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Faculty 2011

	IUH Founder & Headmistress K.Ruby Blume www.rogueruby.com K.Ruby Blume is an educator, gardener, beekeeper, artist, performer and activist, with 20+ years experience gardening in an urban setting. As a life-long leraner, she has studied everything from permaculture to organ massage and has taught herself cooking, canning and fermentation techniques, as well as how to set tile, install a sink, do electrical wiring, tend a beehive and repair a motorcycle. Ruby holds certificates in permaculture desgn, massage, somatic sexology and life coaching and has studied botany, pollination ecology and native plant ecology at the tilden botanic gardem, the jepson herbarium and the sierra nevada field campus. She has extensive experience in the arts including work with ceramic, mosaic, glass, textile, printmaking, puppetry, collage, assemblage, costume design and photography. She is known for her work as founder and artistic director of the art for justice project, Wise Fool Puppet Intervention, and has performed and exhibited her work throughout the Bay Area and beyond since the mid-80s. The product of three generations of teachers, Ruby's experience as an educator extends back thirty years. She has taught music, art, puppetry, design, theatre, gardening, beekeeping,canning and more to people ages five to ninety-five. She founded The Institute of Urban Homesteading in 2008 and co-authored the book Urban Homesteading: Heirloom Skills for Sustainable Living release date April 2011.
	Teachers (alphabetical by last name)
	Laura Allen www.greywaterguerillas.com Laura Allen is a Bay Area educator and greywater activist. She has a BA in Environmental Science from UC Berkeley, and a teaching credential and masters in education from the New College of California. She is a co-founder of The Greywater Guerrillas and co-editor of Dam Nation: Dispatches from the Water Underground (Soft Skull Press, 2007). She's been teaching hands-on greywater workshops for the past nine years.
	Patricis Algara & Giancarlo Muscardini www.foodscaping.blogspot.com Patricia Algara, has a masters in Landscape Architecture, and is a certified Permaculture designer. She has taught at UC Berkeley Extension and designed and taught a 10 week course, Foodscaping 101 in 2010. Patricia currently works at MIG a planning and design firm and runs her own Foodscaping design-build business. Giancarlo Muscardini has been studying and practicing Permaculture for over 15 years. Well studied in the trades, he is a proficient carpenter and builder. His urban farm in Berkeley, adjacent to the Algarden urban demonstration farm, is a living example of applied Permaculture design. Patricia and Giancarlo are co-creators of the Algarden urban demonstration farm in Berkeley, started in 2008.
	Serena Bartlett www.GrassRoutesGuides.com Serena is the author of many books about West Coast travel and sustainability. In an effort to point out all the best places worth visiting, that are also making a positive impact on their communities, she created the GrassRoutes Guidebook series, which you can find on Amazon. She revels in discovering new, delicious and healthy ways to tread more lightly on the planet and at home she tends a four-season garden, cans, spins yarn, and cooks both food and body products from scratch. She writes on food and sustainability at a number of publications, and you can catch up with her latest discoveries on her blog. Everywhere she travels, whether around the block or across the globe, she collects stories, traditions, techniques, and interesting ingredients.
	Molly Goulet Bolt Molly Goulet Bolt is an ISA certified arborist whose practice focuses on structural and orchard pruning. She has taught the soil and nutrition labs at Merritt College, trains docents at the UC Botanical garden and managed a local nursery. She makes is committed to greater local food security through backyard farming, whether it's milking her goats or gardening with her kids.
	Kathleen Elliot & The Hillcrest Ranch www.hillcrestrancholiveoil.com Kathleen Elliot is the owner of the Hillcrest Ranch, where she produces organic extra-virgin olive oil, brined olives and olive oil soaps. The ranch is historic, part of a huge planting of olive tress dating back to the 19th century and its 6 acres now sits as an island atop Sunol's Pleasanton Ridge Park. Kathleen has a lifelong involvement in animal husbandry and plant sciences. She was a beekeeper for 30 years staring when she worked at the Bee Biology Center while a student of plant sciences at UC Davis. As well as her work on the ranch, Kathleen currently works as horticulturalist and landscape designer at Regan Nursery, where she regularly teaches pruning, edible landscaping and plant propagation. Further teaching experience includes teaching beekeeping, chicken husbandry and dairy goat management, cheesemaking and cooking to people of all ages through diverse organizations, from 4-H, to senior centers, to the UC Berkeley Botanical Gardens.
	Asa Bradman is a gardener and environmental scientist. He has been gardening in Berkeley for over 25 years and his yard boasts over 25 fruit trees including plum trees with red and yellow varieties on the same tree, numerous rare apple varieties and a kiwi vine sporting both female and (grafted) male branches, ensuring simultaneous fruiting and bountiful, delicious fruit each year. Asa has taught grafting workshops in the East Bay, as well as providing custom tree grafting for home orchardists looking for rare apple varieties. In his work as a health scientist he focuses on exposures to pregnant women and children and leads an initiative to improve environmental health in California child care facilities.
	David Glaser David Glaser is a mechanical engineer and a former science teacher. He built his first solar cooker in 1997 from some borrowed plans and later made two cookers of his own design. He currently spends much of his free time improving his cookers, doing solar cooking in his backyard, as well as other "green" projects.
	Steven "Stem" Kent www.aliveandhealing.com “Stem” Kent is a backyard gardener, natural builder and permaculture designer, who relishes the opportunity to mentor others in sustainability practices. With a passion for stewarding ancient microbes in the garden and in the kitchen, his journey into fermentation has been one of enthusiastic experimentation. Stem loves sharing homemade sauerkraut, jasmine kombucha, garlic rosemary sourdough bread and fresh tempeh with his close community. He runs Stem’s “Alive and Healing” Enterprise, offering fermented goods, permaculture expertise and bodywork to the Bay Area community. His intention is the integration of personal power with community creativity to cocreate a vibrant sustainable community of the future.
	Frieda Kipar www.taprootmedicine.org Frieda Kipar is an herbalist, activist, and teacher. She is a graduate of the California School of Herbal Studies, and is currently enrolled in Aviva Romm’s Women’s Herbal Educator course. After working for two years with the Herbal Apothecary, she started Taproot Medicine, maker of Strong Woman herbal iron syrup and other herbal medicines. She has been a teacher of movement for the past decade, and fuses her deep knowledge of the body with her work as a healer. She lives in Oakland with her partner and brand-new son. taprootmedicine. Medicinal herbs work best when integrated into your diet, and your food becomes your medicine.
	Jeannie McKenizie & Frankie Morrow Jeannie and Frankie live on a 1/2 acre homestead in Montclair that was the neighborhood's first chicken farm. They have been gradually reviving the old farmstead which now includes chickens, bees, turkeys and goats, an organic garden and many fruit trees. Jeannie is a circus artist, dancer, musician and teacher. She currently teaches music at Windrush school in El Cerrito and plays with several bands around town. Frankie is a professional carpenter and body worker. In addition he has coached and taught Ultimate Frisbee, cycling, volleyball and soccer for much of his adult life. Interestingly Jeannie and Frankie both have experience working with birds of prey. Frankie spent nine months rehabilitating an injured great horned owl and later trained animals for use in educational presentations at Sulfur Creek Nature Center. Jeannie rehabilitated a roughlegged hawk. Jeannie and Frankie have been involved in many aspects of homesteading and are excited to share their growing knowledge of and passion for backyard chicken farming.
	Jim Montgomery Jim Montgomery is an East Bay native who has been raising livestock in urban settings for 30 years. He started with 26 guinea pigs at age twelve and quickly moved on to rabbits, pigeons and chickens. He started raising livestock to feed his pet Burmese python but he couldn't help feeding eggs and meat to his family as his menagerie grew. The soil in his mother's yard also improved greatly thanks to the animals' contributions. Jim has volunteered at the Berkeley Free Clinic since 1981. He has a BA in Molecular Biology from UC Berkeley, which has fueled his interests in Public Health and Animal Husbandry. Since 1992 Jim teaches Math at Maybeck High School -- a small community-based, collectively run school. In 1995 Jim and a close friend purchased a large garden with a modest house attached in Berkeley. In 2001 Green Faerie Farm (as they call their home) acquired two Oberhasli dairy goats to add milk and cheese to the bounty of food coming from the garden. Jim is the lead animal handler while his farm partners Mateo and Roy take the lead with the plants. Jim enjoys teaching both young people and adults and hopes to inspire his community to decrease the distance their food travels to get to their table and to increase their food security by helping them bring more food production under their own control.
	Paul Oprescu Paul Oprescu is an avid cook whose culinary skills are steeped in continental cooking. Having grown up in Europe, from an early age, he witnessed the time-tested flavors of tradition. He watched his father prepare meats and sausages at home. When he is not cooking, Paul works as a Montessori teacher. And when not busy teaching, he enjoys foraging for mushrooms and mussels, making jams and pickling foods, baking bread and making pasta, photographing and painting.
	Heather Haxo Phillips www.rawbayarea.com. Heather Haxo Phillips is a certified raw food chef & instructor who received her formal culinary training from the prestigious Living Light Culinary Institute. She offers cooking classes and lectures throughout the Bay Area, in private homes and venues such as Whole Foods Market and Café Gratitude. Heather has a background in holistic health and nutrition, and years of experience working in the food industry. She is passionate about food & people and has been teaching raw food cooking classes, including nut milks and cheeses, for three years. You can find out more about Heather, including recipes and classes at www.rawbayarea.com.
	Stewart Port www.tincanbanjo.com www.stewartportguitars.com Stewart Port has worked with tools and materials for 40 years. He began his Industrial Arts education under the demanding eyes of the retired Navy Yard carpenters and machinists who taught at Brooklyn Technical High and has since built, wired, plumbed and painted houses, boats, exhibits, musical instruments, and radio stations, as well as operating a restoration architectural millwork business and two restaurants. He has taught at DIY Skillshare events, staffed the Drop-in Tech Help program at the Tinkers Workshop, and headed the Woodworking Department at the Crucible. Stewart currently builds and repairs guitars at his Oakland studio, and plays trombone with the Brass Liberation Orchestra.
	Sasha Rabin villasobrante.blogspot.com/ Sasha has been building and teaching others to build with natural materials since co-founding Seven Generations Natural Builders (SGNB) in 2002. She is currently living, learning and working on a suburban permaculture and natural building home and demonstration site in El Sobrante, Ca. Sasha has a degree in Ecological Design from Evergreen State College and apprenticed at the Cob Cottage Company. She continues to teach with SGNB, as well as teaching as an instructor at the Real Good Institute for Solar Living. She is in the process of co-founding Vertical Clay, a natural building organization based in the East Bay which will focus on small natural building projects that have an impact and emphasis on community and education.
	Lee Sonko lee.org Lee Sonko is an entrepreneur, educator, machine artist, organizer, hacker, geek and baker. Those attributes often team up in his life to help explore the world. He is a founding member of SWARM, a San Francisco based mechatronic art robot group. He is also a member of the Flaming Lotus Girls and teaching faculty at The Crucible in Oakland. Lee's love affair with good bread goes back as long as he can remember. Making and eating bread is his daily reminder of the simplicity and purity of the experience of creation.
	Jessica Watson & Hank Obermayer Hank Obermayer and Jess Watson both live in Mariposa Grove, an urban retrofit of four connected houses in North Oakland where people share meals, art projects, a graywater system, chickens, bees and more. Hank's passions for building home and community have fed nearly 20 years of leadership in intentional communities and housing cooperatives. Hank founded Mariposa Grove in 1999 and has also worked on housing and intentional community projects with organizations as varied as New College of California, the Ecovillage Network of the Americas and the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Jess coordinates Mariposa Grove’s community outreach efforts. She is a PhD Candidate in Cultural Anthropology and a freelance journalist. You can access some of her writing at quirkyurbanite.blogspot.com.
	Cleo Woelfle-Erskine Cleo Woelfle-Erskine is an educator, writer, scientist, and avid gardener. He co-founded the Greywater Guerrillas in 1999 and has installed dozens of greywater and rainwater catchment systems in varied climates across North America. Author of numerous books and articles on urban gardening and water issues including Urban Wilds, Dam Nation, and Sink or Swim: A History of Sausal Creek, he has taught sustainable water systems workshops in local public schools, permaculture classes, and universities. He holds a B.S. in geosciences from the University of Montana, and is interested in the connections between small-scale water conservation and watershed restoration. Cleo is the coauthor of Rain Gardens for the Home, forthcoming from Timber Press.
	Tim van Dragt Haling from grand Rapids Michigan, Tim van Dragt was introduced to the subtleties of coffee drinks relatively late in life, on his first date with his future wife Becky in 2005. At that time, she explained to him the differences in coffee drinks and his obsession with coffee was born (the date went well too!). His introduction to "third wave" coffee was Nova Coffee in Denver, where Becky worked. It was through them that he got interested in roasting and came to view coffee not as a commodity, but as an art form. When he & Becky moved here in 2007, he got a job at Bittersweet cafe, where he received his first "serious" coffee training and began to train others. His growing passion lead him to experimention with roasting, both learning by doing and taking advantage of the coffee professionals around him. Tim currently works at Local 123 (one twenty three), where he has also taught home-roating workshops. He is a student of photography at City College and hopes to continue to work with coffee while pursuing a professional photography career.

Classes in gardening, urban animal husbandry, food preservation, brewcraft, herbal medicines, and more