The Sumac School

This year long wild food intensive takes you deep into connection with the world we are a part of through the doorway of wild food, ecological design into a deeper sense of integration and connection with other species and diverse landscapes!


Through the doorway of wild food, we'll pierce through the wallpaper that limits our relationships with the wide world of plants and animals and start participating with the ecosystems that sustain us and their nonhuman residents in a meaningful way. Through a year's cycle, we'll cover a wide range of survival, hands-on and awareness skills. With a strong focus on learning from and about eating and cultivating plants and animals, class time and homework will create an immediate, positive impact on your diet, budget, health 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, germinating seeds and cuttings; and the basics of permaculture design as we explore gardens in the area. Explore many habitats and 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 50 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 learn how to butcher chickens and a sheep or deer.

Varied locations in the Pioneer Valley.  (Northampton, Greenfield, Montague, Southampton, Amherst, Holyoke)

One SUNDAY, most months, for a full year. 
2022-2023 Dates: 10/16, 11/13, 12/18, 1/15, NO FEB, 3/12, 4/16, 5/14, 6/18, 7/16, NO AUG, 9/17

Time: 10 am-2:30 pm

Instructor bio: Felix Lufkin has been foraging and educating about plants for 15 years. He teaches nature and gardening programs at K-12 schools in the Valley, has offered hundreds of plant walks, and directs Help Yourself Edibles as well as Leapfrog Programs.

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Western MA - Sumac School

$450.00 - $750.00

In this year-long wild food intensive, we'll explore diverse landscapes around Western MA, looking for wild edible plants, medicinals, and other wildlife. Over the course of a year together, we'll expand our repertoire of familiar species, learning how to safely ID, harvest and prepare many of them into nutritious, delicious food.

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