Services

The following services are available throughout southern Michigan as well as in northern Indiana and northwest Ohio. The cost for all services is $150 for the first half hour, then $50 per half hour, plus travel.

Contact Rachel at rhmifsud@gmail.com.

Private Classes and Plant Walks

Are you part of a homeschool group? Garden club? Library? Just want to have a group of friends together for something different and fun? We can do a private plant walk at a local park or wherever you want to meet. We can teach classes on a variety of foraging topics as well as plant ID, mushroom ID, growing mushrooms, wild fermentation, basic herbal medicine, and many other traditional skills. Walks and classes can be anywhere from half an hour to all day. Let’s talk about what will work best for you!

Lectures

Or maybe your group prefers a PPT-style lecture? We have several prepared lectures that we can give. These lectures typically last about an hour.

• Intro to Foraging- what is foraging? Why forage? What things do you need to think about? Where do you start learning?

• Tips for New Foragers- I polled hundreds of foragers and asked what they wished someone had told them when they started. This is what they said.

• Safety and Sustainability- considerations for keeping yourself and the environment intact

• Intro to Plant ID- An introduction to basic plant anatomy and some of the more common plant groups

• Intro to Mushroom ID- An introduction to basic mushroom anatomy and some of the more common mushroom groups

• Foraged Medicine Cabinet- how could you replace over-the-counter medicines with foraged alternatives?

• Plants and Mushrooms to Avoid- There aren’t a ton of plants and mushrooms that will seriously hurt you. This covers the most common ones in our area.

• Preserving the Wild Harvest- An overview of various preservation techniques with tips on how to apply them to wild foods.

Private Property Assessment

Want to know what’s on your land? Or how you can manage your land to increase the wild edibles that will grow there? We will spend an afternoon walking your property with you, identifying your edible and medicinal plants, and talking about possibilities for improving your foraging opportunities. Think of it as a private plant walk in your own backyard. Representative plants will be flagged so that you can keep track of them through the seasons, find them when it’s time to harvest, and learn about them in detail. Because we are identifying representatives and not every single plant, most properties can be assessed in 2-3 hours, regardless of size. And even a small lot can have surprising diversity if it is allowed to be feral. So whether you have half an acre or 100 acres, let’s get out there and check it out.