Summer Plant Identification and Foraging
We will be spending the afternoon learning, exploring, and nibbling on what early summer foraging has to offer. All experience levels are welcome!
Using natural materials, time tested techniques, and your own two hand your can learn to craft anything from a bow and arrow, to a stone axe, to your own leather clothing. These are the skills people used to thrive in the long term. Primitive skills, hand crafts, stone tools and flint knapping.
Advanced Fire Kits
We will be taking a look at bow drill, a fire by friction technique, and bring it to an elevated level both in material and technique. To create a kit that is long term as well as beautiful we will craft a high performing flex bow out of osage orange and peck a stone handhold that will never have to be replaced. We will also take a look at techniques and various ways to troubleshoot and modify your kit so that you can be versitile as you coax fire from wood.
Blacksmithing Basics
This class will be a 2-day beginners-oriented exploration of the various black smithing techniques useful in the creation of tools & crafts related to outdoor living skills.
Spring Fling
A weekend of archery fun! 3d target course through the woods, moving target challenges, archery competitions, and a flaming arrow shoot. Long bows and self bows only. More info soon!
Animal Processing
Join us for day of learning the entire process of bringing an animal from whole to breaking it down into its many useful parts. Learn to get over the confusion and fear of what to do, and learn to take part in the creation of your food from the most basic level.
Late Fall Foraging and Processing
Late fall offers us a bounty of food. From roots at the peak of their energy storage, to fall nut harvests, to the last greens surviving the frost, the late Autumn landscape still provides foods to explore and harvest. This course will go into the seasonably available foods, as well as preparation and processing of across, one of the most abundant and nutritious or fall edibles.
Spring Foraging; Roots and Shoots
Spring! The time to eat your greens! This is also a fantastic time to learn the basal rosettes of so many biennial plants that have edible roots. We will spend the day identifying various plants, nibbling, and putting together a salad of wild greens and sauteing of foraged roots. This is a great way to get into a foraging practice for the rest of the growing season.
White Tail Projects
The White Tailed Deer is the most commonly hunted ungulate in North America. Like all the mammals we eat, it has many fantastic materials sources beyond the meat and tanned hide. In this course we will dive into those most useful resources that can be taken from deer and other mammals. We will process bones and antler, working on projects such as knives, awls, fish hooks, and more. We will get into raw hide projects, learning how simple it is to turn a fresh skin into raw hide, as well as how to shape containers with this mold-able yet durable material.
Origins-9 Month Program
Nine months, over 30 class days of training, one course a month ending with a week long stone age living trip. Engage yourself in your landscape and material culture in a whole new way. Immerse yourself in a handmade life. Studying, making, and using the tools needed to meet your basic needs, not in a short term survival scenario, but in a long term relationship of living with the land.
Bow and Arrow Making
Combining bow building Osage Orange bow and primitive arrow making, this course is intensive, hands on, information rich, fulfilling, and fun as it gets. A total of six days.
Basic Stone Tools- Flint Knapping
Shaping rocks into beautiful and functional tools is a fun and challenging skill that has been practiced for over 3 million years! This course is a basic stone tool class for beginner and intermediate flint knappers.
Autumn Wild Edible Plant Foraging
Learn to see through the wall of green to a bounty of healthy, delicious, and nutritious local foods! Join Roots for a day of getting to know how to identify, harvest, and process wild edibles. A one Day Class.
Bow Building
Build your own self bow that will last a life time while learning the fundamental principals of bow making and its dynamics. A four day class.
Raw Hide Craft
There are many ways to utilize an animals skin. One of the most easily accessible and useful techniques is crafting with rawhide. In this short one day course we will go over processing rawhide from a fresh skin and how to source materials. Then we will get into several approaches to using rawhide, from straps, to bags, to sheaths, to boxes and other containers. All materials are included.
Hide Tanning
Turn a raw deer hide into beautiful and functional buckskin for clothing and projects. Also looks into making and using rawhide, sinew, hide glue, bone, and more. Space is limited. A three day class.
Pelt Tanning
Furs and pelts are an amazing way to get your hands on the tanning process. This introduces you to much of the principals, terminology, and processes of hide tanning while being less intensive and more approachable then tanning a whole deer hide into buckskin. You will get to learn how to take raw pelts and turn them into beautiful furs to use in projects such as making hats, gloves, vests, hood liners, and pouches. In this course students will tan and take home a finished pelt. We will cover the steps of skinning, fleshing, membraining, softening, and smoking.
Celts, Adzes, Axes, and Chisels - Pecked and Ground Stone Tools
Ancient Technology of pecking and grinding to produce functional wood working tools. This is labor intensive and highly fulfilling. A four day class.
Ancient Living Skills
Students work with a variety of important materials and processes such as bone and antler carving, soap stone carving, birch bark plaiting, advanced cordage and drop spindles, hand weaving, bent wood and rawhide burden baskets and more... A four day class.
Primitive Arrow Making
2 days, Learn the art of producing functional primitive arrows from natural materials of bone, wood, sinew, pitch, and feathers. Stone tool processes covered.
Cooking by Fire
Learn to cook in and open hearth fire setting. Using traditional techniques you can bake, broil, fry, steam, roast, and more just using a fire. This class is literally delicious. A one day class.
Birch Basket Weaving - Diagonal Plaiting
Learn to weave birch bark with the diagonal plaiting method, a fun and accessible way to make beautiful and functional vessels. A one day class.
Advanced Flint Knapping
If you have taken knapping before and want to grow your skills, this class is for you. I will work with everyone individually at their skill level, and my job is to help you take your knapping to the next level! This class will focus on a slew of advanced topics such as: refining accuracy for percussion and alternate supporting methods, adding power for pressure flaking, learning indirect percussion and several different punching types, fluting, and blade cores.
Open House and Skills Share
A free event in which prospective students came come out and get a feel for the school and old students can come and see whats new and work on skills in an open setting. A one day event.
