Lavender Workshop at Hancock Shaker Village, Where 1800's American Herb Trade Began

Saturday, August 22, 10am–noon | Pittsfield, MA

Hancock Shaker Village hosts a hands-on lavender workshop on August 22, led by instructor Caitlyn Tucker. Participants make a variety of lavender-based products—soap, body spray, lip conditioner, and syrup—while learning the plant's practical benefits, and go home with both their finished samples and recipes to make more at home. All materials are provided; the workshop is appropriate for ages 16 and up, and the fee includes admission to the Village.

The workshop sits within a much longer tradition. The Shakers were among the first Americans to build a commercial herb industry, beginning around 1800 at New Lebanon, New York, just across the state line from Hancock. By the mid-1800s their catalogs of dried herbs, extracts, and compounded medicines had made "Shaker" a byword for quality among doctors and pharmacists nationwide, and by 1827 the Watervliet Shaker community alone was selling 129 different herbs and seven extracts to pharmaceutical firms. Hancock's own herb gardens once covered many acres, supplying vegetables, seeds, and medicinal plants that brought the community both income and renown. Learning to work with a single herb by hand, in the same fields the Shakers once farmed at scale, gives the workshop a direct line back to that history.

Hancock Shaker Village, 1843 West Housatonic St., Pittsfield, MA. Register at hancockshakervillage.org.