Community Programs 2025 Calendar

April 4: Grow Your Own Edible Mushrooms with UMaine Cooperative Extension
May 6-10: Bioregionalism, Resilience and Active Hope with Antioch University
May 17: Wild Greens for the Common Table

July 27: Maine Open Farm Day
September 27-28: Cob Oven Building Workshop with Jesse Stevens
October 4-5: Willow Basket Weaving Weekend with Mary Lauren Fraser
October 18: How to Eat an Acorn
Oct. 31 - Nov. 2: Heart Teachings with Ray Reitze

Our community programs are geared toward adults but many of them are appropriate for supervised kids as well. All programs take place on the Maine Local Living School campus, 71 Lake Drive, Temple, Maine. Our campus is unfortunately not ADA accessible; please reach out if you have questions about accessibility.

Grow Your Own Edible Mushrooms

Mushrooms are fascinating and beautiful organisms that also offer opportunities for substantial food production and economic value in Maine. This workshop, a collaboration between Nick Rowley from UMaine Cooperative Extension and MLLS, will focus on shiitake and oyster mushroom production on log and wood-chip substrates. The class offers a nod to the complexity of the mycosphere, information on common terminology and production, when and how to harvest woody substrates, and plenty of hands-on experience with inoculation. Participants will take home a freshly inoculated shiitake log.

Date: April 4, 4:00 - 6:00 pm
Cost: $10 - 40 sliding scale

Bioregionalism, Resilience & Active Hope

How do we practice hope as the world unravels? Explore the power of place connection and hands-on skill building to reweave fabrics of kinship and community.

In the course, offered in partnership with Antioch University, we will explore themes of just transition, downshift, localization, and resiliency through readings, discussion, and most importantly, embodied experience. You will carve a spoon, plant seeds, inoculate mushrooms, tend a woodland, feast upon wild and cultivated local foods, sharpen a knife, compost everything, and build your own rocket stove. Depart with practical and philosophical frameworks to create a small piece of “the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible” (Charles Eisenstein).

Dates: Tuesday, May 6 through Saturday, May 10
Cost: $1,200; scholarships/reduced fee available (you do not need to be a student at Antioch to receive a scholarship)

Wild Greens for the Common Table

Come feast on the wild abundance of spring! We will spend the day on identification, wise harvest, and cooking of multiple wild plants that grace the springtime table. Ever eat a tree-leaf salad, nettle stir-fry or knotweed pie? Come learn how and see how partnering with the wild can bring health, happiness, and hope. We will provide a mostly-foraged lunch.

Date: Saturday, May 17, 10:00 am - 3:00 pm
Cost: $30-80 sliding scale

Maine Open Farm Day

Visit the working homestead and education center of Maine Local Living School on Open Farm Day! We will lead tours of the campus including the ice house, root cellar, greenhouse and gardens, solar food dehydrator, animal barn, and the classroom/workshop. Visitors will learn about and interact with earth-friendly systems including rainwater collection and solar water heating, rocket stoves and outdoor kitchens, composting toilets, and alternative building construction. Visitors will also have the opportunity to put their hands to work on a homestead project and try cookies made with acorn flour. Free and open to the public.

Date: Sunday, July 27, 11:00 am - 3:00 pm

Willow Weaving Weekend

Date: October 4-5, Saturday 10:00 am to Sunday 4:00 pm

Cost: $400-500 sliding scale, meals and accommodation included (see registration form for details)

In this two day workshop you will make a round-base basket, otherwise known as stake-and-strand, traditional to much of Europe. Learn to make the slath, two-rod twining, staking up, 3-rod waling, French randing, a waled border, and handles of your choice. Take home a round-base basket to use for the rest of your life and the skills to make more.

The workshop is taught by Mary Lauren Fraser, who apprenticed with Karen Collins in northern Scotland. Mary has been weaving coffins for green burial and teaching basketry workshops throughout New England since 2015. Of Scottish heritage, she grew up and resides on the banks of the Connecticut River in today's western Massachusetts, on unceded Abenaki land.

How to Eat an Acorn

Acorns: the amazing, bountiful, ancient staple of humanity! But did you ever try eating a raw acorn? Yuck! However, it just takes some simple processing to transform acorns into a truly delicious grain-like (and gluten free) food. This is real food; we eat hundreds of pounds a year. As part of this day we honor indigenous cultures that have enjoyed acorns for thousands of years, and we investigate the potential of acorn to transform modern food systems and culture. We'll begin the day with harvesting and end with baking!

Date: Saturday, October 18, 10:00 am - 2:00 pm
Cost: $30-60 sliding scale

Heart Teachings Philosophy
with Grandfather Ray

Registration

Ray Reitze, master Maine Guide, has led thousands of people through the peace of the Maine woods and into the peace of their own hearts. Molly Gawler is a fiddle teacher, mother, and dancer who has been studying with Ray for many years. During Ray and Molly's 3-day spiritual retreat, there will be time for stillness, learning, and questions as well as great home-cooked meals and music. Throughout the program, Ray will share stories and wisdom while guiding us, through breath, silence, and deep listening toward becoming what we all are: love.

Date: Friday, Oct. 31 - Sunday, Nov. 2. 10:00 am arrival, 3:00 pm departure.

Cost: $350-500 sliding scale

Note: the program is hosted at but not run by Maine Local Living School.