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All around the country (USA) there are workshops that include all kinds of cool stuff like earthen building, gardening and permaculture- textile crafts, tanning, blacksmithing and herbalism.

I'm saving up to attend a 4 month workshop in Oregon next year. Does anyone else go to these?

The course I'm looking at is like 4k.

I would love so much to go on a herbalism course (is herbalism a word?) but they don't seem to have them where I live crying sad . Plus the prices you were throwing around sound out of my range sweatdrop

I would look into homesteading clubs, many are low cost, or like the one I go to, free. It is a good way to discuss skills, get together to network, and even work on projects. The one that I found is on Meet Up or if there is no club in your area, you can make one of your own on there.

Has anyone tried Craig's List? There is all kinds of stuff posted there. You may be able to find someone to teach you locally.
Also, some of the herb stuff can be found at a Wiccan/Pagan supply shop. If you are open minded about religion, then you could ask a green witch for help. For this, you may have to be 18+ as some towns are touchy about alternative religions and your teacher may have to protect him/herself from charges from your parents.

I mostly rely on the internet. I can find all the information I need for free, though obviously I would need a way to get hands on experience, I doubt it would cost nearly as much as your course to do.

Blacksmithing is the only one that could cost a lot, but only if you think you have to buy all the tools just to learn how to do it.

Honestly, I took years of pottery classes and they never improved my technique. If you're trying to learn "primitive" skills, I assume they are for your own personal use, and not as some sort of income stream, so as long as your bowls have no holes in them they will work out. I would prefer to have wobbly dishes than spend thousands to learn how to make them smoother.
Not to mention, as long as you don't bake the thing, you can re-do it a million times just by keeping it moist. You don't have to keep the bowl with a hole in it, you can smush it and try again. It seriously takes less than 15 minutes to shape something simple and small-ish.


And wood working in the sense of literally building stuff, not carving it, is not really at all by feel. If you go at it by how you think it should go without starting out with premade plans and such, you will waste a lot more than if nobody is there to tell you what to do. I made a step stool in a class where there was almost no instructions aside from how to not kill yourself on the saws and how to read the blueprints. I was 11 years old and had never hit a nail with a hammer in my life.
It wasn't the prettiest thing ever, but it still works a decade later.


The plant thing, I honestly don't know much about. However, I can say that I trust the myriad of websites and books that exist a whole lot more than just one or two people teaching me. People can be wrong, at least online you can gather a dozen valid, reliable resources, and then cross-check them to make sure you're not getting flawed information. There is more information out there than just books, there are "herbalists" who have blogs and websites, and as long as you make sure the information is valid (by checking to make sure that the plant doesn't do damage to humans, at least) that is better to me than someone talking that you not only can't just print out or bookmark their words, but that you'll offend them if you're sitting there looking up the plants on a toxicity site the whole time.
I would never recommend using anything other than a well-known medical source to check the toxicity of things you plant to ingest. The fact is that Herbalist isn't a real title, there are no checks in place to ensure that these people know what they are doing. You have no guarantee, other than being cautious and double-checking it all until you believe they really know what is going on, that they have any more information than anyone else.


My main point was that yes, some things can't be replaced by personal efforts, but enough of those things can be done completely on your own to make it so you could spend less to learn just the remaining ones.

You almost definitely don't need help to learn pottery. Kids can manage to make something useable when they are 6, and looks are a matter of actual practice, which is simple when your material is 100% reusable.

I'm not really sure why "throwing" is all you think of when you think of pottery. I refused to use a wheel, it was more difficult and never worked out. You can use your hands so much easier.
"Not knowing how to do it properly"
There are instructions online for getting air bubbles out. Nobody demonstrated it to me, and nothing I made ever exploded. I've never made a glaze, because I'm not a chemist, and they can be easily purchased for not much as long as you choose a simple one.


I don't know why you would automatically assume that you have the resources to own a throwing wheel, a kiln, chemicals that are hard to aquire to make glaze, but not be able to afford a little plaster?
150 minutes? That's not even 3 hours. 3 hours to adequately learn a skill seems a lot better still to me than spending months and thousands on a trip.



I also think maybe you are confused about my use of the term "real title".
For example, you cannot legally call yourself ANY kind of "therapist" in Canada unless you have a master's degree. This is what I mean. "Herbalist" is NOT regulated by any governments, therefore anyone can say that they are one. You do not get people like that in every field in which they are doing something that could kill you. Doctors need to be qualified, surgeons need to be qualified, nurses need to be qualified. You can't call yourself any of these things unless you have proven you have the knowledge and experience to back it up.

What you're talking about wanting to learn about Herbalism is not something that someone would even have the time to teach you. 4 months and you think you will trust yourself to use dangerous plants in an attempt to heal someone? If there are Real Schools for it, it must take at least a year, full time, to properly learn, yes?
Finding a teacher IS important, and that's why I think that taking a short term program to teach you a half dozen things is NOT a good course of action. You don't "need" someone to teach you pottery, your bowl isn't safe because you haven't bothered to treat it in order to make it safe, not because you didn't learn how from an "expert". You also don't really need to learn how to make glaze, one large batch will last longer than a lifetime of non-ornamental use.
If you want to do something that might end up harming someone like attempting to treat actual medical conditions with untested (I mean scientifically, not just trial and error and assumption) plants, you shouldn't be splitting your attention amongst it and a handful of other things, that should be the MAIN priority while you are learning it.


Subtle insider tips can be found online. You seem to think that I'm suggesting that the only possible resources are either some pagan-healing sites or encyclopedias, but there are literally HUNDREDS of blogs out there from people who do professional woodworking, professional pottery, they are filled with these tips.
If you have a very basic understanding of how to control your hands and fingers, you can learn everything necessary about both of those online in under a month, leaving you more time to devote to things more likely to cause problems if you learn them wrong.

There are lots of blogs (and books) about earthen building as well, and communities you can go to where you don't PAY to learn how to do it, because hey, you're building them a house FOR FREE.
Gardening? God, that one is so abundant right now it is crazy. Why would you go to a course to learn how to save seeds when you can google the info? Gardening is so simple that once you read just one legitimate book about it, you'll find that there is no new information out there for you. I recently took out 4 books at the same time from the library. After the first, I figured out that the only differences between the books were phrasing and climate-related suggestions. You add the same things to change the pH no matter who you talk to, you always save tomato seeds the same way, and the methods for specific techniques are the same too.


I'm not saying that nothing requires human-to-human teaching, just that it seems silly to say that it is cheaper than going to courses for all of them separately, when you don't need to go to courses for all of them! It might be cheaper to buy two pairs of eyeglasses on sale than 2 on separate days, but if you don't need two pairs, it is still more expensive than buying just one.