2026 Advanced Herbal Medicine, Cooking & Craft Camp

This post by apprentice Rhys Sutherland is part of a pilot effort to share a review of every program we run, focusing on the skills and activities participants experienced at Wolf Camp.

The Wolf Camp week of August 10-14, 2026 at the Lake Sammamish Hans Jensen Group Camp had the descriptive title Advanced Herbal Medicine, Cooking & Craft, and we had an experience full of learning, foraging and lots of cooking. Here’s how the week turned out!

Monday – Blackberry Ice Cream

On Monday, we started the week like any other, with camp agreements, site training and a quick name game. Just after, we set out to the lower field to learn about the rose family, Rosaceae, which included many fruits like apples, pears and blackberries. The parts of a flower came next, reviewing the sepals, petals, pistils, and stamens. Next, we harvested evergreen blackberries, one of the three types on the Hans Jensen Group Camp property where we spent the week, to make into blackberry ice cream. Using two ziplock bags, ice, salt, and of course the ice cream base. To deepen the flavor and to stay on the topic of Rosaceae, we made a spiced pear “simple syrup” to drizzle on top of the ice cream. In the afternoon, we collected apples from a tree guarding the entrance to camp, utilizing yet another member of the rose family to make a nice spiced cider for the next morning.

Tuesday – Lavender Sweet Buns

Tuesday morning began with a cozy cider, using the apples we collected on Monday, adding cinnamon, anise, and orange. With our stomachs warmed, we set out to the forest to learn about the plant giants around us. Before our deep dive into native trees, however, we learned about leaves in general, from leaf morphology or the overall shape, to the frequency of the leaves on a branch. On the way back from the leaf extravaganza, we identified all the trees we could find and settled back at our area to have a quick snack before learning about the mint family, Lamiaceae. Mint, lavender, basil, sage, thyme and a bunch of other aromatic spices fall into this family. We began our minty cooking with an ambitious “earl grey sweet bun” with lavender glaze, followed by a homemade herbal butter which was put on toasted bread, turning it into garlic bread. After sending the day campers off with a closing circle, we (the overnight campers) decided to do a little more cooking in the form of a twist on a camping classic. Instead of toasting our marshmallows, we dipped them in melted mint chocolate.

Wednesday – Ravioli

Wednesday, we began with a training on how to teach reverse-wrap cordage so the campers could teach their folks at home, followed by tasting the sweet buns from the day before. After that, we hopped right into the grass family, Poaceae, and harvested a little bit of grass seed before crushing some other grains to make flour for a ravioli dough. For the filling, we learned about the pea-bean family, Fabaceae, and made a lentil and bean paste that tasted surprisingly meaty for just a few types of beans and some spices. For our final activities of the day, we learned about the mustard family, Brassicaceae, and made fried broccoli wings.

Thursday – Pancakes and Syrup

Thursday started differently from the rest, instead of staying together as a bigger overnight group, we began in our sub-groups with grass identification and were able to find colonial bentgrass! We next learned about the nightshade family, Solanaceae, which we used to make salsa for our camp-made tortilla chips. The carrot and parsley family, Apiaceae, was next on the menu, separating out the many poisonous lookalikes in this family. We split into two groups, one to make a cornbread pancake, the other to make a caramelized fennel and carrot sauce which we combined with a fresh blackberry syrup. All of this topped our pancake as the final food of the day. However, we had feasted but were still thirsty. So with our last new family of the week, the asters, Asteraceae, we made a lettuce lemonade.

Friday – Herbal Spa

Friday had come, our final day. We started once again in our full overnight camp group of herbalists to experience a relaxing herbal spa. Starting with a foot wash in the creek, we worked our way through a sugar scrub with herbs from various families, an oat face mask, a relaxing herbal steam while listening to a story and finished our spa with a meditation. Beginning the afternoon, campers tried to stump the instructors with plants they had identified and were able to with bog moss. Finally, to conclude, we created a parody song with one of the other groups to the tune of the Animaniacs countries of the world song instead, listing as many plants as we could that we had found over the week.

We were able to pack so much into such a short time, that it just might have been the greatest week in the 30 year history of Wolf Camp! We hope you join us next year for even better weeks to come!