2023-24 Northeastern land & Food

A series of farming, culinary & land stewardship intensives

LivingFuture Foundation presents a rare opportunity to stay at SHO Farm—the Foundation’s flagship project—in the mountains near Burlington, Vermont for a series of 1-7 day-long intensives, and learn from us and a staff of guest instructors about the multiple dimensions of tending a large regenerative farm and wild landscape, with a special focus on culinary processes that dramatically expand the wild and cultivated foods available to us. Also central to each class, we cover how to integrate wildlife habitat and their phenology as vital parts of a farming and food ecosystem. By immersing ourselves in a functioning ecosystem from the perspectives of those who are a part of it, a transformation occurs, allowing us to view the land and our own foodways through the being of the animals who abide with us. While sometimes slow to take root in our consciousness, when it does, it changes us forever and hones our capacity for intersubjective and right relationship with other species as well as our own.

For longer intensives, we offer on-site camping with access to a central kitchen and facilities—this is to keep costs as low as possible. Students will combine book study, guest teacher instruction, and daily practice in the many dimensions of growing an ecosystem for wild and human residents. Intensives will cover different content according to seasonal changes on the land.

The Program

Each study session will include 6 elements:

1. What’s happening on the land, including seasonal wild and cultivated plant and mushroom study in forests, fields and permaculture orchards.

2. Wildlife behavioral study, browsing, denning, reproduction, tracking led by Susan C. Morse. How to integrate wildlife into a designed food system with a sophisticated understanding of how the animals travel, what they eat, when they reproduce, how they inhabit the land, what their seasonal needs are and how to harmonize with them.

3. Culinary Study—covering post harvest handling, high nutrient conversion, gastronomic principles for creating flavor, applying traditional methods of brewing, fermentation and aging in creative ways, creating vegan dishes with whole plant foods that satisfy a palate indoctrinated in a modern and animal-product-centric culture.

4. Guest lectures by visiting leaders in their fields. Some instructors may join virtually. Core permaculture principles explained by Geoff Lawton.

5. Integrating sanctuary animals into food systems. Composting, animal care in a lifetime context, how it differs from livestock systems. Forming a lifetime commitment with animals.

May

May is the perfect time to observe the landscape waking up from winter and to observe key wildlife patterns and plan for the season’s wildlife-integrated management. Planting trees from the nursery, spreading cardboard and compost for gardens and cutting mushroom wood. Foraging nettles, ramps, wild toothwort (like wasabi!), thistle, japanese knotweed roots for lyme medicine, lilacs, flowers, reishi, pheasantback mushrooms, shiitakes, medicinal mushrooms. Gallium oderatum, Shooting contour with a laser level, before the grasses grow. Establishing no-till gardens and building fertility from on-site biological processes and materials.

Turkeys and grouse lay their eggs in the woods. Lilacs, shiitakes, rhubarb, coltsfoot flowers (late April), making chive oil, making chive bud capers.

Tracker, forester, wildlife ecologist, author, and photographer Susan C. Morse will guide us through breeding habits, early spring forages, and preferred travel routes.

Guest instructors: Will Bonsall, Susan C. Morse,

June

The system comes alive…We harvest spring ephemerals like ramps from the woods, chives from the gardens, evening primrose leaves, basswood leaves, nettles and thistles, dandelion, mountain mint, reishi, red-belted polypore, pheasantback, and other mushrooms. We plant the annual gardens. Black locust flowers, lilac flowers for making syrups and infusions. Sweet woodruff, thyme, oregano, sweet clover harvest for culinary and brewing herbs. Pine pollen collection, woodchuck observation, seeding CBD, lupins bloom, chive flowers, pollinator study. Boletes, small hericium. Crambe maritime (perennial sea kale), mushroom log inoculation, making maple-mustard japanese knotweed shoots. Picking lambsquarters, sweet woodruff, comfrey. Making rose petal syrup. Milkweed blossoms. Making black locust water kefir champagne. Pruning male kiwi leaves for leaf protein concentrate.

Eric Toensmeier on Carbon Farming and Perennial Vegetables, Susan C. Morse, Wildlife Ecologist.

July

Forest mushrooms, chaga, milkweed blossoms, mature reishi, currants, gooseberries, elderberry flowers, chanterelles, indian pipe, motherwort, day lilies, lambs quarters as a key vegetable, black raspberries, monarchs, bi-color boletes, pumpkin leaf protein concentrate. Making tempeh using leaves as wrapping. Making milkweed saag paneer.

We focus especially on the relationship between sanctuary animals to regenerative food systems.

august

Plums, shiitakes, black trumpet mushrooms, wild oyster mushrooms, blueberries, squash blossoms, blackberries, black raspberries. Monarchs, seaberries, making eggplant “bacon”, making dill pickles, mountain ash berries.

September

Harvests and post-harvest handling. Seaberries, hazelnuts, blewits, wild lion’s mane, pumpkin leaf protein concentrate, cornelian cherries, apples, pears, making sriracha, making kimchi, making mustard, mushroom beers and stocks, wild grapes, wild hops, hawthorn berries. Harvesting hemp, making CBD oil.

Monarchs, snakes, bear.

october

Lion’s mane mushrooms, maitake, acorns, apples, schisandra berries, late season blueberries, shaggy mane mushrooms. Harvesting wild roots, making tinctures, making brews, wild oyster mushrooms, nut pines, puffballs, quince, hardy kiwi, chestnuts, elderberries, shaggy mane, goldnerod, nannyberries. Harvesting hemp, making CBD oil.

If there’s a good apple harvest, we cover the science of cider-making.

January

Culinary study focussing on advanced preservation and fermentation, maximizing nutrients, finding flavor in wood and fire, wildlife browsing observation, establishing storage staple crops and how to use them in advanced culinary preparations. Making pine soda, mushroom stocks, mushroom beers, misos.

Guest Instructors: TBD Guest Chef; Susan C. Morse