Fox Haven Foragers: Year-Round Land Reciprocity Circle – Jefferson, MD

Step into the rhythms of nature through the Fox Haven Foragers: Land Reciprocity Circle. This year-long program invites you to connect deeply with the land, learn to see beyond individual plants by exploring the full ecosystem, and find your role within it.

Throughout the program, you’ll sharpen your observation skills, uncover new plants, and document your discoveries in a phenological nature journal. You’ll also have the opportunity to work on a personal project to study how the seasons shape our environment, deepening your connection to the place we call home.

Core components of the program include peer-to-peer learning, skill-building, storytelling, and culture creation, all supported by collaboration. Participants will share knowledge, work together on tasks like plant identification, and learn from guest teachers to enrich the experience.

Meetings take place on the first Saturday of each month, February through November, from 9 am to 12 pm, with three additional Zoom sessions on topics like phenology and local history for deeper context.

—Foragers will gain knowledge and skills like:

Mycoremediation and forest Inoculation as an addition to growing mushrooms for food

Pruning for tree health and bark harvest

Stewarding wild plants and ‘wild’ planting

Grafting to bring greater edibility to wild plants

Land navigation and how to use topographic maps and compass

Collecting and processing nuts and seeds for food

Intermediate botany and ecosystem study

Phenologic journaling

Beginners pottery and basket making and how to start seeing your environment as your toolkit

Species and cultivars that thrive in our bioregion

Uses and awareness of ‘invasive’ plants

Diseases and insects of concern particular to our region

Local natural history and how language shapes our relationship to land

A practice of visiting a ‘sit-spot’ to observe

Ancestral discovery, future imagining

Exploration of a Deep Ecology mindset

A field trip to a food forest

Some new plants we might meet or go deeper with are: Japanese Knotweed, Barberry, Bloodroot, Spicebush, Japanese Honeysuckle, Sweetflag, Eastern Red Cedar, Oak, Chestnut, Yellow Dock, White Clover, Red Bud Tree, American Beech, Black Walnut, English Ivy, Watercress, Cattail, Willow, Wild Ginger, Wild Geranium, Sumac and various Mushroom species for remediation and eating.

– —

Series Materials

Book for Year – The Forest Unseen by David George Haskell

Film – Tending the Wild

Essays – Where the Wild Things Aren’t, Voices of the Land

Podcasts etc – For the Wild

EARLY BIRD SPECIAL!!

USE CODE FORAGE2 for $40 OFF. DISCOUNT DEADLINE DECEMBER 15TH

To inquire about a payment plan, please email alecks@foxhavenfarm.org

Looking for more opportunities to learn about foraging? Check out Fox Haven Foragers: Year-Round Wild Edible Meet-up!

A word from a past student:

“Foragers 2 was an insightful look at our relationship with the natural world. Learning about the food and medicine offered each month was valuable, but the discussion around how we see ourselves as co-stewards of the land were very impactful. The recipes, conversations, and community built around shared love and appreciation  for the natural world will be with me for life. I recommend this course to anyone looking to deepen their knowledge and put down roots physically and metaphorically.”

From 2022 onward, Fox Haven will donate $2 from each event ticket to the Piscataway Conoy Tribe to pay LandBack tax, acknowledging our access to stolen Indigenous land. The Piscataway Land Trust is an Indigenous-led initiative working to restore ancestral land and sovereignty to the Piscataway and other Indigenous communities of the Chesapeake.