Over three days, we will gather around a single sheep and move intentionally through the arc of harvest. This will include meeting the animal, ethical slaughter, hands-on skinning and full animal butchery, and tanning the hide through brain/smoke tanning.

Though this experience will be very skills based, it will be held in a container that includes mindfulness, intentionality, and relationship.

We’ll explore cooking as another form of relationship and reciprocity. We will learn how the whole sheep - bones, blood, organs - can feed us, how traditional food ways make use of the entire body, and how nourishment itself can become part of honoring the life.

Maximum 6 participants. No experience necessary.

Dates: Friday, November 20th - Sunday, November 22nd

Location: North Boulder, Colorado

Cost:

  • Early Bird: $1,850 before October 1st

  • Standard: $2,050

If cost is prohibitive please reach out. We are open to being in discussion about potential trades or pricing structure.

Included:

  • Two preparatory calls with the group and facilitators

  • 3 days of hands on learning - slaughter, butchering, tanning

  • All materials

  • Homestead grown lunches and dinners

  • Your own personal and self tanned sheepskin rug

  • Evening group debriefs and discussions

  • Integration call with the group and facilitators

Not Included:

  • Travel

  • Lodging

  • Breakfast & personal snacks

Full Animal Harvest & Hide Tanning

November 20th - 22nd, 2026 / Boulder, Colorado

Instructors:

John Clay

John spent many years as a permaculture farmer in Maine, where working with the land taught him to move in step with seasonal cycles and to see life and death on a farm as part of one continuous system. That grounding, along with training in artisan butchery, shaped how he approaches slaughter — not as a task to get through, but as a moment that deserves full presence and care, and he brings that attentiveness to the animal in the moments before, during, and just after. John’s culinary background gives him an understanding of the animal from field to table — how each choice in this process shapes what it ultimately becomes as food. Teaching this now to others has become one of his great gifts of life, and one of the most important callings he has found.

Yoshua Greenfield

Yoshua is the founder of You Enjoy Life Homestead, an educational homestead in North Boulder dedicated to reconnecting people with traditional food systems, self-sufficiency, and sacred practices. With years of experience in fermentation, regenerative farming, and ceremonial animal harvesting, Yoshua invites people into a deeper relationship with the land, food, and the cycles of life and death.

Jess Arneson

Jess is the founder of Jessica Rae Counseling. She has been tanning hides since 2023, working with deer, sheep, cow, fish, fox, and other small animals. Hide tanning has become so much more than a craft and a skill but a way of coming into relationship with animal kin and the life/death/life cycle. Jess is drawn to the slowness and intimacy of these ancient processes, and the ways they connect us to our roots, our hands, and older ways of living in relationship with the natural world.

Curious? Feeling the call to say “Yes” to this experience…?

Please fill out this form and we will be in touch with next steps!

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