Education & Skillsharing
We didn't start teaching in classrooms. We started because we couldn't stop learning—and eventually had too much to keep to ourselves. For Paul, it began at seven, realizing food came from somewhere other than boxes. For Thera and Cayden, their own paths toward wild places and homegrown solutions. That shared hunger became a lifetime of fieldwork, and eventually, a calling to pass on what the land teaches.
The path here
Twenty years of walking students through forests, wetlands, and alpine zones. Teaching tribal youth traditional plant uses their grandparents still remembered. Leading homeschool families through seasonal harvest cycles. Working with public schools that wanted more than textbook botany. Guiding adults who felt disconnected from the systems that fed them and wanted to find their way back.
Paul has credentials—Bachelor's in Botany, Master's in Ethnobotany, Nationally Certified Interpretive Guide, certified teacher in multiple states. But the real education happened in the field. Extended stays on the Inland Plateau learning from communities who never lost their relationship with wild foods. Seasons on the Oregon Coast watching what fruited after storms. Years in the Adirondacks, the Everglades, and now the Ozarks—building literacy that only comes from showing up season after season.
We homeschool. We live the skills we teach. Education isn't curriculum to us—it's daily practice, refined through years of observation.
How we teach
Not from podiums. On trails, at forest edges, in places where you can smell the soil working. Students learn by doing: identifying plants by characteristics that hold across seasons, harvesting in ways that leave populations healthy, processing what they gather, understanding the timing that separates a good forage from a wasted trip.
This isn't weekend naturalism. It's building observation skills that deepen over years. Ethical frameworks that guide practice. Confidence that comes from genuine competence—knowing a species well enough to find it in new terrain, reading a landscape and predicting what's fruiting, teaching others because you've done the work yourself.
Our homeschool experience shapes everything we offer. We know how to meet learners where they are.
What we offer
- Guided Foraging Workshops: Species-specific deep dives, seasonal harvest training, ethical practice foundations
- Ethnobotany Courses: Traditional plant knowledge, cultural context, bridging indigenous wisdom with contemporary science
- Wilderness Skills Training: Observation techniques, landscape literacy, survival skills grounded in ecology
- Homeschool Programs: Custom curriculum for families seeking place-based, hands-on natural science education
- Professional Development: Field-tested methods for educators in environmental and experiential fields
- Mentorship Programs: Long-term guidance for aspiring field researchers, foragers, and land stewards
Our approach
We teach as a family. Different strengths, shared purpose. What we offer isn't information transfer—it's initiation into a way of seeing and being in relationship with land and season. Skills that serve for a lifetime. Knowledge that gets passed down.