Late Spring Foraging, Wildcrafting, and Wild Medicine Making Intensive at Blue Spruce Park (Indiana, PA)

This spring, summer, and fall, Dana from the Pennsylvania School of Herbalism is offering herbal foraging and medicine-making intensives at a variety of regional locations. Join us for our first herbal intensive, which will focus on the plants and mushrooms in season in late Spring.

Part of growing your herbalism practice is developing a relationship with your local ecosystem and the medicine that grows there. This includes learning about plant identification, where herbs grow in our ecosystem, and safe foraging practices. But it also involves learning about reciprocation practices: how to be a good steward of the land where you live, how to monitor plant and mushroom populations and increase medicinal plants, and how to give back more than you take.  In the first part of this class, attendees will be introduced to a variety of ecosystems at Blue Spruce Park in Indiana, PA, including edge spaces, lawn, wetland, woodland wetland, and forest.  We will place an emphasis on plant and mushroom identification, ethical foraging, stewardship, and reciprocal herbalism practices. We will cover identification of plants, trees, and fungi that are medicinal (and occasionally, edible!) Our emphasis in this class is on harvesting invasive plants to support the health of the park (including Japanese Knotweed, Japanese Barberry). We will learning of their medicinal virtues, and make medicine from these amazing–if not opportunistic–species.

In the second part of this class, we will learn to process and make medicine from the plants that we harvested, which includes garbling, cleaning, and preparing.

Preparation: Good footwear is essential for this class; please wear a closed-toe hiking shoe with good tread, long pants, and layers for a variety of weather conditions. Foraging often includes rough terrain and off-trail walking, and we will be off-trail and on some sloped, damp, and rocky areas. Bring bug spray and tick repellent.  Participants will find it helpful to bring a notebook to document and take notes.  An open-weave basket, gloves, a knife, and a pair of pruners are also recommended.

Gloves are strongly recommended since we will be harvesting and working with Japanese Barberry, which has thorns.

Location: Blue Spruce Park in Indiana, PA at Pavilion #4.  9am – 1pm.

Cost: Sliding scale $40-$80.  Sliding scale means that you pay what you can afford to pay, so please pay what you can afford.

Herbalism Certificate Credits: 3 stewardship and identification; 1 medicine making