In this class, the knowledge required to grow and use bamboo efficiently will be covered. We will cover the best practices for harvesting, curing, treating, and preserving bamboo. You will leave with an intimate connection and understanding of bamboo and the gifts it offers us and our planet.
In this two-day willow immersion, instructor Tyler Lavenburg will show you how to weave up a mighty-fine carry-all basket, using the “stake and strand” method. By the end of this class, you’ll walk away with your very own beautiful and functional messenger bag style baskets with shoulder straps or a picnic basket with a wrapped willow handle. These baskets can be used for just about anything, from harvesting food to carrying your computer!
Join Emileigh of Rhythm & Ritual for a day of broomcraft and connection.
More than a handcrafts class, Emileigh creates a ritual space for participants to settle in and create with intention. Everyone will make their own full length sweeper broom.
Are you interested in having an environmentally responsible death plan, learning practical ways to prepare for a thoughtful and conscientious transition, and create a community-held connection around death? Join us for an enlightening presentation by some of North Carolina’s leading environmental and death conscious educators.
Using more prolific naturals, such as Wisteria, Virginia Creeper, English Ivy, Grape Vine and split Kudzu vines to weave a small ribbed basket. Nancy Basket takes her name from the work she does and a Cherokee grandmother long ago, Margaret Basket. She’s made vessels from natural materials for more than 40 years. Expect serious humor, exhorting you to excellence since she has thrived teaching public school as an artist in education since 1990.
In this workshop we'll do a deep dive into the basics of processing raw(unpasteurized and non-homogenized) milk from the farm to the kitchen. This class will give you the foundational knowledge to process milk at home to make some of your favorite grocery store dairy products like butter, yogurt, and fresh cheeses like ricotta and mozzarella. This workshop will explore the chemistry behind dairy processing, and how dairy takes on so many different forms in our diets.
Laura Boggess, a Biology and Environmental Studies professor at Mars Hill University and Nastassja Noell is a lichenologist who struggles to stay within the fenced pastures of science. As a biologist, painter, and writer, her work grapples with the collapse of ecosystems and the reality of living on stolen indigenous lands, and seeks to co-create futures that reconnect and heal. Join them for an enlightening (en-lichen-ing?) discovery walk, where they will introduce you to the basics of lichen identification, as well as their roles in natural systems and as medicine, natural dyes, kin, and muse.
Enter the world of broom-making – rich with metaphor, beauty, and practicality in this class on Broom-making for Renewal. Emileigh holds the space in a circle format, guiding students through a meditation and connection exercise and will provide an opportunity for sharing and reflection. From a place of presence, we will craft 2 turkey wing whisk brooms of different sizes. Students will walk away with a feeling of accomplishment, connection, and two beautifully crafted brooms. Materials will be available for purchase for those that feel the desire to keep tying brooms at home!
This free family-friendly event is hosted by WNC Food Coalition and is a relaunching of the Collaborative Ag Network with 4 exciting programs to improve connectivity and quality of life for farmers. Meet some folks and learn what’s coming to WNC and how to get involved. Then enjoy some local food and music with A Grisman + Garcia Experience with Dirty Dawg.
Join Rare Birders Benjamin Gibbins and Edwin Self for a demonstration of woodcrete construction. We are restoring a late 1800’s Chestnut and Oak barn at Rare Bird and through a combination of imagination and sustainability Ben and Edwin have developed a technique using the sawdust from their milling creating an insulative, fire-retardant and quite beautiful wall. Come get your hands dirty and learn the process.
The dynamic duo that is Hazel Ketchum and Bob Culver, aka; The Harrows are multi-talented, multi-instrumentalists, multi-cultural musicians and teachers. They will work with students using voice techniques to learn the basics of harmonizing. This workshop will culminate into a showcase concert where students will have the opportunity to take the stage and practice what was learned in a public setting before a safe and encouraging audience. Free Concert afterwards with registration here.
In 1965, a twenty-one year old filmmaker, David Hoffman, embarked on a journey to Madison County to create one of the first documentary films on Appalachian Music. The black and white film titled "Music Makers of the Blue Ridge (Bluegrass Roots)" followed the musical journey of Bascom Lunsford through the picturesque backroads of Madison and Buncombe Counties. Now, 60 years later, at the age of 81, David Hoffman returns to Madison County to screen his iconic 1965 film.
Participants will learn how people from around the world approach animal farming, slaughter, butchery, and meat preservation, not only to enrich practical cooking and eating but also as a way of reconnecting you with ancestral skills and ways of knowing. Meal included and free barn concert with Mother Marrow following workshop.
Join us for a transformative weekend retreat at Rare Bird Farm, where we'll delve into the power of dreams from a Jungian perspective. Led by Farrah Hoffmire, a Certified Dreamwork Professional with a lifelong passion for dream practices, this immersive experience will take us on a journey of self-understanding and growth.
Participants will be assisted in making their own reusable mushroom grow-bucket. Ryan will discuss substrate recipes, the sterilization process, where to source and how to make your own spawn, cultivation, care, and harvest as well as nutrition, medicinal applications, and more! Extra time will be used for a Q&A session.
Eco-printing and natural dyeing has almost become a form of therapy - an acceptance of the imperfect world, an appreciation of the natural gifts all around us, and a practice of turning imperfection and surprise into the thing I exactly wanted all along. I am no expert, but the art itself is one big experiment. I hope you enjoy being a part of it with me!
Participants will learn the basics of fermenting and what successful fermentation looks like. Students will get to know the tools and skills needed to take it home and do it on your own. This is perfect for everyone wanting to enhance their health and preserve garden harvests!
This workshop is for parents and their children and will focus on the guidance and support of developing an intentional and intuitive relationship to learning with your children. As a parent, do you worry if you are doing it right? Do you wish you had more community support? Free Concert afterwards with registration here.
Spend an afternoon learning the language of flowers with Sarah Stewart, the magical artist behind Rattlesnakes & Rainbows. This workshop is for those wishing to connect more deeply with their intuition and find a way to dialogue with the world of flowers. It’s about learning the way the flowers want to speak with you. Free concert afterwards with registration here.
Do you enjoy singing and playing with your voice? Do you want to practice meditation and prayer, but sometimes find it challenging to sit still in silence for prolonged periods of time? There is a reason that so many cultures around the world have used song, chant, and mantra as tools for prayer and contemplation. Free Concert afterwards with registration here.
Come together in circle to explore the voice, open the throat chakra, and sing sacred songs of spring cleansing, awakening, and growth. Christina and Kimberly met in the Asheville area in 2021 and have been exploring their love of sacred songs together. Their intention is to share songs in an empowered way that reclaims singing as something that belongs to us all. Free Concert after this workshop with registration here.
In this generative writing workshop, we are going to embrace our distractions instead of shunning them. We’re going to learn to expand our focus to include all the uniqueness at the edges of our consciousness. We’re not staying on task. We’re getting off task with gusto and pizzazz. Mmmmm. Pizza… You love pizza. Free Concert after this workshop with registration here.
This workshop is a space for you to nurture and explore the layered depths of yourself– to come as you are, to tend to the fullness of your experience, to embody an aspect of yourself that you’re becoming or have yet to explore. We will begin the day with a guided yoga session from Rare Bird Farm Founder, Artist and Yogi Farrah Hoffmire and then flow into breath work and a guided exercise in somatic centering with Poet and Women’s Counselor Tiffany Narron. Each participant will then enter into an intimate 30-minute photo session on the farm with Photographer René Treece of Luxe House Photographic to capture a reflective heirloom of your wise, embodied self. We will share a nourishing meal together around a communal fire with music and song circle led by the wild and wise, Sparrow Pants of Resonant Rogues. Weekend farm camping available upon request.
In this hands-on intuitive weaving session we will learn how to construct basic tapestry looms from found and reused materials. Each participant will select a loom to create, or work with a premade loom if that feels right, and we will weave together with traditional and nontraditional materials. During our time together, we will practice a few tapestry weaving techniques, from warping to basic weave structures, to creating shapes and patterns with yarn. This class will focus on the meditative and restorative aspects of hand weaving and give participants the basic support needed to create your own freestyle weavings at home.
In this immersive and experiential workshop, we are invited into an intentional mask making process where we will bring a mask to life while exploring the myriad of archetypes we engage in our lives, naming the traits we wish to embody while shedding the shadows that no longer serve us.
We will begin with a grounding exercise to breathe into our bodies, creating the space to name our intention for the season and in the masks we're wanting to shed as well as the qualities we long to embody. We will then move into an exploration of archetypes for us to consider in how we feel them at play in our own lives. After our masks are named and intentions set, we'll move into mask-making. All materials of pre-cut mask faces, charcoal, paint, scrap cloth, glue, etc. will be provided. We'll take a journey together around the enchanting land at Rare Bird Farm to gather natural materials of twigs and dried flowers as well. Over tea, we will bring our masks to life, allowing the attributes forward that we seek to work with and explore in the season ahead. Each participant will leave with a mask of their own design and a grounded, felt sense of their embodied self in this time.
Sliding scale rates are available so if finances are an issue, please connect with us as we would rather you be here if you feel called.
Saturday, September 24, 2022
10AM-2PM
Garden Fresh Lunch Included
Rare Bird Farm is offering it’s first workshop and we are making it free to the first 12 people who sign up!
We will guide participants through the basics of hands-on natural plant dyes and eco-printing. Participants can expect to learn about fabric preparation, dyeing plants, and techniques and leave with their own creations. We will provide all materials. Donations appreciated but not required. This class is for beginners.
