Description
Date: April 18th – 20th 2025. Class starts at 9 am on the 23rd, and finishes at 4 pm on the 20th.
Instructor: Kelly Moody
Location: Paonia, Colorado (Groundwork Farm — See map).
Lodging: Rustic camping along the North Fork of the Gunnison River with access to composting toilets. AirBnb/Hotels are available in Paonia.
Meals: Meals are provided during the weekend, with organic ingredients from our educational farm. Bring any extra snacks you may like to have.
Level: Beginner (No experience required)
Come to Groundwork Educational Farm for 3 days of immersion into the art of fat and smoke buckskin hide tanning. Over the course of a long weekend, we will take raw deer skins and transform them into soft buckskin material that you can use for a number of craft purposes using only natural materials. Buckskin once was the main clothing material for many cultures of people worldwide before widespread weaving became available. The class will cover all the steps involved with fat and smoke tanning hair off skins, with other discussions on hide tanning history and ethnobotany, variations for different animals domestic and wild, why good skinning matters, alternative techniques and tricks, how the process differs from bark tanning and hair on tanning, and some 101 buckskin sewing examples for bags and clothing.
You will leave with your own buckskin to take home, the basic skills of using hide tanning tools, an understanding of each part of the process, and how to take the next steps in making garments or bags out of your skin. You will leave with skills to do the process on your own directly from wild or domestic animals. This course also offers the opportunity to connect with like-minded individuals, camp for 3 nights along the bank of the North Fork Gunnison River, and eat from the land!
Skills: scraping hides, tanning hides, smoking hides, hide tanning tool use, ethnobotany and tanning, local plants for hide tanning
