Build Your Winter Apothecary: Herbs for Immunity & Resilience
🌿Welcome to Plant Church✨
As the days grow darker and colder, our bodies and spirits call for warmth, nourishment, and protection.
In this multi-week series, we’ll build our winter apothecary together — crafting herbal remedies and rituals that strengthen immunity, soothe the nervous system, and rekindle our inner light.
We’ll begin with a Fire Cider–making workshop, preparing this traditional tonic while exploring its origins, science, and spirit — why it works, how it works, and how it connects us to generations of kitchen witches and healers before us. We’ll also meet a few of our warming and winter culinary allies — garlic, turmeric, cardamom, rosemary, and ginger — learning how these everyday plants help us maintain warmth, circulation, and vitality all season long.
Then, we’ll gather for a lecture on Winter’s Immunity-Boosting Allies, exploring herbs and fungi that fortify our defenses, move lymph, and strengthen resilience from root to crown. Together, we’ll look at trusted companions like elderberry, astragalus, and chaga — discovering how they protect and restore the body during colder months.
Finally, we’ll end where we began — straining our fire brews and raising a toast as we explore the herbal allies that nourish and sustain body and spirit through the heart of winter, just in time for the solstice.
Together, we’ll look at several common and accessible herbs (and mushrooms) through multiple lenses:
- 🌱 Spiritual & ancestral – how cultures have worked with them in ritual and daily life
🧪 Scientific – what research says about their impact on our bodies and nervous systems
💚 Practical – how to prepare and integrate them into your own life
Whether you’re brand new to herbalism or already familiar with some of these plants, you’ll walk away with a deeper understanding of how to partner with them in the right way.
We’ll close our time near the Solstice by returning to our Fire Cider to strain, taste, and share — marking the turning of the season and celebrating the warmth we’ve cultivated within and together.
Series Overview
This series is choose-your-own-adventure style: Each Monday is individually ticketed — come to one or join them all. Donations are appreciated but never required. If this medicine is meant for you, trust that the Earth will make the exchange in her own way.
Nov 17, 24*: 🔥Fire Cider Workshop Part I – Ignite the Inner Fire
- We’ll explore the kitchen as medicine chest — the aromatic roots, herbs, and spices that stoke circulation, metabolism, and warmth through the cold season. Then we’ll make our own batch of Fire Cider together.
*Choose either date! The 24th is a second offering of the same Fire Cider workshop for those who can’t attend on the 17th.
Dec 1, 8*, 15*: 🌿Lecture: Boosting & Protective Allies
- This is the deep-dive lecture portion — connecting immune health, lymphatic flow, and the fungal/root medicines that fortify us from within.
*Choose either date! These are repeat offering of the lecture.
Dec 22: 🍷Fire Cider Part II: Brightening, Nourishing & Sustaining Allies
- We’ll start things off with a discussion on herbal allies that help sustain our mood, energy, and function during the winter season, and then strain and sweeten our Fire Cider--and taste our brew! This is a Solstice-aligned closing circle, with communal tastings, reflections, and a plant gratitude ritual.
