‘Little House on the Prairie’ Star Melissa Gilbert Speaks on Quiet Cabin Life: ‘What I’ve Always Wanted’

Former “Little House on the Prairie” star Melissa Gilbert–who wrote a book recently about moving into a run-down cabin–always wanted to live on a farm. She told People recently that she experienced the Hollywood version on the Classic TV show “Little House,” but wanted more. “I loved playing Laura because I wanted to be like her,” she recalled.

Now, at 57, Gilbert is living out her Laura Ingalls Wilder dreams, rediscovering the outdoors and living in a rustic cabin on 14 acres in New York’s Catskill Mountains with her husband, Timothy Busfield. “This is what I’ve always wanted,” she told People recently.

Along with living in the mountains, and growing her own food, Gilbert also shared that she’s going more natural in her aging process as well. She previously got Botox and plastic surgery but says that part of her life is behind her. “I grew up in an industry that values the outside considerably more than the inside,” she said. “And I was caught in that wheel of trying to stay young. I finally woke up and went, ‘What am I doing? I look like a carrot top, and I’m not happy.’”

The lifestyle of trying to stay thin and fit in with the Hollywood crowd didn’t sit right with Melissa Gilbert. In 2013, she discovered a more natural lifestyle when she moved to Michigan with her husband. Now, she’s embracing aging in a physically and mentally healthy way. “I was always trying too hard to fit the mold that someone else wanted,” she explained. “I’m finally happy in my own skin. I’m so grateful and relieved and so much happier.”

Melissa Gilbert Embraces Rustic Life, Explores ‘Little House on the Prairie’ Influence in New Book

Melissa Gilbert has a new book coming out, titled “Back to the Prairie,” which chronicles her life from “Little House on the Prairie” to her experience moving to a “ramshackle house in the Catskills.” The description explains the book further, saying, “When her husband introduces her to the wilds of rural Michigan, Melissa begins to fall back in love with nature. And when work takes them to New York, they find a rustic cottage in the Catskill Mountains to call home. But ‘rustic’ is a generous description for the state of the house, requiring a lot of blood, sweat, and tears for the newlyweds to make habitable.”

Gilbert fully embraced rural life; she raises chickens, grows her own food, and basically gave up Hollywood life. “She trades Botox treatments for DIY projects, power lunching for gardening and raising chickens, and soon her life is rediscovered anew in her own little house in the Catskills.”

It seems like things have come full circle for Melissa Gilbert; from “Little House on the Prairie” to little cabin in the Catskills, she’s made a comfortable, idyllic life for herself and her husband.