Faculty 2012
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IUH Founder & Headmistress K.Ruby Blume www.rogueruby.com |
| Teachers (alphabetical by last name) | |
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Jared Aldrich Childress |
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Serena Bartlett www.GrassRoutesGuides.com Lather 101: Bar & Liquid Soap <aking Toiletry Redux 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. |
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Molly Goulet Bolt |
| Asa Bradman Dormant Seasion Fruit Grafting 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. |
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Kathleen Elliot & The Hillcrest Ranch www.hillcrestrancholiveoil.com Olive Picking & Brining 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 starting 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, cheese making and cooking to people of all ages through diverse organizations, from 4-H, to senior centers, to the UC Berkeley Botanical Gardens. |
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Lisa Feldstein Land Use and Zoning for Urban Homesteaders Lisa Feldstein is a lifelong foodie who studies and teaches about food systems as well as growing, baking, and, preserving her own. She has a J.D. from the Boalt Hall School of Law and is a doctoral candidate in City & Regional Planning at UC Berkeley, where her research focuses on urban food policy. A longtime city planning and policy geek, she has taught food-focused planning and zoning to lay audiences since 2005,. Lisa believes that planning is a powerful tool for enacting progressive social change and loves getting people excited about the connections between land use regulation and their daily lives. Lisa is a former San Francisco Planning Commissioner and a current Bay Conservation Development Commissioner. She enjoys spending time with her husband and their teenaged daughter, eating locally, and dabbling in San Francisco politics. |
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Ilana Fonariov Wild Desserts: Carob Surdough: Starter Cultures & Breadcraft Ilana Fonariov began her forays in the kitchen at the age of 15. What started off as a fondness for freshness, became a tender love affair of fermented foodstuff-sourdoughs, sauerkrauts and sprouts galore. After years experimenting with recipes, she ventured off into the wild world and began to harvest foraged foods for her baking goods, learning to substitute traditional baking ingredients with more nutritious and wild food. When she's not gardening, canning, pickling, kneading or biking she may be found managing an industrial kitchen where she helps inexperienced cooks learn their way around the kitchen, get comfortable to innovate with the wild and find creative ways to reuse leftovers (ever had pancakes made from curry?). |
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Lila Ann Frechette www.lunabeebody.com Luscious Lotions Revealed Lila Ann is a massage therapist and herbalist. She firmly believes that life is to be enjoyed and that health and happiness start at home. These are values she developed at a young age. As a child, one of her favorite games was a make-believe game in which she played the role of a traditional healer, collecting plant and mineral matter and then processing them into healing formulas for curing her friends ailments. These days, she enjoys making herb-infused oils and lotions for her massage practice and infused honeys, cordials, and chocolates to share with friends. |
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David Glaser Cooking With the Sun: Building & Cooking With Solar Ovens 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. |
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Lou Grantham www.sffiber.com/ Fleece to Fiber: Spinning Weaving and in love with the arts since the second grade, Lou has been teaching and supporting herself professionally via the textile arts since the 70's when she began selling her hand spun, naturally dyed yarns and clothing. Lou received her Bachelor’s of Fine Arts in textiles from San Francisco State. She is the creator and owner of San Francisco Fiber Company, a weaving and spinning shop, gallery, and school. Besides working privately in her shop, Lou is the coordinator for Decorative and Textile program for Walnut Creek's Civic Arts, and she teaches for the Mendocino Arts Center. She is a co-creator of the Oakland Fiber and Textile Festival, supporting free and hands-on textile experience geared towards family and community. In her spare time she moonlights as a landscape artist. |
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Katharine Joida www.feltthesun.com Felt the Sun: Introduction to Felting Coldwater Scouts Youth Camp Born and raised in the East Bay, Katharine Jolda went to Arizona and spent several years on the Navajo Nation involved in sheepherding, farming, and health education. She developed a teaching practice for ancient arts, focusing on felt and natural dyes. With a BS in Political Science and Economics, she understands her work as a constructive direct action, the rebuilding of social/ecological relationships. She is a collaborating artisan on the Fibershed Project, a founding member of the Yerba Buena Institute, and inventor of the Cyclocarder, a pedal-powered wool processing machine, which received an Editor's Choice award at the 2011 Maker Faire. |
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frieda kipar bay www.taprootmedicine.org Wild Medicine: Remedies From Weeds Decadent Cordials frieda kipar bay is an herbalist, activist, and teacher. She is a graduate of the California School of Herbal Studies, and is currently completing Aviva Romm’s Women’s Herbal Educator course. After working for two years with the Herbal Apothecary (Sebastopol) as a medicine maker, she started Taproot Medicine, maker of Strong Woman herbal iron syrup and other herbal tonics. 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 son, yarrow. |
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Grant Marcoux grantsforge.com |
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Nathan Kaufman www.fishnetaquaponics.com Aquaponics and Organic Hydroponics Nathan Kaufman is the Farm Manager of Fishnet Aquaponics located in Soquel, California. Born and raised in the Bay Area, Nathan received a B.S. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and a B.A. in Environmental Studies from U.C. Santa Cruz. Nathan caught the aquaponics bug in 2010 and never looked back! Nathan has interned and worked for several aquaponic institutions, where he focused on creating space conservative agro-ecosystems. As an educator, Nathan has a passion for sharing the information he has gained through his experiences. |
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Jeannie McKenizie Backyard Chickens Jeannie lives on a half acre homestead in Montclair that was the neighborhood's first chicken farm. She has been gradually reviving the old farmstead which now includes chickens, bees, and goats, an organic garden and many fruit trees. Jeannie is a circus artist, dancer, musician and teacher. She currently teaches music in a few elementary schools and plays with several bands around town. Jeannie has been involved in many aspects of homesteading and she’s excited to share her growing knowledge of and passion for backyard chicken farming. |
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Jim Montgomery |
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Giancarlo Muscardini Urban Permaculture Crash Course A Berkeley native. Giancarlo has been studying and practicing Permaculture for 15 years. He began his studies with Doug Bullock and John Valenzuela in Hawaii where he received his Permaculture Design Certificate in1998. Most recently he completed the Ecology Of Leadership course at the Regenerative Design Institute, focusing on personal development and community resilience. Giancarlo's urban farm in West Berkeley is a living example of applied Permaculture and includes a food forest with over 30 edible species, timber bamboo, soil building, plant guilds and an expansive annual garden. Beyond his work as a permaculture designer Giancarlo is a skilled landscaper, craftsman and builder. He feels that a deep cpnnection to the natural world is fundamental to life and health and seeks to use permaculture as a bridge between the wild and cultivated worlds.. |
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Mushroom Maestros www.mushroommaestros.comMushroom Cultivation Homestead-Style Ray Lanier began cultivating mushrooms in the mid 1980's in his hometown Atlanta, GA. He has studied withf Paul Stamet's seminars as well as fervently pursuing mycology as a self taught endeavor. Ray has a passion and a zest for mushroom cultivation that is contagious. He never tires of experimenting in the lab and specializes in cultivating in non-sterile environments. Patty Lanier is an Oakland native who has spent most of her professional life as a personal trainer and nutritionist. When she met Ray, she took immediately to the notion of mushroom farming and mycology education. Her passion for the mushroom shines when you get her talking about the benefits of eating mushrooms. "They are absolute super foods! People don't eat enough mushrooms. They possess serious healing power, we have yet to reveal all that they are really capable of giving us and the ecosystems of the world." In April of 2010 Patty & Ray started Mushroom Maestros, an off grid urban farm with a mission, they aim to teach as many people as possible how to cultivate mushrooms, so that the amazing fungi can fulfill it's potential in saving the world. |
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Deepa Preeti Natarajan permacouture.org Natural Dying With Local Plants For the past five years, Deepa served as the UC Berkeley Botanical Garden's coordinator of public programs and tours, where she transformed her own love of gardening into a year-round series of events about the many uses of plants - medicinal, culinary, fibers, dyes, and more. As part of her college studies in Anthri\opolgy, Deepa traveled to Eritrea to study traditional plant based medicines and Rajasthan to promote traditional medicine and conservation of medicinal plants. Her yearly travels to her roots in Soutern India have informed and inspired her practices of gardening, food justice, sustainable textiles and natural dyes. She hasrecently returned from 5 months in Chennai, where she taught several workshops on Natural Dyes. Deepa spearheads the Seed to Sew project of the Permacouture Institute, helping local seedbanks tag seeds for fiber and dye plants. |
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Seth Peterson All About Dehydration Home Smoking Meat 101: The Chicken Seth Peterson's passions are teaching and cooking. As a second generation urban gardener living in the heart of Berkeley, his love of gardening is a natural extension of his love of food, cooking, and eating in community passed on from his mother. His passion for teaching is fueled by fourteen years in Latin America, where he taught English and business. Since returning five years ago he has dedicated himself to working in East Bay restaurants and exploring the local foodshed. He enjoys combining his twin passions and experience to bring real local food to the people,giving them knowledge and skills to prepare it using traditional cooking techniques that are healthy and delicious. |
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Heather Haxo Phillips www.rawbayarea.com. Dehydration Basics Every Day Nut Milks & Cheeses Heather Haxo Phillips is a certified raw food chef & instructor. 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. Her formal culinary training is from Living Light Culinary Institute. She is passionate about food & people and has been teaching raw food cooking classes for five years. You can find out more about Heather, including recipes and classes at www.rawbayarea.com. |
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Rhiyana Rebecca Sang
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Kitty Sharkey www.havenscourthomestead.com Container & Raised Bed Gardening Kitty is an urban homesteader, consultant, and educator who believes that “You don’t have to move to change the place you live.” After purchasing a foreclosed home in East Oakland, she began the process of transforming an empty yard into an urban oasis. She has since become a master of small space design and utilization, packing an entire urban farm into her 2,000 square foot back and side yards. Focusing on livestock, Kitty raises goats, chickens, ducks, rabbits, quail, and honeybees. She practices raised bed and container gardening with an emphasis on utilizing vertical space and water conservation. Aside from typical homesteading activities like gardening, preserving, cheese making, baking and brewing, Kitty also enjoys fishing and foraging for mushrooms and other wild edibles. With a degree in graphic arts, she has been in print production management for 34 years. |
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Lydia Rose Sifferten Hannah Addario-Berry The Craft of Coconut Lydia Rose is a culinary folk artist and food therapist, reviving traditional skills and bringing rhythm, spirit, and economy to the kitchen while studying the realms of body healing and food as medicine. She is a graduate of the Cooking and Culinary Traditions Program at Three Stone Hearth, a pioneering community supported kitchen in Berkeley. Lydia Rose offers cooking classes through several Bay Area, clinics tand works individually with clients who struggle with food allergies, digestive issues, addiction, and eating disorders. Hannah Addario-Berry is a professional cellist, healing foods virtuoso and the artistic director of Locaphonic, an event series which presents collaborations between talented local musicians and culinary artists. She ibelives deeply in the power of food to heal, sustain, and strengthen individuals and community. Hannah and Lydia Rose met at a GAPS cooking class at Three Stone Hearth. Their connection was immediate and their culinary creations bountiful. They continue to inspire and teach each other both in and out of the kitchen. |
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Jillian Steinberger All About Avocados Jillian is on the case, always looking for a good story to write about plants, health, and food justice. She writes for Edible East Bay magazine and other publications. She is also a landscaper who brings inspired thinking and Permaculture principles to gardens that are both practical and glorious, , and she worships tree fruits.. With an arts-and-crafts style and a love of rocks and lichens, Jillian specializes in combining native and pollinator plants with kitchen gardens, for the joy of producing fresh food, herbs and flowers. She splits her time between the East Bay and Santa Cruz. |
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Tanya Stiller Soup & Salad: Spring Foraging Expedition Wild Foods: Fall Foraging Expedition Tanya Stiller learned to make preserves, fruit leather and wine growing up on a small family farm in Eastern Oregon with her mother. She received her herbalism certificate in 1994 from The Oregon School of Herbal Medicine, ran a tincture and lotion-making company called Pixie Plants and has been teaching herbalism classes in Oregon and the Bay Area for the last 15 years. Tanya is passionate about studying and teaching permaculture, nutrition, and ethnobotany. She works as the Nutrition and Garden Coordinator at Rosa Parks Elementary School and lives at an intentional community house called Brigid Collective in West Berkeley. |
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Anders Vidstrand www.merrittlandhort.com |
