The Sumac School: year-long intensive wild food class

This apprenticeship will take you deep into connection with the natural world we live in and are a part of through the doorway of wild foods. Penetrate the wallpaper that limits our relationships with the wide world of plants and animals! Through a year's cycle, we'll cover a wide range of survival, practical and awareness skills with a strong focus on learning from and about plants and animals. Enjoy an immediately positive impact on your diet, budget, health, awareness and sense of belonging to the land.

• Gain confidence and familiarity with more than 50 edible, medicinal & useful and poisonous species of plants, and their uses - how to find, ID, harvest and prepare them into food and medicine.
  
• Plant and land stewarding skills: Learn how to care for and propagate plants by coppicing, grafting, layering, and germinating seeds and cuttings; and the basics of permaculture design and gardening as we explore gardens in the area. Explore a diversity of habitats and wild hot spots in the Valley as we explore gardens, streams, rivers, forests and fields together in different towns.
  

• Learn how to make plants into useful tools to create glue, baskets, mats, cordage and rope, tinder and insulation, making friction fires, and projectiles.
  
• Learn 20 mammals and 20 bird species that share our habitat, their habits, appearance, songs and tracks. Process animals into food with skinning, butchering, meat curing and hide work. We will slaughter chickens and a sheep.
  

Class appropriate for ages 15+. Meets one Sat. a month for a full year between April '18 to March '19. Cost is 400-700$ sliding scale, requires a 200$ deposit - and supports public fruit tree planting. Limited work trade available. Register by 3/15: leapfrogprograms@gmail.com

Locations: Northampton, Greenfield, Montague, Huntington, Southampton, Amherst, Hadley, Holyoke

Saturdays: 4/28, 5/26, 6/23, 7/28, 8/25, 9/22, 10/27, 11/17, 12/15. 2019: 1/5, 2/2 ,3/2

Instructor bio: Felix Lufkin has been foraging and educating about plants, for 12 years. He teaches nature and gardening programs at K-12 schools in the Valley, and has offered hundreds of plant walks for the community through Acorn Kitchen and Help Yourself.

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