Wildculturing: The Art of Crafting Live-Cultured Foods

“Wildculturing works with increasing the fecundity and perennial abundance of the inner and outer terrain. Wildculturing is a toolbox packed with traditional techniques and practices from simple ways to increase the quality of microorganisms in an inner microbiome or a microclimate. It brings back wholeness of the combined genetic material of the microorganisms in a particular environment.”

Wildculturing begins with the wild and native edible plants of fields and forests, bringing them into our kitchens to start the culturing process. Come and discover the wonders of the gut microbiome, its role in health and how we can better support it. Learn the ancient food-preserving process of bacterial fermentation, how it works and why these foods and drinks matter so much to health. Through the evenings, we will taste delicious, nourishing, mature fermented vegetable samples and herbal beverages to inspire you to eat and drink with gut health in mind.

Fermentation makes foods more nutritious as well as delicious. Microscopic organisms – transform food and extend

 its usefulness. Fermentation is found throughout human cultures. Hundreds of medical and scientific studies confirm what folklore has always known: Fermented foods help people stay healthy.

We will discuss some of your favourite foods and drinks, including fermented ones. Our focus will be on types of fermentation incorporating local wild weeds of the season.

Some of the possible topics to be discussed and tasted are:

• Sprouted Grains Sour Dough Crackers
• Seed and Nut Cheeses
• Vegetable Ferments
• Herbal Cider Vinegar
• Lightly Cultured Herbal Teas
• Wild Pickles
• Sauerkraut Spicy Kimchi
• Herbal Vinegar
• Water Kefir
• Wild Weed Ferments
• Kombucha & Jun
• Root Tonics: Cultured Roots of Wild Weeds

Includes

• Wild Fermented Sampling
• Fresh Herbal Tea
• Wild Fermented Beverage
• Seasonal Foraging Charts & Handouts
• Wildculturing: The Art of Crafting Live-Cultured Foods e-Manual (available for those doing the whole series)

Facilitator: Shantree Kacera, R.H., D.N., Ph.D., received his doctorate in Nutritional Medicine and Herbalism in the 70s. Since then, he has been exploring the effect of foods and herbs in an integrative lifestyle approach to one’s physical, mental, emotional and spiritual well-being. His passion and study of wild edibles and foraging began in the 70s. He has been exploring the benefits of a high-energy Ayurvedic plant-based approach to nutrition and the ecological benefits of integrating bioregional local, native and wild edible living plants into one’s daily life. 

To Register

Date: Sept 30 – Oct 1, 2023

Time: 9 am to 5 pm.

Cost:
Early-Bird $250 (Two weeks before the workshop). Regular price $300

Includes all workshop materials, handouts, and charts.

All lunches will be potluck style using organic, local, wild, live-food plant-based ingredients as much as possible. The centre will provide organic in-season soups, salads, herbal teas and snacks.

It does not include taxes, accommodations or travel.