The dream of a simpler, natural life speaks to a deep place in all of us. Modern-day homesteading is both an embrace of the past and a revolutionary act for the future. Urban and suburban life can feel shallow and disconnected. Learning to live with the land in our homesteading classes brings meaning, purpose and empowerment.
Grow your interconnected, land-based life with our homesteading classes
In Person Classes
All Genders Basic Carpentry
Get deep satisfaction from learning carpentry In a culture that’s zooming toward virtual reality and digitizing the day-to-day, not everyone grows up learning how to use tools and work with their hands. Our woodworking class for beginners and folks who have used tools, but don’t feel totally comfortable with them is here to change that. […]
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All Genders Advanced Carpentry
Learn to design and build your own buildings from the ground up! We’ve had such an awesome experience with our Basic Carpentry Classes, that we decided to offer something to take graduates to the next level. This class builds on the foundation set in the basics class, where we cover how to use basic tools […]
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Building Apprenticeship
Get confident building for yourself and others. Our apprenticeship is non-residential and takes place at Wild Abundance, located near Asheville, NC. It’s appropriate for beginning to intermediate level builders; no experience is necessary, just enthusiasm and a willingness to learn by doing. If you do have experience, there will be plenty of depth and advanced […]
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Women's Basic Carpentry
This class is intended to get ladies up-to-speed on basic building skills, working with wood, and using hand tools as well as power tools. Focus is placed on creating a safe, comfortable, relaxed and fun learning environment in which students with beginning to intermediate skill levels can thrive. Trans welcome.
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Tiny Homes and Natural Building
Gain the skills you need to build your own tiny house from local, natural, or conventional materials. Tour beautifully crafted tiny houses and natural buildings, learn about each stage of building from expert lectures, experience hands-on learning as we build a tiny house from scratch, and practice natural plaster and paint. This is the most practical Natural Building Course out there.
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Wildcrafting and Medicine Making
Identify and wild forage medicinal plants in the Appalachian mountains. Learn to make medicine and cultivate herbs in your garden. Make ... and take home herbal salves, tinctures, flower essences, decoctions, cough syrups, herbal liqueurs, oxymels and vinegars.
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Survival Skills Class
Come immerse yourself in the ancient arts and modern techniques that will grow your confidence and hone your ability to survive and ... thrive in the wild. The natural world can provide for all your basic needs, but you need knowledge and skills to utilize what’s out there.
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Timber Framing Class
Learn how to lay out, measure, cut, fit, assemble, and raise a 16' by 20' timber-framed building through demos and hands-on practice. This class is appropriate whether you are an experienced carpenter, backyard deck builder, or excited beginner who just has a knack for craft.
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10 Spring Wild Foods That You Can Find Almost Anywhere
Do you want to be able to feed yourself from the wild? Discover delicacies growing right outside your door. Your guide through this course is seasoned ... Wild Abundance instructor Luke Cannon. He’s been foraging wild foods for over two decades! More than a botanist, Luke is a long-time pursuer and teacher of the magic and medicine of plants.
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Holistic Garden Planning
Learn to plan a great garden unique to you This 2+ hour, comprehensive video course includes materials for both beginning and more experienced ... gardeners. Get lifetime access to the on-demand library of 17 videos and 50+ page course manual ebook. Plan for garden success A good garden plan can result in less work, more fun, healthier crops, and the right yields to fit your personal needs and desires.
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Online Gardening School
Are you ready to grow some serious food? This online video course will give you the skills and tools you need to be able to grow a garden for yourself,... from the ground up. Lifetime access, live mentorship.
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Summer Planting for Fall Gardening
Learn to grow vegetables in the cooler seasons This 1 hour and 35 minute long video course is accompanied by a 25 page course manual to help you ... get growing. Sow seeds now (in midsummer) for bountiful fall and winter harvests. Learn about crops that survive and even thrive in cooler weather! We’ll provide growing tips, planting dates, and our favorite varieties. Plus, explore season-extension techniques, including step-by-step instructions on how to set up a simple and inexpensive row cover that protects plants from frost
Learn MoreTake a step closer to your dream of a self-sufficient homestead
Only a few generations ago, most people grew up in roughly the same place as their great-grandparents. Back then, children learned from older family members how to contribute skillfully to the homestead. But nowadays, things are a bit different. Few of us were raised with extended family around. It’s common for children to focus on book learning at school; they may never wield a shovel, hoe or hammer as part of their education.
But that doesn’t mean we can’t, as adults, renew our relationships with self sufficiency. Our homesteading classes grew out of a love for practical skills and the desire to make learning these skills accessible in a culture that has virtually abandoned them. We are here to welcome you back to your roots and to build a sustainable future together.
You may wonder what sorts of skills you need to live your dream of a self-sufficient homestead? Our instructors have been experimenting with this vision for decades. You can learn a lot from their experience in our homesteading classes. As a result you’ll be able to get started with your own project on solid footing.
Our classes combine traditional Earth-based living with the modern language of permaculture design
We believe that permaculture design and principles are incredibly useful tools when it comes to homesteading. Our traditional, 12-day Permaculture Design Course teaches them through lots of hands-on learning, site visits and a theoretical foundation. In our experience living with the land, permaculture and earthskills enrich one another. This is why we also offer an intensive Permaculture Design Certificate Immersion with more than 100 additional hours of instruction, focused on Earth-based skills and rewilding.
Wild and cultivated plants are the stars of our homesteading classes
Getting to know the plants around you is important for every homesteader. We are out-of-the-closet plant nerds. Botanical education works its way into all of our homesteading classes.
If the green world is what draws you most, we also offer an wildcrafting class where you’ll learn all about wildcrafting and making medicines from healing plants. Both of our permaculture courses go deep into both wild and cultivated plant allies, too. Our gardening apprenticeship takes things a step further. Of all our homesteading classes, it provides the most hands-on experience with plants in the fields, woods, and garden.
Self sufficient living depends on diverse abilities, including practical and natural building skills
Everyone needs carpentry and building skills. Whether you hope to build your own home, renovate one, or just do your own maintenance and repairs, learning carpentry is important. One of our homesteading classes is a tiny house workshop that covers so much more than the basics. It’s 8 full days long and weaves in natural and sustainable materials, along with design and traditional building skills. The course is just one aspect of our tiny house apprenticeship, which includes room and board, plus individualized guidance in building, permaculture and just about everything we do here.
For female-bodied people who may not feel comfortable with hand and power tools yet, our women’s carpentry course will get you up to speed. We offer two levels: basic and advanced. The difference is that we dive into structural building in the advanced class.
Homesteading workshops help us reclaim the practical skills that have sustained our ancestors for generations
Homesteading is all about being resourceful. That means learning how to use what you have at hand. When your homestead includes raising livestock and/or hunting, the knowledge of how to use the whole animal is crucial. That’s why we teach you how to tan a hide so that you can make the best quality leather right on your homestead. You can see that our homesteading classes cover both the macro and the micro levels of sustainable living. As a result, we provide you with the skills you need to make your dreams a reality.