The Buckeye Gathering is an annual event in Northern California aimed at teaching and reviving lost arts and primitive skills. Here’s how the organizers describe it:

Primitive living skills are our original technologies. All of us, every human, has ancestors who made fire and tools from plant, stone, & bone. Because reconnecting with traditional living requires knowledge of the local ecosystems, of the bioregion and its resources, we emphasize local flora and fauna. Although all of our forebears lived earth-based cultures at some point, California Indians tended this land for millennia before European arrival, so we at Buckeye place their particular technology and history at the forefront. We cannot roll back time to a pristine past, but we may learn fundamental lessons from the people who have come before, teachings integral to our healthy survival.

Today on Food Makers, a Google+ hangout on air at 2pm PST/5EST, I’ll be talking food and food making with some of the organizers behind the Buckeye Gathering about what skills we’ve lost and how we can go about relearning them. Tune in right here. If you miss the live broadcast today, just head over to youtube.com/make to watch the archived video.