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Greetings Friends!
Spring promises to be a full and fun time at Koviashuvik!  Please join us for “Acorn Processing” at
The Maine Fiddlehead Festival in Farmington this coming Saturday, May 6th.  On Saturday, May 13th, catch “Wild Greens for the Common Table” here at Koviashuvik. We’ll celebrate the new green shoots springing forth by gathering and eating them!
If you would like to use a spoon for your nettle soup then come back the very next day, Mother’s Day, to
“Wooden Spoons are Free From a Tree.”  The spoon class has no charge but is nearly full, and registration is required!  If you can’t make the classes and want to visit, please come to the Open House on May 27th and enjoy a thorough tour of Koviashuvik,  including seeing the new classroom building and meeting the new baby goats!



 
School Programs:  Maranacook Middle School is scheduled to come out for a day of earth-craft and wilderness skills.  Farmington Mallet School’s 2nd grade will join us for its annual spring visit during which we gather from the wild all the elements needed for a cup of tea including firewood, spring water, wild plants and even the fire itself, which we make with friction!  We are seeking to expand this sort of programing within school systems.  If you know a school interested in programing of this nature, please go to School Programs on our website and check it out.
On Saturday, May 13th, catch “Wild Greens for the Common Table”: Learn about amazing local plants that will grace your table, feed your family, and connect your spirit to the springtime.   Plants we’ll look for may include Trout Lily, Colt’s Foot, Chickweed, Violet, Dandelion, Fiddleheads, Knotweed, Basswood, Stinging Nettle, Lambs’ Quarters, Sorrel, Burdock, Indian Cucumber, and Cattail.   The class culminates with open fire cooking and a three-course “wild” lunch. Plants are taught with an emphasis on observation skills that will enable you to continue gathering on your own.
Semester Program: the Kroka Winter Semester Program, 2017, spent fourteen busy days at Koviashuvik in early April.  The focus of the visit was to provide a live-in experience wherein the ideas and ideals by which students have been living on the winter trail, transfer to sedentary life.  Students pounded ash and made pack-baskets, carved spoons, cooked with food from the root-cellar, boiled maple sap and drank birch sap, scraped hides for moccasins, did some reading and lots of journal writing, and completed final essays on the book Education of Little Tree.
 
Koviashuvik’s Simple Life Internship, born out of years of teaching apprentices and high school students, continues to take shape on paper and we look forward to running it for the first time in the spring of 2018!
In this program, we have combined and formalized the models of semester program and traditional apprenticeship, creating a two-month (for now) earth-living intensive.  Check out this recent post by our friend Tim Smith, founder of Jack Mountain Bushcraft, as he interviews Chris about the Simple Life Internship: http://blog.jackmtn.com/  (episode 21.)

 
The Family Sustainability Stay  (above, peeling birch bark for basket-making) is an unique opportunity to learn skills to guide your own family’s relationship to the earth while having a fun and relaxing up-scale camping experience.  Remaining available dates: July 17-19, July 21-23, August 18-20 and August 22- 24. 
Family Life:
Ashirah enjoys working off the farm doing elder homecare, then coming back to take care of her baby animals.  She continues to learn huge amounts as she figures out sustainable systems for raising rabbits and goats on pasture/brush for meat and milk.  The cuteness factor has been high this spring with four goat kids kidded and twenty rabbit kits kindled! 

Bonnie Bee helped birth the baby goats and is excited to be learning to play the piano that showed up in our classroom last fall, (thank you, Grandparents Knapp!)  Owen won our local poetry contest in his age group with “Morning,” and is working on a spell that will do duck chores for him while he reads Harry Potter in his room. 

Chris is gearing up for yet another building project as we lift the roof off the Knapp cabin and go up a floor.  We wonder if building code will approve our 36 level high-rise with its 10’ x 13’ footprint!? 

Sending good thoughts and wishes to all of you; let us know what you are up to! Enjoy the spring and please spread the word by sharing this newsletter with anyone you think would be interested.

The Knapps

 






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Maine Local Living School · 71 Lake Drive · Temple, ME 04984 · USA

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