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Three Seasons Herbal Pioneering Program

for the Academic Year 2010-11

featuring Permaculture & Herbalist Certification Options

Scroll Down or Click for Specifics:

• Program Dates, Deadlines, Prerequisites;
• Benefits & Goals of the program;
• Skills Covered In This Program;
• Program Schedule & Tuition Breakdown;
• Program Genesis;
• How to Apply for this Program;

Apply now for this Three-Season Cooperative Apprenticeship running September 18, 2010 - June 4, 2011 which is open to qualified teens and adults relocating to or currently living anywhere in western Washington, northwest Oregon, or the lower mainland of British Columbia. Capacity will range from 2-10 students. Non-Credit Tuition is $3,500 if you apply by March 20th, 2010; or $3,750 if you register by June 10th, 2010, or $4,000 if you register by September 12th, 2010, if space remains available. You may receive discounts for previous experience, registering additional family members, and referring friends, with your financial contribution bottoming out at a minimum of $2,750. However, if you complete one of our SUMMERTIME RESIDENTIAL APPRENTICESHIPS first, the cost for your 2010-2011 Three Seasons Cooperative Apprenticeship will be just $2,500 if you register by August 14th, 2010. A similar discount will be given for any additional future apprenticeship choices you take beyond that as well. A $1,000 deposit (fully refundable only if your application is not accepted - otherwise it can only be used as credit toward future programs) is required to hold your spot. Chris Chisholm will be your mentor through this experience, with assistance from Kim and guidance from other Veteran Faculty. Reserve your spot by applying right away.

You will have greater success with this program if you have experience with as many of the following activities as possible:

• Wild Edible Foods & Herbal Studies
• Gardening and Farming
• Permaculture Design and Earth Skills Courses
• Pioneering Skills (like knowing how to chop wood, use tools safely and efficiently, etc.)
• Community Living Experiences
• Eclectic Spiritual Experiences
• Time Outdoors (especially growing up playing in the woods, deserts, or beaches around your home; harvesting fruits and vegetables, fish and animals both domestic and wild, as a youth; plus taking adventures on the mountains, prairies, and waterways of this beautiful earth as a young adult)
• Teaching Experience (especially understanding the needs of various ages)
• Wilderness Survival; Primitive Craftwork
• Music & Artwork; Photography & Recording; Writing & Journaling
• Wilderness First Aid, Search & Rescue; Lifeguarding; EMT Training

Goals of the Program (STAND-BY; CURRENTLY BEING EDITED for 2010-11)

The mission of this cooperative residential intensive is for you to develop a self-sufficient lifestyle within modern society. For example, you will find that the plant world may become your conduit for health and healing. Whether you simply process herbs for personal and family use, or if you someday open an herbal dispensary or healing practice, we hope that caretaking wild herbs and cultivating garden plants will become a lifestyle for all graduates.

At its core, this program offers you space to become self-sufficient through experience. Self-directed cultivation of gardens and hands-on caretaking of wild-land flora will be supplemented by class lectures and our library resources. And in the end, we hope that your development of a personal medicine wheel of health, guided by permaculture principles, the values of earth skills, and your own spiritual study, we hope that each participant becomes a person to whom anyone could turn for advice in the healing arts.

Herbal Aspect:

To us, being an herbalist means being the person in a community to whom everyone can come for guidance as well as healing. To heal means preventing ailments, so an herbalist must know what tonics should be included in community meals. And to treat ailments, an herbalist must know how to deal with crises, build fire to heat water and lift spirits, then apply herbs and other remedies to cure a situation. The herbalist also makes sure that the community is caretaking its land in the most sustainable way possible, and s/he maintains a vision of peace for community action.

To realize these ideals, you will need to begin to practice an herbalist's lifestyle, based on the rhythms of your micro-climate and bio-region, as well as on the rhythms of the individuals around you. You will help develop a wall-size community calendar to document the best times to cultivate and harvest, while also developing your own personal medicine wheel of health. You will also help us expand our farm and forest gardens as we walk this land with attitude of caretakers.

The core elements of your program include Wolf Journey field exercises which guide you to become an herbalist in a broad sense of the word, while the classes with Linda Quintana (tentative depending on dates) and other herbalists show you a vision for where your skills could bring you. Plus, the week-long camps with Chris, Carol and Nikki (see staff page) are designed to push your skills to the next level. Most everyone agrees in retrospect that these camp experiences become the richest in every participant's memory, and the most difficult to convey in words, so we won't try to explain it now. They simply have to be experienced to understand.

We will also use resources by Susun Weed, Tom Elpel, Pojar & McKinnon, Paul S. Auerbach, Hillary Stewart, Michael Moore, various Permaculture authors and the Peterson's Field Guide series among many other sources as our references. You will graduate from the program once you have completed a minimum required amount of coursework which is part of the above activities.

No matter your previous experience, you will be expected to fully participate in every possible training opportunity to push your skills to a higher level of excellence, although your own health will be the priority. The goal is to always develop ourselves into better and healthier herbalists.

Self-Sufficiencty Skills Learned

• Health & Organizational Strategies (western lineal and medicine wheel use for self, lessons, projects)
• Medicinal Herb Collection & Preservation (drawing from knowledge of area herbalists)
• Preventative Health & Herbal Spas (from daily health routines, to our special spa treatments)
• Organic & Biodynamic Gardening
• Farm Animal Care & Cultivation
• Wild Edible Foraging & Preparation (Herbs, Nuts, Roots, Flowers, Fruits, Insects)
• Natural Cooking & Food Storage (pit cook, clay oven, ash cakes, smoking, jerkying, pemmican)
• Various Basketry Projects (one of our specialties), woodwork, and other pioneer crafts.
• Natural Selection Forestry (chopping and chainsawing, wood splitting and moving)
• Land Mapping & Water Navigation (orienteering with and without modern aids)
• Pioneer Style Shelters, plus Emergency Shelter & Primitive Shelter.
• Clay Harvesting, Molding & Firing.
• Canoeing, Sailing and Kayaking.
• Parfleching (carrying cases, drum making).
• Bent cedar boxes and other important bioregional crafts.

Additional Earth Skills Learned:

• Nature Sketching & Journaling.
• Wet Fire Maintenance & Fire by Friction
• Natural Water Purification (seeps, filters, rock boiling, and locating natural springs)
• Bowls & Cordage Making (double and triple reverse wrap using nettle, fireweed, cedar, kelp seaweed)
• Backpacking & Camping
• Wildlife Tracking & Bird Language.
• Bioregional Ecosystems (old growth temperate rainforest, glaciated alpine meadow, intertidal and estuary, river and lake, wetland and bog, desert and sagebrush steppe, mixed pine and subalpine forest)
• Music and the Arts (flute making, drumming, songwriting, poetry, clay sculpting, natural paints, singing and pianos/guitars on hand)
• Influences of Nature on Spirituality (buddhist, christian, hindi, indigenous, jewish, muslim) including opportunities of retreats and quests, sweat lodges and fasts

Management & Educational Skills:

• Emergency Rescue, Advanced First Aid, CPR (wilderness and water settings)
• Most effective ways to treat age group (3-6, 7-9, 10-12, 13-15, 16-18, 19-21, young adults, parents, elders)
• Most effective methods to use with each age group (didactic/wolf, questioning/coyote, imagining/fox, imitation/dog)
• Delivery of age appropriate stories (personal, european, african, persian, chinese, other eastern, indigenous)
• Risk Management (assessing sites, planning activities, mitigating hazards)
• Incorporating Earth Skills & Starting New Schools (examples of non-profits, partnerships, sole ventures, and communities)
• Political Environmentalism (left and right wing strategies, legislative and artistic strategies)

Overview of Benefits (STAND-BY; CURRENTLY BEING EDITED for 2010-11)

Note taking (or tape recording) during every class is required, along with weekly blogging. Graduates become eligible to become Wolf Camp instructors, though hiring is dependent on enrollment and the ongoing development of your skills.

Schedule