Maine Local Living School
nurturing the human-earth relationship
Community Programs 2026 Calendar
April 18: Making Miso with Nicholas Reppening
May 9-10: Wild Foods Weekend
June 4-7: Hickory Bow Making Intensive with Tejas Moses
July 11-12: Cob Bread Oven Build with Kelly Sandman
July 17-19: Yoga and Yarrow with Anya Hanson and Soul Revival
July 27: Maine Open Farm Day
August 1: Willow Weaving Day with Hannah Billian
August 8-9: Mushroom ID and Foraging with Nicholas Reppening
October 3-4: Willow Weaving Weekend with Hannah Billian
October 18: How to Eat an Acorn
October 24-25: Bend Like Willow with Soul Revival
November 5-8 Heart Teachings with Ray Reitze
Our community programs are geared toward adults but many of them are appropriate for supervised kids as well. All programs take place on the Maine Local Living School campus, 71 Lake Drive, Temple, Maine. Our campus is unfortunately not ADA accessible; please reach out if you have questions about accessibility.
Miso Making
Join go-en fermented foods for a shiro (white ferment) miso-making workshop and discussion about miso and its uses as well as the history and cultural significance of this traditional fermented food of Japan. Having been produced for more than a millennium, miso utilizes techniques and relationships that have been passed down from generation to generation with little alteration. Learn why that is and get to know the microbial partners within and around us that have agreed to carry on these relationships.
In this hands-on workshop, the goal is to send participants home with the confidence to tackle miso on their own and begin an annual tradition. We will reconvene in one year to cook with this year's miso and make a new batch!
Date: Saturday, April 18 1-5pm
Cost: $30-60 sliding scale
Wild Foods Weekend
Join us for a weekend of plant identification and communication, wise harvesting, wild meals, and a celebration of new life this spring! Participants will learn different methods of preparation and preservation and enjoy community style wild foraged meals. Through exploration of springtime plants in the garden, open field, and forest edge, we will share in the health and hope that can be found through deepened partnerships with the wild.
Date: Saturday, May 9 - Sunday, May 10
Arrival time: 9:30-10am
Departure: 3pm
Cost: $250-350 sliding scale
Hickory Bow Making Intensive
In this four-day intensive, participants will learn to craft their own bow from a single hickory stave using traditional metal tools. We will cover harvesting, seasoning, bow design and layout, tool usage, tillering and finish work. Tillering is the process of teaching the wood to bend in a beautiful arc so that it can serve as a durable, fast, and accurate bow.
Tejas Moses made his first bow under the tutelage of Preston Taylor at the Vermont Wilderness School. Since then, Tejas has learned about handwork from Howard Hitchmough, Neill Bovaird, Ben Putnam, and Al Jaeger. Tejas has a BFA in Ceramics from the University of New Hampshire. He is a clay artist and bowyer. He has taken artist’s residency in Jingdezhen China, and at the New Hampshire Potters Guild wood kiln in Deerfield NH. Tejas mentors at wilderness programs for youth, teaches adult classes in various crafts, and works as a licensed arborist.
Date: Thursday, June 4 - Sunday, June 7
Arrival time: 9:30-10am
Departure: 3pm
Cost: $650-850 sliding scale
Cob Bread Oven Build
Come build an outdoor cob oven for baking everything from pizza to bread to veggies to yogurt in one firing. Learn basic cob concepts, how the oven works, how to test soil for clay content, finding the right mixture of clay and sand and straw for the properties you want, and experience the joy of playing in the dirt to make something functional and beautiful!
This workshop is taught by Kelly Sandman. Kelly lives in Belgrade, Maine and spends her time singing, dancing, rowing, roller skating, growing things, building things, nurturing things, and advocating for women in the trades through the groups We Built This, Tradeswomen of Maine (mid-coast), and Non-Trad Tradies (Portland area). She works as a carpenter, woodworker, metal roofer, teacher, plus whatever else she finds interesting.
Date: Saturday July 11 - Sunday, July 12
Arrival: 9:30-10am
Departure: 3pm
Cost: Work exchange, donations welcome
Yoga and Yarrow
Deepening Connections with Body and Plants
Join us to deepen your yoga practice and cultivate relationships with the local plant community! We'll start our days with yoga, explore plant identification, ethical harvesting, processing, ethnobotany, land stewardship, and medicine making. Participants will learn extraction methods including water, oil, and alcohol, and leave with an herbal remedy crafted from the land. While preparing nourishing meals and herbal medicines, we'll celebrate the ways our minds, hearts, and spirits are enriched through deepened bonds with the plant world.
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Yoga will be led by the Beals of Soul Revival Yoga Studio, with our herbal exploration led by Kayleigh Martin of MLLS and Anya Hanson. Anya is a graduate of Bastyr University’s Herbal Sciences program and has completed work-trades with farms and herbalists across the United States and Europe. She is passionate about cultivating reciprocal relationships with the plants in her community through growing, harvesting, cooking, and formulating herbal remedies. In her free time, she enjoys hiking New England’s 4,000-footers, baking bread, and creating herbal skincare products.
Dates: Friday, July 17 - Sunday, July 19
Arrival: 9:30-10am
Departure: 3pm
Cost: $375-475 sliding scale
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Maine Open Farm Day
Visit the working homestead and education center of Maine Local Living School on Open Farm Day! We will lead tours of the campus including the ice house, root cellar, greenhouse and gardens, solar food dehydrator, animal barn, and the classroom/workshop. Visitors will learn about and interact with earth-friendly systems including rainwater collection and solar water heating, rocket stoves and outdoor kitchens, composting toilets, and alternative building construction. Visitors will also have the opportunity to put their hands to work on a homestead project and try cookies made with acorn flour. Free and open to the public.
Date: Sunday, July 26, 11:00 am - 3:00 pm
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Willow Weaving Day
We will be making willow “leaf” trays (think shallow basket) during this full day class. Utilizing hazel and willow frames, we will make simple but beautiful ribbed willow trays to bring home, load with your garden harvest, or fill with treasures from the land. Participants will make trays in the shape of a leaf, with the option of playing with some other frame shapes if there is time.
The workshop is taught by Hannah Billian. Hannah spends her days growing chicories in her garden, weaving baskets out of her home-grown willow, cycling, nordic skiing, and picking and eating copious amounts of fruit from the land she calls home. With a passion for literacy and the outdoors, she works as an educator during the school year. She makes a lot of baskets (too many perhaps?), and enjoys sharing her love for and knowledge of the willow plant with students. Hannah lives on a farm in central Vermont with her husband and children where they grow fruit trees, nuts, and berry plants.
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Date: Saturday, August 1 9:30am-4pm
Cost: $125
Mushroom ID and Foraging Weekend
Join us for an introductory exploration of the vast world of mushroom collection and identification. Nicholas Repenning will lead us into the woods of MLLS for a foray, where we will learn about mushrooms, where they live, best practices for gathering, and basic macroscopic field identification. Learn how to see the forest through a forager's eyes. We will tune in to our surroundings, learn to listen with more than just our ears, and venture into the world of the fungal families around us.
We will delve into identifying mushrooms and utilizing available resources to learn their characteristics and classify them to genus/species. Resources will be available for identification as well as guidance to continue your education and skill building opportunities.
This workshop is taught by Nicholas Repenning, who has been foraging and preserving wild foods in midcoast Maine for well over a decade. As an amateur mycologist Nicholas has spent countless hours collecting and identifying the ephemeral fungal fruits of the forests. “Foraging is more than a hobby but a way of life for me and my family. It's how we eat and how we come to know the world around us.” A lifelong observer and admirer of the natural world, Nicholas is enthusiastic to share his passion with those around him.
Date: Saturday, August 8 - Sunday, August 9
Arrival: 9:30-10am
Departure: 3pm
Cost: $250-350 sliding scale
Willow Weaving Weekend
During this two day class we will make round base stake and strand baskets. Participants will learn various techniques such as pairing, three-rod wale, french randing, and zig-zag. There will be an option to add one or two handles, depending on your preference.
The workshop is taught by Hannah Billian. Hannah spends her days growing chicories in her garden, weaving baskets out of her home-grown willow, cycling, nordic skiing, and picking and eating copious amounts of fruit from the land she calls home. With a passion for literacy and the outdoors, she works as an educator during the school year. She makes a lot of baskets (too many perhaps?), and enjoys sharing her love for and knowledge of the willow plant with students. Hannah lives on a farm in central Vermont with her husband and children where they grow fruit trees, nuts, and berry plants.
Date: Saturday, Oct. 3 - Sunday, Oct. 4
Arrival: 9:30-10am
Departure: 4:00 pm
Cost: $400-500 sliding scale, meals and accommodation included (see registration form for details)
How to Eat an Acorn
Acorns: the amazing, bountiful, ancient staple of humanity! But did you ever try eating a raw acorn? Yuck! However, it just takes some simple processing to transform acorns into a truly delicious grain-like (and gluten free) food. This is real food; we eat hundreds of pounds a year. As part of this day we honor indigenous cultures that have enjoyed acorns for thousands of years, and we investigate the potential of acorn to transform modern food systems and culture. We'll begin the day with harvesting and end with baking!
Date: Sunday, October 18, 10am - 2pm
Cost: $30-60 sliding scale
Bend Like Willow
Homesteading, Willow Weaving, and Yoga with Soul Revival Yoga Studio
Join us as we interweave yoga and meditation led by the Beals with wild gathering, wild crafting, and the celebration of wild abundance led by Chris Knapp of MLLS.
When not practicing yoga or making space for silence we will:
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Weave a simple willow basket
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Cook on a fire with fresh foods from the homestead
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harvest and preserve fruits, food and mushrooms.
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Make a jar of kimchi
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Experience and learn about sustainable systems such as a root cellar, ice house, solar food dehydrator, rocket stoves, and homestead-scale regenerative agriculture and agroforestry..
Date: Saturday, October 24 - Sunday, October 25
Arrival: 9:30-10am
Departure: 3pm
Cost: $250
Ray Reitze, master Maine Guide, has led thousands of people through the peace of the Maine woods and into the peace of their own hearts. Molly Gawler is a fiddle teacher, mother, and dancer who has been studying with Ray for many years. During Ray and Molly's 3-day spiritual retreat, there will be time for stillness, learning, and questions as well as great home-cooked meals and music. Throughout the program, Ray will share stories and wisdom while guiding us, through breath, silence, and deep listening toward becoming what we all are: love.
Date: Thursday, November 5 - Sunday, November 8
Arrival: 5pm
Departure: Early afternoon
Cost: $350-500 sliding scale