Survival Skills Course

Follow along as Afrovivalist visits Green Concepts Containers to source vessels for storing water and explores different options for different needs. Then watch as she walks you through a basic home set-up for collecting your own rainwater.

Afrovivalist is an African-American woman who has been preparing for a catastrophic disaster and practices wilderness survival skills. She is also preparing to live an off-grid, self-reliant lifestyle. Afrovivalist wears many hats. She is a member of the state of Oregon Radiological Emergency Response Team, Emergency Preparedness & Response instructor at Saturday Academy, a Preparedness Consultant and founder of deCamp Outdoors - a preparedness camp for city folks.

This workshop features the tools and techniques needed to safely and sustainably manage your woodlot. Traditional axemanship as well as modern felling, limbing, bucking, and skidding (both horse- and human-powered) are demonstrated in this workshop. Particular attention is given to chainsaw techniques to maximize efficiency and overcome tricky situations such as back-lean and hazard trees.

Dr. Brett McLeod is a professor of forestry at Paul Smith's College in the Adirondack Mountains of New York and author of American Axe: The Tool That Shaped a Continent. As a former professional axman, McLeod competed internationally in speed chopping and lumberjack sports. When not swinging an axe, McLeod can be found working a team of draft horses to implement low-impact forestry methods. In addition to traditional woodsmen skills, McLeod also teaches modern forest managment techniques to help you get the most out of your woodlot. He and his wife live on a 30-acre woodland homestead in the Adirondack Mountains.

Matt Stephens takes audiences on a journey from the farm into the backcountry in this workshop. A homesteader's way of life is all about developing skills, and adapting them to different situations can keep us alive. You might secure a tarp to cover the last of the winter's hay and then secure that same tarp to cover yourself overnight when your goats decide to take a vacation. What do you do when you run out of matches? Strike a fire! Matt Stephens leads this adventure that takes skills from the home into the forest.

Matt Stephens was born into a part-time homesteading family. Growing up on a 65-acre Central Texas hobby farm, he learned from his parents and his rural Depression-surviving grandparents. He developed a love for all things that lived and came from a farmstead lifestyle. Life took him across the state of Texas, only to deliver him back to the family farm. He expanded this familiar piece of land beyond a hobby and into a full-time endeavor that includes more than 300 acres, owned and leased. Now with a family of his own, he looks to instill the same upbringing in his children and teach others from his experiences.

An often overlooked but important part of homesteading and self-sufficiency is dealing with injuries and accidents. Power tools, powerful animals, and using so much people power means such things are not unlikely nor uncommon. In this session, learn from a decade plus of a homesteading family's experience as to what supplies you should have on hand to help deal with common issues on the homestead.

The Moody family farms and homesteads on 35 acres in Kentucky. John Moody discovered more than a decade ago that his diet was killing him, with duodenal ulcers, seasonal allergies, and other health problems. So, the family began to transition to local foods and local food distribution. Eventually, he relocated his family to 35 acres of land to put his learning into practice. He currently serves as a founder and director of Steader (an online learning platform for homesteaders and farmers), and also speaks at many local, regional, and national events on food, farming, and nutrition. He has two books forthcoming to help growers and gardeners, one on soil and one on small-scale farm infrastructure.

In this workshop, Kyle Ferlemann details the importance of home remedies and tactics to ensuring your food security in times of need. He also describes how to best plan for cold weather and winter rules to live by.

Kyle Ferlemann is a 33-year veteran of the National Guard. He worked extensively with local, state, and federal agencies in both domestic and international emergency planning and operational support. Formally trained in military as well as civilian disaster response, he has used these skills to meet the needs of civilian authority from small town mayors to U.S. embassy personnel where military assistance was appropriate. Having conducted hundreds of interviews with survivors of disasters and wars over many years, Kyle found that the most prepared and resilient people were those whose attitudes on awareness and preparation were a balance of self-reliance and connection with community. These stories and experiences of real-life resiliency lead Kyle to a philosophy of disaster preparedness that focused upon awareness, realistic expectations, economy, community connection, and civility. Kyle continues to write about and promote these principles as the most effective methods of readiness and resiliency during disasters as well as life in general.

Learn how to have a vehicle that will ensure you're ready in case of an emergency or if you need to evacuate. Follow along with Afrovivalist as she walks you through her "bug out" vehicle and what to stock to be prepared to leave in a hurry.

Afrovivalist is an African-American woman who has been preparing for a catastrophic disaster and practice wilderness survival skills. She is also preparing to live an off-grid, self-reliant lifestyle. Afrovivalist wears many hats. She is a member of the state of Oregon Radiological Emergency Response Team, Emergency Preparedness & Response Instructor at Saturday Academy, a Preparedness Consultant and founder of deCamp Outdoors - a preparedness camp for city folks.

It isn’t a big leap to say that most people’s diets today are not as healthy as those of our ancestors.

Most of us aren’t going to wake up tomorrow ready to become hunter-gatherers, but there are a lot of ways we can incorporate wild foods and medicines into our diets in little ways that can make a big difference in our bodies, in our psyches, and in our sense of connection to the world around us. Learning how to harvest and make use of a few wild foods will help you weather the storms of global crisis with more confidence and a positive step toward building a healthier, more resilient, wilder life.

After all: You are what you eat!

Woniya Thibeault is a passionate educator and crafts person. She lived a lot of her adult life off grid, growing and gathering her own food and making what she needs from resources in the landscape around her. She recently tested these skills on Season 6 of the hit television show Alone where she spent 73 days living off the land in the arctic. Through her business, Buckskin Revolution, she teaches ancestral and land-based living skills with a focus on integrating the skills humans have relied on for eons into their modern lives in a way that fosters connection to the land around them, their human community, and the wilder places in themselves. 

With decades of experience in ancestral skills and a masters degree in Environmental Science, Woniya strives to combine the physical skills for feeding, clothing, and sheltering oneself with nature connection practices and natural history knowledge for a well-rounded experience that helps people experience a more abundant, grounded, and connected life.