Wildculturing Workshop

February 23- Sunday the 25 with option to add Monday February 26

Hands-on workshop, to learn steps to a vibrant polyculture with Steven Martyn founder of the Sacred Gardener School of Golden Lake, Ontario

Gain hands on experience to integrate your life with the land where you live. Wildculturing can work with any landscape to increase the fecundity and perennial abundance of the land.
The wildculturing tool box is full a traditional techniques from simple ways to increase the quality of a forest or existing forage to creating complex plantings of successional polyculture.

• Friday night, introduction circle and talk about how to approach the land in a sacred way, and about sacred forms of agriculture and land use.
• Sat morning will be a group breakfast then to the site, absorbing period, meditate, talk, and look at things.
• Sat afternoon-lunch then begin the process of visioning, set realistic goals and go through the process together of prayerfully preparing one spot of ground and planting.
• Sunday we can break off into smaller groups to practice, so everyone can go through the process of approaching, preparing and planting and mulching at least one thing.
• Monday option to explore deeper with Steven and gain a deeper understanding of cultivating a relationship with the lands spirits.

Join us for a life changing event in the Virginia Blue Ridge Mountains at Montfair Resort Farm, with Steven Martyn of the Sacred Gardener. In this two day hands-on wildculturing intensive we will work with Dave and Leora Vincenti and their home site’s land that is a mile from Montfair. Participants will be taken through the whole process of Wildculturing (or integrated polyculture) as outlined in Steven’s books “The Madawaska Forest Garden” and “Sacred Gardening”.

Wildculturing is based on a sacred ‘indigenous’-meaning ‘from inside’, approach to land; where the beings that reside on the land and the land herself are honored and worked with co-creatively to evolve a more productive culture for ourselves and the other residence of the land.

First thing (after breakfast) we’ll head out to the site. The wildculturing process must always begin from the land (not the drawing board or books on design). Before we can begin we must know the land well and ask for permission. In terms of having the intimate knowledge and being connected to the history of the land Dave and Leora and other local residence will be essential. From these first gleanings and understandings of what is actually present on the land, our visions of changing the space can find a place to root and grow from. Then, each one of these visions must be given back to the lands council of beings to see if it is accepted. If it is accepted then we can move forward into the physical. With each process and at each stage there must be a sensitivity so we can adapt in our approach. The feel of something, the way it looks and smells, these are all the information we need, but at the end of a shovel or a plow we don’t feel these things.
The cumulative event of planting ends the physical process with the land and simultaneously begins a lifelong spiritual relationship with the land. When we have prepared the ground in a conscious way, our planting of the seeds and roots becomes an act of consecration, through which we are married and obligate to the land for life. The introduced plant is a child to the land and ourselves. When gardening this sacred way ’as ritual’ we are working directly with divinity. While this way of working with the land is new territory for us it can also feel very familiar. This parallels our ancestral indigenous relationship with the land and how we lived for hundreds of thousands of years.
From this place of understanding what we think we know is often turned on its head. Like Alice through the looking glass everything is transformed and animated. What we see as good organic growing can look like fascism, actions on the land we may have seen as destructive become part of a larger co-creative dance of give and take. And what we saw before as ‘produce’ becomes a gift from divinity.

Because of the hands-on nature of the workshop there is limited spaces available, so book early.
Food and lodge camping or cabins available for an additional fee.

Steven Martyn, M.A. (traditional plant use), B.F.A. honors, artist, farmer, wild crafter, builder, teacher, writer, visionary.

Steven has more than thirty years’ experience living co-creatively with the Earth, practicing traditional living skills of growing food, building and healing. Steven created Livingstone & Greenbloom in 1986, Toronto’s first green landscaping company. In 1996, he created the Algonquin Tea Company, North America’s premiere bioregional tea company. He has given talks and run workshops internationally for more than twenty years and has taught at Algonquin College since 2000. Steven has been teaching wild edible and medicinal plant use as well as traditional survival skills for more than a decade.
In 2014 Steven and his wife started the Sacred Gardener Earth Wisdom School. Steven released his first book, “The Story of the Madawaska Forest Garden” in 2016, and his second “Sacred Gardening” was released in June 2017.

Price of Workshop per person: $200.00

Additions:

Add on Monday February 26 for an additional $85.00

Food $36.00 for 3 days of meals

2 breakfasts, 2 lunches and 2 dinners. $36.00

Accommodations at Montfair Resort Farm:

Camping in Lodge will be $50.00 per night per person includes use of kitchen, restrooms, shower, heat and use of fire place. Guest will need to provide own sleeping bag/ linens and or cot.

Cottage option: $112.00 per night for up to 4 guests and $20.00 per additional person up to 6 guests. (One single payee per cabin)