Becoming Friends with Plants: DIY Herbal Remedies In Person Skill Share

Becoming Friends with Plants: DIY Herbal Remedies 3D with Antonia Estela Pérez

The 3D series is a multidimensional workshop series designed for B.I.P.O.C. (Black, Indigenous, & People of Color) to deepen skills in specific farming and land stewardship practices in a culturally relevant, supportive, and joyful environment.

“I believe that a revolution can begin from this one strand of straw. Seen at a glance, this rice straw may appear light and insignificant. Hardly anyone would believe that it could start a revolution. But I have come to realize the weight and power of this straw. For me, this revolution is very real.” -Masanobu Fukuoka, The One-Straw Revolution

We all embody a lineage that connects us directly to the plant world as a source of living energy and ancestral genetic information. Colonization attempted to erase people’s connection to land and medicine in order to take their autonomy away. Keeping this connection alive is part of our legacy. Plant medicine has been used by our people for survival for generations, including utilizing what some consider to be "weeds."

Antonia will support us in connecting with, identifying, and respectfully harvesting plants for healing. This workshop focuses on medicinal plants that grow at Soul Fire Farm–some you may find in your garden or even growing through sidewalk cracks. We will learn how these plants can support our health and continued healing. We invite you to join and share your own plant stories and curiosities. Together we will learn to make a balm, glycerite, and tincture with herbs we will spend time befriending including anise hyssop, plantain, dandelion, and goldenrod.

In this workshop you will learn how to:

• Identify and befriend medicinal plants
• Make herbal remedies to support you and your community
• Harvest plants respectfully
• Make herbal balms, glycerites, tinctures, herbal infusions

Language: The instruction will be delivered in English.

Cost: The sliding scale is $15 -100. Please think generously - what could be more important to contribute to than living food, land sovereignty, and skilled farmers spreading love and knowledge?!

The workshop is designed to be a culturally relevant and safe space that centers Black, Indigenous and People of Color (read why here). Donations are accepted from those who are unable to attend the event or those who would like to support BIPOC participant attendance. For this option, choose DONATION when registering.

Registration closes Tuesday, July 18 at 10pm Eastern Time.

Presenter(s):

Antonia Estela Pérez (they/she)

Antonia is a Chilean-American clinical herbalist, gardener, educator, community organizer, and founder. Born and raised in New York City, in a first-generation household which nurtured the values and principles of nature appreciation, land stewardship, interdisciplinary education, and social justice—Antonia’s lifelong passion for herbs and plant medicine helps to bridge the relationships between rural and urban spaces. Antonia combines a decade of experience studying and working with plant medicine, with her studies in environmental and urban studies at Bard College, Clinical Herbalism at Arborvitae School of Traditional Herbal Medicine, and learning with herbalists and elders throughout Central and South America. Antonia facilitates workshops and produces events as the co-founder of NY-based collective—Brujas—and as founder of Herban Cura: An herbal medicine and education project which centers the knowledge and stories of Indigenous, Black, Queer and Trans communities. Antonia’s work is rooted in her passion for sharing knowledge that interrupts notions of individualism and separatism from nature to grow towards collaborative and symbiotic communities.

Find out more about Antonia's work at www.herbancura.com and follow them @herban.cura on Instagram.

About the organizer

Soul Fire Farm is an Afro-Indigenous centered training farm committed to ending racism and seeding sovereignty in the food system. Our food sovereignty programs reach over 10,000 people each year, including farmer training for Black and Brown growers, reparations and land return initiatives for northeast farmers, food justice workshops for urban youth, home gardens for city-dwellers living under food apartheid, doorstep harvest delivery for food insecure households, and systems and policy education for public decision-makers.