Mountain Medicine Monthly - “Kern Family Farm Year 1.5”

We’ve had a lot of requests for a medicine making class that meets monthly and continues on with the Materia Medica practice.  Students have joked that they need a “Year 1.5” course. Here it is! This course is open to any alumni from Year 1 or Year 2. It’s going to be on one Saturday a month from March-November.  It’s a chance to gather with fellow herbalists here at the farm, harvest herbs, make herbal medicine together, and take Materia Medica herbs home to study about and review together the following month. 

The general format of classes will be:

9 - Gather and have tea / gratitude circle

10 - Materia Medica review

11:30 Lunch

12:30 Show and tell to see what your fellow classmates have been up to as herbalists

1:30 Medicine Making workshop - see schedule below for specifics

3: Harvest the abundant herbs on the farm for your personal use to make tinctures, glycerites, infused honeys, or dried herbs at home. 

4:30 Closing circle

The idea is to keep deepening your herbal knowledge, form relationships with other herbalists, and stock up on herbal medicine during the month and for the future to use or share with others.

The class will stock up your apothecary throughout the year, and ends with an epic “Holiday Gift Making Workshop” where you’ll make all sorts of herbal gifts for friends and family. I used to run this as a stand alone class, and it was always the most fun of all classes.  

Here’s the course content schedule:

March 20th “Awaken from winter”

Harvest fresh spring herbs and medicinal weeds for our infused oils, teas, vinegars. 

Materia Medica:

Oregon grape

Red Clover

Slippery Elm

Shepherds purse

Tea workshop: 3 teas for revitalizing the body in early spring

April 17th “Unfurl and stretch”

Harvest nettle, new mints, lemon balm, early garlic, calendula, edible flowers, and other farm goodies to continue our herbal vinegars, teas, and begin tincturing at home.

Materia Medica:

Peony root

Ashwagandha root

Schizandra berry

Violet flowers and leaf

Tea workshop: Create 3 teas to follow the spring transition arc to “unfurl and stretch” your limbs into the growing season of mid-Spring.

May 15th “One with the flowers”

This month is when the damask roses bloom, so we’ll be harvesting these for making fresh rose infused honey.  We’ll also harvest chamomile flowers, calendula flowers, borage flowers, violets, first lavender of the year, and a slew of herbs that you can use in your teas, tinctures, and herbal infused vinegars at home.  We will also get to harvest milky oat if it’s ready.  
Materia Medica herbs for May:

Sage

Oregano

Borage

California Poppy

Medicine Making Workshop: We’ll focus our attention on our medicine making of rose honey and rose jam this month. We’ll also make one tea as a group because we need tea.

June 19th “Solstice Surrender”

Harvest plants at the peak of the solstice sunlight. We’ll have a LOT available to harvest this month, pretty much all of the mint family plants and flowering asteraceae family plants. You’ll get to start harvesting Tulsi, too! If you take these home and make tinctures, we’d love to see how they turned out when you return next month.

Materia Medica for June:

Feverfew

Meadowsweet

Passionflower

Clary Sage

Tea workshop: 3 solstice teas to enliven your senses, connect you with the world around you, and allow you to feel the radiance of your soul.

July 24th “Lavender fields forever”

The lavender is going to be blooming big time, so we’re going to make all sorts of lavender medicine. 

Materia Medica for July to make you feel SO GOOD:

Brahmi

Cacao

Mulberry

Damiana

Lemongrass

Lavender workshop: We’ll make lavender crowns, lavender sachets, lavender wands, lavender wreaths, lavender sugar, and lavender scrubs.   We’ll also make a lavender tea!  It will be a lavender harvesting & lavender medicine making day to remember.

August 21st “Herbal-ing up your jams” with carminative and flavonoid-rich spices

We’ll harvest the usual herbs that are abundant on the farm for you to continue stocking up for use over the winter and for making your tinctures, glycerites, and infused honeys at home. We’ll think of flavor profiles to use in our teas and in jam making, since this is the season for abundant fruit canning and jam and we’re due for a chat about formulating great tasting medicine. We’ll have a jam tasting next month to see what you all come up with for your herbal-inspired jam making at home.

Materia Medica for August (all tasty spice herbs, not all seasonally relevant but if you’re canning these could be useful in your creations):

Turmeric

Cumin 

Coriander

Star Anise

Cardamom

Medicine making workshop: 2 teas for the summer heat, and 2 spice blends for your food and jam.

September 18th “Late summer push!”

We all know that September can be dry and smokey, so this is when we’re going to do a tea workshop to reduce the burden this dryness and smoke can have on our bodies, and to prepare for the vata season of Fall. We’re going to moisten, cool, and prepare the nervous system and digestion for big VATA. The herbs are going to start transitioning, being less abundant but still helpful to stockpile for your winter months. There will be fresh Spilanthes and Jujube, as well as the first seeds if you want to collect seeds from herbs for your gardens. 

Materia Medica for September:

Jujube 

Spilanthes

Cornsilk

Horsetail 

Tea making workshop: 3 teas to strengthen your barriers, moisten your dryness, and prepare for the fall transition.

October 16th “Fall” into balance 🙂

Fall is going to be here in October, probably swinging between cold mornings and warm afternoons, and we may have our first rain. We’re going to celebrate this by making a hydrosol together with whatever the farm has ready for us. It might be rosemary, lemongrass, tulsi, whatever we choose as a group. This way we’ll have some aromatic healing hydrosol to help us through the fall season. 

Materia Medica for October:

Usnea

Shiitake

Black Walnut

Dong quai 

Tea workshop: We’ll make two teas for fall wellness together.

November 20th “Holiday Gift Making Workshop!”

We’ll have to move through our Materia Medica review quickly so that we can fill our afternoon with a “holiday gift making workshop” where you can prepare these different gifts, and wrap them with pretty herbal details afterwards:

• Tea workshop: We’ll make 2 winter/ holiday teas (herbal chai and wellness blends).

• Lip balm workshop: We’ll make 2 batches of lip balms for you to give to your family or friends.

• Infused honey making station - make 2 herbal honeys of your choice.

• Hydrosol bottling station - make 2 hydrosol blends of your choice.

• Body scrub station - make 2 herbal body scrubs from herb infused oils, salts, and essential oils.

• Tincture station: Make 2 tincture blends for people you love.

• Seed bags - bag up herb seeds that we’ve collected to share with family or friends as a gift.

• Wrap them up in kraft paper and decorate them with herbal sprigs to make them look beautiful!

This is your chance to pay it forward and give the gifts of healing medicine to your friends and family. This workshop is so much fun, and you’ll leave feeling grateful and rich in herbal gifts.