What we offer
The Wild Series offers in-depth education in earth-based skills and crafts. Our instructors are artisans, naturalists, musicians, cooks, storytellers, villagers and stewards. We weave, tan, wild tend, spin, felt, dye, woodwork, track, forage, feast, hunt, smith, sing, learn, make and more! We share a love of creating beauty through fun, hands-on experience and believe that learning to work with the hands is one of the ways to awaken and remember our diverse legacies of traditional ecological and cultural knowledge.
Wild Series Courses
The Art of Hide Tanning
Join us for a four day immersion into the traditional art of making leather by hand. In this intimate and experiential class, students will tan one deer or goat buckskin from start to finish, learn to make rawhide, and participate in a fur tanning demonstration. The art of hide tanning is a cross-cultural human legacy
Songs & Stories Festival
Quail Springs is deeply honored to welcome some of our most treasured storytellers, wisdom keepers and musicians for a magical feast of story and song under the stars of Cuyama. Come and celebrate the beautiful seeds of culture that bring us together as we gather by the fire to listen, remember, learn and sing.
Women's Tracking Conference
We are excited to invite you to gather with extraordinary women for a weekend of tracking wildlife, ecology, and your internal landscape. The high desert of Cuyama Valley offers incredible biodiversity of animals, habitats, and culture. Each day will be spent exploring track and sign, trailing animals
Holiday Handcrafting
Join us for a fun and cozy weekend of making beautiful handmade holiday gifts! In this two-day class, students will have the opportunity to learn a variety of small crafts under the mentorship of several skilled Quail Springs stewards. Using mostly natural and simple materials, many of which have been locally hand-harvested and prepared by our teachers, you will have the opportunity to create several projects from a range of possibilities.
Buckskin Moccasins
Beautiful footwear made sustainably from natural materials has been worn by human beings for thousands of years. In this class students will create a pattern customized to their own feet, and learn to craft a pair of short moccasins using genuine brain-tanned buckskin and vegetable tanned leather. This will be a two piece style moccasin, with a harder sole for longer wear. The foundations of this pattern can later be applied for making many other styles of moccasins, including boots of all lengths.
The Art of Blacksmithing
Blacksmithing is an ancient form of alchemy, bringing together fire, metal and air to birth functional and beautiful items that we depend upon in our daily lives. Instructor Justin Starting has been inspired by the way tribal blacksmiths use the simplest methods and materials to forge the highest quality tools. He believes that we can look to their traditional relationships with blacksmithing to bring consciousness and harmony back to our connection with metal.
The Sacred Hunt
This class is designed to explore our ancestors’ relationship to the land through the art of traditional hunting. By cultivating this relationship of respectful exchange, we can deepen our understanding of what it means to live sustainably and remember our place in nature. The Sacred Hunt will be a combination of instruction, group discussions and hands-on experience in the field.
Blossoms, Greens & Juniper Smoke: Identifying & Cooking with Wild Plants
Explore the delicious, fragrant and storied California landscape by learning to identify edible, utilitarian and poisonous species. Students will become acquainted with much of the local flora of Burges canyon and begin to develop real relationships to the world of plants. In this two day class we will dive into cuisine, culture, history, natural living skills, and stewardship. Classes include meals featuring traditional recipes that integrate wild foods.
Coppersmithing & Silversmithing
Join us for a 2-day intro to copper and silver forging! Led by local metal smith Justin Starting, students will begin by forging a copper bracelet and then will forge a silver bracelet out of a 1 oz. silver bar. If time permits we will be able to work with copper more, forging other projects.
Upcoming Courses
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