Spring: May 7-11, 2025
Our first week we come together in the burgeoning spring. This when the first green flush comes out on the land, when the Earth provides us with a bounty of nurturing and cleansing plants. Which is exactly what our body needs at this time of year.
In this session I will take you back into ‘the garden’, foraging for abundant spring edibles and medicine. In this week we with also delve into methods of Palaeolithic agriculture, I call wildculturing, and the ancient art of fruit grafting. This little known practice, from which almost every fruit you’ve ever eaten has been generated, was hidden and protected for centuries by the ancient ‘Goddess’ cultures that originated the art. In the time of conquest that followed, the knowledge spread through Asia and Mongolia, North Africa and eventually Europe. It still forms the backbone of the industrial fruit industry.
These two arts are the foundational cornerstones of modern culture around the world. A people’s culture is an extension of the way they work with the land to generate food and the other materials needed to live. All of the cornerstones of culture were originally given to us as divine gifts. Those old ones we call gods gave these things to us like we would give food to the runt of the litter. These gifts were given to us in pity, so we humans could survive because we are not as physically strong as the other animals. They were given to us humans so that we could live well, not so we could spend our surplus on war, conquer other people and take over the Planet!
Many of our cultural ideas and misappropriation of these gifts can be directly sourced to the Bible. Specifically, to our story of ‘the explosion’ from the Garden of Eden. In our time this first week we will take this myth apart in such a way as to dismantle its patriarchal spell.
Most often for about half the day we work with the land outside, and half in teaching circles or ceremony. At this time of year the hands on work will include: wild harvesting and processing the year’s first roots and first greens for food and medicine, prepping the garden and starting seeds; grafting and pruning.
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