Local Foraging for Food and Medicine

Take a "Weed Walk" on the Old Croton Aqueduct on July 16

Discover the wild and cultivated plants you can use for health and healing at Local Foraging for Food and Medicine, a Roots and Wings workshop with Dina Falconi on Saturday, July 16 from 10:00 AM – 3:00 PM at South Church, 343 Broadway, Dobbs Ferry, NY. Tickets are $30 in advance / $45 at the door and can be purchased at http://rootsandwingswestchester.blogspot.com. This workshop includes a delicious “wild” lunch. No one will be turned away for lack of funds.

Dina Falconi is a sought-after clinical herbalist who has been teaching classes about the everyday use of herbs for over twenty years for places as varied as Albany Medical College and Gaia Northeast to Wild Earth Programs. Based on what she grows and finds near her home in the Catskill Mountains, she produces her own line of natural bodycare products and medicinal tinctures.

Local Foraging is a six hour “best-of” of a Herbal Intensive she typically teaches over six months. Participants will take a “weed walk” on the Old Croton Aqueduct in Dobbs Ferry, then return to South Church’s kitchen to cook and make medicinal potions and herbal skin care.

This workshop provides inspiring, practical and thorough “hands on” herbal information on:

-       Herbal Therapeutics

-       Wild Plant Identification and Application

-       Wild Food Foraging and Culinary Preparations

-       Medicine Making

-       Herbal Skin Care

-       Nutritional Healing… and More

 “As for the menu,” says Dina, “I am thinking we will make the following if the plants permit:  wild salad with basic vinagrette, wild vegetable gratin, flower butter to spread on bread, wild green pesto to spread on bread, and ff wild berries are around, we will serve them with lightly, maple-sweetened whipped cream or organic whole milk yogurt.”

“Everyone will take home a remedy made during the workshop.”

Participants should bring: sun hats, water, baskets, scissors, notebooks and pen, and cameras (optional).

DINA FALCONI

Dina Falcone is part of the movement sometimes called “radical homemakers”—people who guided by simple principles of ecological sustainability, social justice, community engagement and family well-being to reclaim domestic skills. Some plant a garden, grow tomatoes on an apartment balcony, mend a shirt, repair an appliance, or provide one's own entertainment. Dina cooks and preserves the local harvest for food, medicine and pleasure.  

Dina is a founding member of the Northeast Herbal Association, a chapter leader of the Weston A. Price Foundation and on the boards of Slow Food-Hudson Valley and Gaia Northeast, the action-learning regional center of Gaia University International. She organized the annual Family Farm Festival from 2003 – 2007 and is the author of Earthy Bodies & Heavenly Hair: Natural and Healthy Personal Care for Everybody. Listen to her interview on Herb Mentor Radio here.