top of page
Maine Local Living School
nurturing the human-earth relationship
Community Programs
2024 Calendar
April 28: Grow Your Own Edible Mushrooms! with North Spore
May 5-9: Bioregionalism, Resilience and Active Hope with Antioch University
May 19: Wild Greens for the Common Table
June 22: Miso Making Workshop with go-en fermented foods
June 23-27: Heart Teachings: Meditation & Whole Earth Study with Ray Reitze & Molly Gawler
July 28: Maine Open Farm Day at MLLS
August 3-4: Green Wood Spoon Carving with Grant Hawkes
October 5-6: Willow Basket Weaving Weekend with Mary Lauren Fraser
October 19: Acorn Processing Day
October 20-24: Heart Teachings: Meditation & Whole Earth Study with Ray & Molly
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 in Maine. This workshop, led by North Spore educator Louis Giller, will share background and hands-on experience with some of the most reliable outdoor cultivation methods. Louis will start with a presentation explaining how to plan and execute log and bed cultivation with species including Shiitake, Wine Cap, Oysters, Chestnut, and Hen of the Woods. From there, we'll get outside and start inoculating, putting what we've learned into practice! Participants will be able to take home a freshly inoculated Shiitake log.
Date: Sunday, April 28, 10:00 am - 2:00 pm
Cost: $30-80 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: Sunday, May 5 through Thursday, May 9
Cost: $500 - $1,000 with scholarships available through the Office of Continuing Education (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 13, 10:00 am - 3:00 pm
Cost: $30-80 sliding scale
Miso Making Workshop
Join go-en fermented foods for a sweet (quick ferment) miso making workshop and discussion about miso and its uses, as well as the history and cultural significance of this traditional fermented food of Japan. Having been produced for more than a millennium, miso utilizes techniques and relationships that have been passed down from generation to generation with little alteration. Learn why that is and get to know the microbial partners within and around us that have agreed to carry on these relationships.
In this hands-on workshop, the goal is to send participants home with the confidence to tackle miso on their own, along with a jar of sweet miso to ferment.
Date: Saturday, June 22, 2024, 1:00 - 4:00 pm
Cost: $40-60 sliding scale
Heart Teachings:
Meditation and Whole Earth Study
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, dancer, singer, breather, swimmer, walker, and lover of life who has been studying with Ray for many years. During Ray and Molly's 5-day spiritual retreat, there will be time for stillness, learning, and questions as well as great home-cooked meals and laughter around the fire. Throughout the week, Ray will share stories and wisdom while guiding us, through breath, silence, and deep listening toward becoming what we all are: love.
The program will include: seeing, feeling and studying energy systems; root systems; above ground and the green family; the creature people; weather and wind directions; studying and learning to read the landscape (it has so much to tell us about life); observing the actions of water as it interacts with nature.
Dates:
April 21 - 25 (at Earthways in Canaan)
June 23 - 27
October 20 - 24
All programs have Sunday 10:00 am arrival and Thursday 3:00 pm departure; details in registration
Cost: $350-500 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 28, 11:00 am - 3:00 pm
Green Wood Spoon Carving
Join up-and-coming artisan craftsman and maker Grant Hawkes of Wildfolkwanderer for a weekend making beautiful wooden spoons and plenty of curly wood shavings! Spoons are one of the most universal tools of humanity, being crafted and used across the globe for thousands of years. In this course we will explore the details of spoon carving, diving fully into the process of transforming a freshly cut log into a functional and beautiful spoon using simple hand tools. We will cover tool use and care, wood selection, spoon design, carving techniques, and discussions on craft and the role it plays in our lives as we carve together. Over the weekend, each participant will have the opportunity to work on a couple different projects, completing the course with new skills and utensils to take home.
Date: August 3-4, 10:00 am Saturday to 4:00 pm Sunday
Cost: $300-400 sliding scale, meals and accommodation included (see registration form for more details)
Willow Weaving Weekend
Date: October 5-6, Saturday 10:00 am to Sunday 4:00 pm
Cost: $400-500 sliding scale, meals and accommodation included (see registration form for more 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.
Acorn Processing Day
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 19, 10:00 am - 2:00 pm
Cost: $30-60 sliding scale
Previous Workshops
Wild Mushroom Foraging
Join Maine Local Living School and the Butternut Learning Collective for a day of foraging for, cooking with and preserving wild edible and medicinal mushrooms. We'll start with a walk in the oak-rich woods of Day Mountain in Temple to collect and identify mushrooms, then head to MLLS to practice cooking with mushrooms and enjoy a potluck lunch. We'll also cover a few methods of preserving mushrooms and the basics of mushroom biology and life cycle. Led by experienced foragers Cynthia Hoeh Stancioff and Jula Moll-Rocek.
Date: Saturday, September 16, 2023 10:00 am - 3:00 pm
Cost: $0-75 sliding scale, $50 suggested
Collaborative Living Workshop & Potluck
Photo by Robin Farrin
Collaborative Living Maine is bringing their Stone Soup Series to Maine Local Living School! This is an opportunity to mingle and learn about examples of and opportunities for living in community. It will include a 1-hour workshop with Norway Equitable Housing Cooperative Project Coordinator, Thea Hart, about the Steps to Starting a Community followed by small group discussion. All ages and levels of community curiosity are welcome. If you are able, please bring a dish and/or snack to share for the potluck lunch.
Date: Saturday, March 4, 2023, 11:00 am - 3:00 pm
Tool Sharpening Workshop
Learn to put a shaving edge on any tool! BYOT (bring your own tool)! We recommend starting with a simple knife, especially a carving knife with wide bevel. Feel free to bring other tools as well such as a kitchen knife, chisel, drawknife, block plane, etc. The ability to sharpen unlocks our ability to reuse the old and rely on ourselves.
bottom of page