2020 Maine Women's Herbal Retreat!

Maine Womens Herbal Retreat

August 28-30 2020

Mindful Earth Farm and Apothecary

Durham, ME 04222

Max Capacity: 25

This is an outdoor event and will follow CDC guildelines regarding COVID.

We would love to invite you to join us for a weekend of herbal education, locally sourced nourishing meals, unique hands-on workshops, and connection with other women from near and far.

Last year’s gathering was such a success, we have decided to host this event annually and expand to include the whole weekend! We have a new location! This weekend will take place at Mindful Earth Farm and Apothecary in Durham, Maine with 12 acres of land to explore and enjoy throughout your stay. We realize that this is a delicate and transitional time within our worlds - and want to remain respectful of these events. This is a small outdoor event and we will take extra precautions to ensure safety.

This weekend you will have the opportunity to expand your knowledge about wild and cultivated plants, formulating synergistic blends, and will acquire hand on experience with different forms of extraction. We will also explore the energetics, medicinal applications, and spiritual aspects of the cannabis plant a bit more in depth, and will explore current world issues through conscious conversation and discuss important herbs and different ways to support us during a pandemic.

A really exciting addition we have this year is the amazingly intuitive Brooke of Luna Roots based in Putney, Vermont! She will be sharing all about her distillation process which results in highly aromatic and energetically healing hydrosols.

We have a very special weekend planned – our beloved Chef Nicole Silver will be joining us to create and bring to life a really beautiful unique menu focused on medicinal herbs, locally sourced veggies and fruit, and a variety of raw vegan mouth-watering sweet treats. Nicole will also offer some of her skills and knowledge with a mini herbal chocolate making workshop and a special Sunday morning Cacao ceremony with some body based meditation to follow.

We also welcome back Cassandra the very talented mocktail bar medicinal drink creatress! Cassie blew us away with her mocktail bar last year – we can’t wait to see what she comes up with this year. She will also lead a mini workshop on formulating medicinal cocktails and mocktails.

We have a full weekend planned that will sure be inspiring and memorable to say the least! Please plan to arrive Friday between 1- 3pm, and stay until early Sunday evening. This is an outdoor event – camping is allowed anywhere on the property! Our full schedule and detailed workshops descriptions with teacher bios will be available soon!

The cost for the weekend is 600$ and will include:

All meals and beverages. We welcome back our chef from last year, Nicole Silver! All ingredients sourced organically and as locally as possible. 2 breakfasts, 2 lunches, 2 dinners with dessert, snack and tea/hemp honey bar available all day. Mocktail/Cocktail Bar Saturday night

Welcome bag with offerings from workshops presenters, a notebook and pen, custom made mug by Annie Buchholz, Professional Photos capturing the weekends special moments!

All Workshops:

Garden Plant Walk: Formulating a Synergistic Tincture Blend - with Kelly Benson of Mindful Earth -2 hours

We will explore the cultivated medicinal plants growing in Kelly's garden this year! She will offer brief monographs of a wide variety of medicinals - highlighting in greater detail some of her favorites from the aromatic Lamiaceae family of plants. We will then have the opportunity to formulate a personalized tincture blend - by harvesting and preparing the plants and covering them in menstruum/solvent of choice.

Wild Plant Walk: Formulating an Oxymel with the native plants - with Noelle Curtin of Vital Herbals - 2 hours

We will walk a beautiful path on Kelly’s land to get to know the plants that grow freely there. You will learn how to identify 15-20 local plants and learn about their uses. There will be time for questions during the walk. We will then learn to make an herbal infused vinegar from the plant of your choice, which you can label and take home with you. Vinegar is able to extract minerals from plants unlike anything else, and it is a good herbal preparation to have on hand to take every day, similar to using a multivitamin…but from wild plants!

Noelle is a plant lover and self taught herbalist. She is passionate about teaching people to use the medicine that surrounds them for healing - she believes that local plants are the best medicine. Her business, Vital Herbals was created out of her love for sharing plant medicine, and she has gratefully reached more than 20,000 people with her products. Noelle absolutely loves to harvest wild plants and make everything she can from them, and wants to teach you to do the same, to empower you to heal yourself and your family.

Healing Waters: A Deep Dive into Artisan Distilled Hydrosols - with Brooke Frost of Luna Roots - 2 hours

In this workshop, we will be harvesting fresh herbs for a small batch steam distillation, a process that captures the mysterious and vital essence of the plant through an incredibly mesmerizing extraction method. We will discuss this intuitive process and magical conotations along side the many benefits of using these effervescent cellular waters, called hydrosols, as well as compare them to their more potent and highly used counter parts; essential oils.

Brooke Frost, founder of LunaRoots Botanicals, is a budding herbalist and skincare potions creatress based out of southern Vermont. Her work is whimsically woven with intuitive plant medicine and bio-regionally sourced botanicals. She has spent the last 5 years developing one of a kind beauty medicine. Her hopes are to support the work of inner/outer beauty alignment through the cultivation of rituals that evoke magical moments and embrace the acknowledgement that what we put on our sacred bodies not only matters, but can create powerfully transformative experiences.

Cacao Ceremony/Herbal Chocolate Making - with Nicole Silver of Silver Provisions - 2 hours

Join Nicole for her magical herbal chocolate making class. Learn to make cacao concoctions that are delicious, nutritious, and fun to prepare. Nicole's chocolate-making began in 2008 as a way of cutting out refined sugar from her diet, she loves sharing this passion with others and is thrilled to be a part of the weekend retreat. She will also guide us through a Sacred Cacao Ceremony and movement meditation on Sunday morning!

Cannabis Medicine: Exploring Energetics, Actions, the Endocannabinoid System, and Cannabis as a master plant - with Kelly Benson of Mindful Earth - 1 hour

A brief overview of the medicinal applications of the cannabis plant - including a look into our Endocannabinoid systems and getting a better understanding of WHY this plant was made for us - she really is a part of our innate humanism. Explore the Spiritual and Cultural aspects of modern day cannabis medicine and have an open discussion on our experiences and perspectives with this plant.

Weaving - 1.5 hours with Angela Coron

Weaving is an ancient tradition passed down from our ancestors . It’s our Grandmothers, mothers, and our sisters . As we move through these dense and beautiful times, let us join in an ancient tradition of weaving. Together, as a community, let us come together and weave our intentions, dreams, visions and desires. Bring something from your home space to let go, or bring in.

Materials: local wool. A piece from home that you would like to share . It can be anything that can be woven into a loom structure.

Introduction of each other as we toss around a wool scan . This wool was brought to us by local farmer and dyed with local herbs by an artist and local sheep the grazed the land we stand on. I am grateful .We wrap it around our wrist this is our intention or what we are carrying with us as we are here now.

You move up to start the loom and weave your piece from what you brought. What has you here? What have you brought to integrate into this community weave, or what would you like to bring with you or leave with ?

Herbal Mocktails 101 - 1 hour - with Cassandra Sears

Join ‘apothecary bartender’ Cassandra before she hosts the after dinner herbal tonics & mocktail bar, to explore the realm of making creative and seasonally inspired drinks at home! She will share her philosophy and approach to plant- based preparations at the intersection of herbalism and craft bartending.

All materials including herbs, jars and bottles, and anything necessary to make medicines during workshops which will be taken home