdy came to the U.S. at age 26 to do her residency work in St. Louis, where she met her husband. She then completed two fellowships, one in surgical pathology and another in dermatopathology. The family moved to Liberty Lake in 2003. 

Her first fellowship study involved surgical examination of general surgical tissue specimens under the microscope. The second fellowship, for dermatopathology, required skills in the specialty of examining skin tissue under the microscope.  

For her pathology practice in Liberty Lake, Peterdy doesn't see patients directly, but rather she receives tissue samples from area physicians to review and provide pathology reports used by doctors in determining a diagnosis.

"Generally, I see people's biopsies," she said. "I get referrals from other providers. They refer specimens to me, and I examine them." 

She formed Allied Pathology in 2014. She previously worked within a large pathology group before launching her own practice.

"Now, I'm an independent practitioner and local business owner," Peterdy said. "I'm a pathology provider interested in keeping the practice local. Physicians refer samples, but patients if there is a skin sample can request and say they'd like the sample sent to Dr. Peterdy. I get a lot of referrals that way from local advertising, people who know me here."   

Noting that she strives to provide next-day reporting, Peterdy said she typically examines skin tissue for everything from skin cancer to "cysts, lumps and bumps."  

Her husband helps with her practice by handling the financials for Allied Pathology. He also is an attorney with an MBA, and he separately works as a wealth management business consultant, including estate and tax planning.

Noland Peterdy described his wife as hard-working in her practice while simultaneously devoted to family.

"I'm the luckiest man in the world," he said. "She's a wonder woman. She does everything, works professionally, keeps house, runs her own business, and rears the children, so she plays mom, doctor, wife. But she does all that because that's her passion."

Geraldine Peterdy had a good comeback to how she does it all. "I have a good man to back me," she said, smiling. 

On their 40-acre property, the couple has a gardening system that includes one small greenhouse and several smaller gardens. They also have about 100 fruit trees, 11 cows and around 30 chickens for steady egg production.

"For fruit trees, we have everything, not just apples," Noland Peterdy said. "Our main crop is crab apples; we make apple cider, applesauce. We now have a commercial cider press. The cows love it because they eat the pulp."

"We also have hay storage," he said. "It's a simple, 1800s kind of lifestyle we try to live in terms of raising our own beef and some of our other foods. We end up recycling everything. We make our own electricity, and we pump our own water with it. We try to eat organic, or natural."

Geraldine Peterdy said their decision to find acreage and live a rural lifestyle in Liberty Lake also gives them access to nearby educational opportunities the couple wanted for their children.

"We educate the children in Post Falls in a private Catholic school," she said. "We're Catholic. Many people we know were moving here because of the schools."

She smiled as she watched one of her boys walk into the house with paint-stained clothes after working on a deck project.   

"It's been a lot of hard work, but we can see the fruits in our children," she said. "It's been very rewarding to see their development."

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