Saturday February 28th, 2026 | 1pm
$55 per person
Includes a homemade cough remedy to take home
Presented by Abby Artemisia of The WANDER School
Learn to make your own powerful cough syrup from the wild herbs of Appalachia!
Winter brings coughs of all kinds—dry, wet, tickly, or deep—and the mountains around us offer potent natural remedies that have been used for generations. Did you ever wonder why cough syrup is cherry flavored and colored? Because it used to be made from wild cherry bark! Join herbalist Abby Artemisia to discover how to identify, understand, and craft effective herbal remedies for one of winter’s most common ailments.
Abby will also have copies of her book The Herbal Handbook for Homesteaders and locally harvested handmade herbal products for available for purchase.
What You’ll Learn:
- Cough Energetics: Understand the difference between wet and dry coughs and why it matters when choosing the right herbs
- Local Wild Medicine: Explore two of the most effective regional herbs for cough relief—mullein and wild cherry
- Traditional Remedies: Discover the history behind cherry-flavored cough syrup and its wild origins
- Hands-On Demo: Watch Abby prepare a special shelf-stable DIY cough syrup called an oxymel
- Taste & Take Home: Sample the finished oxymel and leave with recipes you can make at home
This hands-on workshop combines herbal wisdom with practical skills. Whether you’re seeking natural alternatives to store-bought remedies or simply want to deepen your connection to plant medicine, this class will empower you to care for yourself and your loved ones using the healing gifts of our mountains.
We’ll gather in our covered outdoor pavilion for this class. Dress comfortably for being outside, though we’ll retreat indoors if Mother Nature gets too wild!
About Abby: Abby Artemisia is a Botanist, Herbalist, Forager, and Founder of The WANDER School, a nonprofit making herbs and botanical education accessible, especially to underserved communities. She lives in Appalachian North Carolina, where she forages and wildcrafts her food and remedies, and teaches. She’s the author of the Botany Breakdown Virtual Course, The Wild Foraged Life Cookbook, and The Herbal Handbook for Homesteaders. You can find these and more at www.thewanderschool.com