Wildcraft: An Herbal Adventure DAY

Whew! I am finally ready for my big day teaching tomorrow. Every year, Wilderness Awareness School runs a week long intensive called NatureSkills. It covers nature awareness, tracking, plants, bird language and survival skills. Each day is taught by a Wilderness Awareness School staff member. Though I am not on staff anymore, I still teach all the herbal classes.  There are 21 folks signed up for the class.

I am leaving in a few days for a two and a half week trip back east to visit family. I've been so busy getting HerbMentor up to speed and programmed for two weeks of auto-pilot, that I did not get around to preparing for this class until tonight.

Since it's summer time, I'm having a little more fun with the class. I only have them for day. So, it's challenging to teach the plants AND skills they can take home.

What I did was design "Wildcraft: An Herbal Adventure Day," based on the board game.

We're going to visit three different sites with slightly different ecosystems, learning the plants that grow there. At each place we'll harvest some herbs to being back to "Gramma" to put in their dinner. Of course, Gramma is the cook at the program...our friend Shannon.

In the Wildcraft Game you go to the top of the mountain to gather huckleberries for Gramma's pie. Tomorrow we'll end up at an organic blueberry farm where the berries JUST became ripe. They'll pick a big box of berries to bring back to Shannon the Cook to back them a blueberry dessert.

We'll also stop by my house and take a look at all the wonderful weeds in the yard that the neighbors wish we would mow. I'm going to teach some basic herbal skills in my kitchen for them.

In a way, on HerbMentor you have all the lessons and more that I will cover tomorrow. In fact, there are two videos posted on this site that make up the same class I taught last year...

All of my footage from this..
http://www.herbmentor.com/articles/20080516_2

and these were the home lessons...
http://www.herbmentor.com/articles/20070920_1
http://www.herbmentor.com/articles/20070920

If you watch those videos you'll more or less be in tomorrow's class with me. :) EXCEPT you'll miss out on Gramma's blueberry pie!!!!

What I am going to do tomorrow is actually carry a deck of cards from the Wildcraft game and hold them up when I cover a plant that is in the game. I picked all the plant cards out, and we'll actually get to meet 21 of the 26 plants in the game in addition to many other wonderful edible and medicinal plants.

Kimberly and I spent tonight cleaning the kitchen, filling the herb jars, and getting all the supplies ready for the class. Kimberly teaches the herbal skills part with me. This class is always a blast to teach.

After tomorrow I have to start really getting ready for the big trip. I also need to set up Rosalee to take my truck down to the Northwest HerbFest in Eugene to sell Wildcraft games. So, if you are going to that conference (which is AWESOME) make sure you say hey to Rosalee. You can check out that conference at herbaltransitions.com

Alright, I have an early day tomorrow...gotta get some sleep. :)