Herbal Medicine Apprenticeships

FIELD TO FARMACY – A CLINICAL HERBAL MEDICINE APPRENTICESHIP

with Chanchal Cabrera, MSc., FNIMH, RH(AHG)
assisted by Thierry Vrain, Deanna Papineau, and Alina Baker

at Innisfree Farm (Vancouver Island).

Are you already a herbalist but longing for greater connection to the plants you work with?

Are you a student of herbal medicine ready for a deep dive into materia medica and clinical applications?

Are you concerned about where your herbs are coming from and how secure they are? How can you know if they are good quality?

Do you want to learn how to grow food and medicine? Are you ready to spend a summer in the garden?

This apprenticeship is an 8-week immersive learning experience. You will learn to grow a wide range of medicinal herbs, to harvest them, process them and make your own herbal products. Extensive lectures and class time every week will open new ways of learning about plants, new ways of seeing plants, from science to art, from growing and harvesting to meditating with them, to using them for medicine.You will also learn critical information to help you assess the quality and purity of herbs and to ensure best practices in medicine making, dispensary services and small scale manufacturing.

The program includes weekly classes, tutorials, a large library with learning plans and study guides, as well as dispensary practicum, materia medica review, herbal formulating, and plant attunement activities, and hands on growing, harvesting and processing a range of herbs. This apprenticeship provides an opportunity to learn by doing, through hands-on practical experience as well as in more formal classroom lessons.

There are close to 200 medicinal plants on the farm and apprentices may work with several dozen during their program. For live in and live out apprentices, this is an opportunity to make new herbal friends and future colleagues, to have study groups, to create your own movie nights with educational films from the library, to sit with the herbs you are studying, and to immerse yourself in the world of herbs.

Applications are now open for the summer of 2025.

Not a clinical herbalist but wanting to learn how to grow and use herbal medicines?

Check out internship opportunities at Innisfree. innisfreefarm.ca/internships

Dates:

Session one: May 19 – July 16

Session two: July 18 – September 10

***Live-in apprentices should plan to arrive 1 day prior to start date & depart 1 day after end date

Fees

$1600 for 8 weeks (includes $500 non-refundable deposit)

5% Early Bird Discount if fees are paid 30 days before the apprenticeship start date

How to Apply

  • Fill out application form.
  • We will notify you when your application has been accepted 
  • Fees are due within 10 days of acceptance of your application, this includes a $500 non-refundable deposit (see cancellations and refunds below)

APPLY NOW

Overview of 8-week program

Program Days and Times

  • Monday evenings (6-8pm) 
  • Wednesday (all day)
  • Every other Friday

Monday 6-8pm: Holistic Biology Lectures with Thierry Vrain

Wednesday 8am – 1pm: Practical Garden Experience w/ Chanchal

Wednesday 2pm – 4pm: Clinical Materia Medica Tutorials w/ Chanchal

Friday 9am – 4pm: 3x Classes with Chanchal; 1x Distillation & Aromatherapy workshop with Deanna Papineau (3hr), 1x TCM Herbal Lecture with Alina Baker (3hr)

*For session two, apprentices will participate in 3 afternoons (July 30th – August 1st) of the Summer 2025 Herb Camp Program with guest teacher Kenneth Proefrock  in lieu of one Friday class.

Total Program Hours – 96 (Certificate of completion provided)

  • 60 hours Direct Teaching Time
  • 32 hours Practical Garden Experience
  • 4 hours Dispensary practicum

Plus:

  • 20 hours video lectures from Chanchal for self-study (case reviews and clinical formulating, pharmacology, plant
    chemistry and toxicology, herbs for cancer care)
  • Access to extensive google drive of learning resources including study guides on gardening, ecology, plant science, herbal medicine, health care and horticultural therapy

 

Value added bonus offer to apprentices upon completion of the 8-week session: 

  • 2 free sessions in Chanchal’s new online mentoring program after the apprenticeship is over (details TBA)

The apprenticeship program is best suited to those pursuing a career as a herbalist or looking to weave herbal medicine into another type of clinical practice. Some prior experience and or herbal training is helpful but not strictly mandatory. 

If you love growing food and medicine and more interested in the work-trade aspect of this program, please check out our farm internships

Curriculum Details

Click to View Curriculum Details

Mondays 6-8pm: Holistic Biology and the Foundations of Life – w/ Thierry Vrain

  • This series will introduce concepts of evolution and biology, the origins and development of Life on earth, the concept of endosymbiogenesis, and the soil microbiome. Challenge traditional rules of science and open up to new ways of understanding how we relate to and are related to the Living world. We will explore the inter-connectivity of the web of life and describe the essential bridge between the plant world and human health.

Wednesdays 8am – 1pm:  Gardening Practicum – w/ Chanchal

  • Tending to the learning and amenity gardens, alongside volunteers from the community who garden with us every week. Consideration of garden design for horticulture therapy.
  • Seeding trays, potting up, planting & transplanting, weeding, pruning, taking cuttings, harvesting, processing the herbs. 

Wednesdays 2-4pm: Herbal medicine tutorials – w/ Chanchal

  • Week one : review of personal learning goals and development of study programs; library and resources including review of google drive
  • Week two : biophilia lecture and a forest walk
  • Weeks three – eight : review body systems and discuss clinical formulating for conditions. These classes are hosted in the apothecary garden, learning directly with the herbs – plant features and forms (field botany), phytochemistry and pharmacology (constituents and actions), materia medica and clinical applications. 
  • Plus Q&A at the end of each class

Additional classes –  Session one

Friday, May 23rd: Evolution of Plant Medicine and Implications for Clinical Practice –  Botany and Materia Medica–  w/Chanchal 

Being a good herbalist means knowing your plants, how and why they came to be as they are, how they live and reproduce, what they look like and how to tell them apart. This class will explore:

  • The evolution of primitive plants like blue-green algae, horsetails, club moss and lichen and the particular medicinal value they offer.
  • Why mushrooms are not plants, and their uses in medicine 
  • Botany and the medicine of the conifers 
  • The relationship between form and function of plant parts 
  • Using a botanical key to identify a plant

Friday, June 13th: Quality Control and Dispensary Management – w/Chanchal

To be a good herbalist you need to know where your herbs are coming from and if they are of good quality. This is botany in practice– you will learn to properly describe and assess the plant material, compare it to standard specimens and know if you are buying good herbs. This is a practical lecture that anyone running a botanical apothecary or making herbal medicines will find very useful. 

Friday, June 27th: Chinese 5-Element Medicine – Aligning with the Energy of Summer – w/ Alina Baker RHT, R.Ac

  • This is the second class of a series taught by registered herbalist and acupuncturist Alina Baker on the 5 seasons and elements of the Chinese calendar and how to use herbal medicine, diet modifications, and lifestyle practices to help the body align with the energy of each season. This 3-hour workshop will focus on embracing the energy of Summer and the element Fire which is all about connection, warmth, joy and expansion.

Friday, July 3: The Green (Wo)Man – w/Chanchal

  • This class combines elements of a herb walk, a harvesting expedition, an anatomy discussion, a materia medica review and creative art. It is a deeply experiential way of learning about herbs and herbal uses for different body parts in the format of an interactive horticulture therapy practice/ collective art installation

Friday, July 11: Distillation and using Hydrosols – w/ Deanna Papineau

  • A hand-on workshop using two different stills to make aromatic hydrosols then turn them into beautiful skin creams.

Additional classes –  Session two

Friday, July 25th: Advanced Herbal Formulation and Plant Synergy – w/ Chanchal

This class will enable you to go beyond the paradigm of “this herb” for “that condition” and allow you to apply a truly holistic lens to your herbal formulation. We will explore topics such as plant synergy, causal chain of disease, proper dosing and toxicity, and the pyramid prescribing principles. 

Thursday July 31st – Saturday Aug 1st (2-5pm): Herb Camp – w/ Kenneth Proefrock

Clinical application of herbs with orthomolecular nutrition events. For full details see event page

Friday, August 8th: Distillation and using Hydrosols – w/ Deanna Papineau

  • A hand-on workshop using two different stills to make aromatic hydrosols then turn them into beautiful skin creams.

Friday, August 22nd: Chinese 5-Element Medicine – Aligning with the Energy of Late Summer – w/ Alina Baker RHT, R.Ac

  • This is the third class of a series taught by registered herbalist and acupuncturist Alina Baker on the 5 seasons and elements of the Chinese calendar and how to use herbal medicine, diet modifications, and lifestyle practices to help the body align with the energy of each season. This 3-hour workshop will focus on embracing the energy of Late Summer (Harvest Season) and the element Earth which is all about reaping what we’ve sown in Spring and Summer, both energetically and physically, and preparing for the transition to fall and winter.

Friday, September 5th: Case Review and Applied Materia Medica – w/ Chanchal

  • Review real cases from Chanchal’s clinical practice and explore the conditions, presentations and pathologies; diagnostic and functional tests; drugs and other treatments; the formulas and protocols recommended and why.

There will be a field trip in each session , to explore the flora and landscape of the alpine meadows.

Live and Study on-site

It takes a village! Every season Innisfree welcomes people from all over the world to come live with us for 2 to 4 months, to learn to grow food and medicine, to share the experience and to help us make this place
truly special. There are no fees exchanged but we operate under a work trade agreement where participants work 25 hours / week in trade for board and lodging (accommodation and all meals).

We grow all sorts of herbs, vegetables, berries and orchard fruits for sale at the farm shop and the live in apprentices may be involved in all aspects of growing, harvesting and processing the produce. Innisfree runs a registered Botanic Garden and is open to the public every week during the summer season, serving brunch and afternoon tea, selling herbal products from the farm and giving guided garden tours, and live in apprentices may be involved in all aspects of this business as well, as part of their work trade.

What the live-in apprentices learn during their stay

  • Garden planning – assessing your soil, understanding the terrain
  • Cover crops, green manure and composting 
  • Making soil mix
  • Preparing garden beds
  • Sowing seeds and transplanting seedlings
  • Food forests 
  • Soil types and soil health; tilling, mulching, irrigation
  • Crop Selection: (nutrients, pH, water, space, support, pests) and crop rotation 
  • Weed control
  • Pest control
  • Harvesting and processing crops 

Requirements for Live-in Apprentices

  • Good work ethic – some gardening and farming is dirty and muddy and cold (or hot) and it still has to get done. We especially like people with experience working outdoors – farming, landscaping,
    tree planting, construction, because you know how it is to work in all weather.
  • A strong back – literally, because we do some landscaping, lifting, hauling and shoveling.
  • No significant health or other physical restriction
  • Good time management – we work as a team and showing up late or not being ready on time puts extra work on other apprentices.
  • Sociable and friendly – apprentices have private bedrooms, and share kitchen, bathroom and common space. Ability to get along with others is very important.
  • Willingness to be challenged, to try or to do new things, curiosity and desire to learn through doing.

Cancellations and Refunds 

When you are accepted to the apprenticeship program, we reserve the spot just for you. Since spaces are limited, this often means we end up turning away applicants once the program is full. As such, we ask that you do your very best to commit to the program when you apply. 

However, we understand that circumstances change and ask that if you do need to cancel, you let us know as soon  as possible so we can offer your spot to someone else.

Should you choose to withdraw anytime up to 30 days before the start date, all fees apart from the $500 non-refundable deposit will be returned to you. 

All fees become non-refundable 30 days before the apprenticeship start date.