Faculty
 |
IUH Founder & Headmistress K.Ruby Blume www.rogueruby.com |
| 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. |
 |
Erik Bjorkquist www.bruteforceeng.com Erik "Jesus" Bjorkquist is a video engineer, welder, machinist, woodworker, cook and lover of beer. A true technical genius who can fix just about any equipment known to man, Erik also has a background as a ranch hand and farm boy and knows his way around an orchard and a kitchen. Inspired by all the homestead goings-on around him, Erik has found his passion in studying and brewing beer. Starting with the easier malt extract beers he is now moving on to experiments with all grain and older beer recipes made with stimulating and healing herbs. Erik's beers have received rave reviews from those who know and love beer. He loves to have people over and share his knowledge and skill. He has taught many people to weld and is excited to brew up some beer with you. |
 |
Molly Goulet Bolt |
 |
Heidi Cunningham sourcehere.wordpress.com. Heidi Cunningham is an artist, gardener, writer and early childhood educator. She has taught workshops on composting, fermenting and using environmental curriculum with young children and has led youth in educational farm activities at Pie Ranch. Heidi is also co-founder of Source Press, a collective dedicated to dispensing inspiration, information and resources outside of consumerism. You can view their skill based zines at sourcehere.wordpress.com. |
 |
Andy Dale Andy Dale has been building and playing with farming, processing and packaging equipment for over 25 years. His resume includes being a mechanic and metal worker in a small farming community to running a food processing and packaging plant. He now makes his living as a computer technologist and lives with his family on an urban homestead in West Berkeley. Besides their experiments with home oil extraction, the Dale family makes their own grape jelly, wine, hand crafted candles and more. If it needs engineering and building, Andy wants to be a part of it. |
 |
Birgitt Evans Birgitt Evans has been growing vegetables since she was a child. In college she was mentored by one of the founders of the Hopkins-Peralta Community Garden in Berkeley, who introduced her to seed starting, composting and community gardening. Birgitt has experimented with seeds ever since, growing 90% of the plants in her large vegetable garden from seeds and even selling heirloom tomato and pepper seedlings to others. She joined the Master Gardeners in 1999 and was amazed to find that very few of them knew how to start seeds, so she started teaching classes on seed starting to Master Gardeners and members of the gardening public. She also created a Master Gardener brochure on seed starting. |
 |
Ken Litchfield Ken Litchfield began his professional career as a naturalist in the early '70s at Texas State University where he taught in the biology and art departments, illustrated scientific papers, theses, textbooks, etc., and worked as a botanist on environmental impact studies. He has since also illustrated, written, taught and worked in the fields of drafting, technical illustration, computer graphics, gemology, ecobioculture, and human health and fitness. He consults, instructs, and trains at various organizations and institutions and lives and works on a farm. Currently he is the Cultivation Chair of the Mycological Society of San Francisco and teaches Mushroom Cultivation, Beneficial Beasts in the Garden and Growing and Using Healthful Herbs at Merritt Community College. Ken likes brewing odd concoctions and enjoys the challenge of fetch cat training, bee blob massage, and barbarumuricatum breeding. He is a freegan feral omnivore but can manage to handle vegans if they are seasoned properly. |
 |
Ben Macri Ben Macri has been a professor in the "Industrial Arts" department of City College San Francisco for 24 years in this lifetime with previous incarnations in business, medicine, body practice, the hotel and restaurant industry, and hippie commune living. Throughout this life's practice he has followed the passionate clarion call to a more sustainable life style and energy management systems. In the theme close to Ruby's bee practice he is like a bee moving from flower to flower to suck the honey essence of the wonder of life to bring to the hive. Ben was the service manager for the California division of Solectria Electric Cars, drove a homebrew electric for 10 years until crossing over to diesel conversion and running bio-diesel and vegetable oil. Eleven years ago he learned solar design, constructing an owner/builder 2.5Kw solar system and added a micro wind turbine to achieve energy independence, much to the chagrin of PG&E at the time. He is in love with life, love and is conjuring the means to tweak the system for the next hundred years... |
 |
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. |
 |
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. |
 |
Christopher Schein www.wildheartgardens.com/ Christopher Shein has been a permaculture designer and gardener in the East Bay since 1993, starting many gardens for schools, homeless centers, backyards, markets and community gardens. He spent two years in British Colombia at Linnaea Farm on Cortes Island. He’s been teaching at Merritt’s Landscape Horticulture Department (look for Permaculture Design, LH 028) for 5+ years. He’s now self-employed with Wildheart Gardens (see Wildheart Gardens) with some current projects in Oakland including St. Mary’s, a homeless senior edible and native garden and Friendship House, a Native American women’s drug and alcohol recovery edible and native healing garden. His latest interest is in building a strawbale design studio and guest room in his backyard. He also has a lot of native plants, bamboo, greywater, vegetables, fruits, and chickens. |
 |
Kait Singley Kait Singlyis an edible & medicinal gardener, herbalist, educator and mentor. She celebrates our earthly abundance by sharing her knowledge and skills of herbal cooking and medicine making in a variety of settings throughout the Bay Area. Kait earned a certificate in the Roots of Herbalism from the California School of Herbal Studies in 2009 and has worked as a garden catalyst for 7 years, inspiring interdependent relationships between people and plants. She derives her inspiration for herbal crafting and homesteading from work on farms and homesteads in Northern California and Utah, involvement with permaculture education, and the lessons learned in her own healing garden. Kait's mission is to co-create with her clients and students to envision, build, maintain and eat their gardens for optimal creativity and health. |
 |
Tanya Stiller 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. |
 |
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. |
 |
David Thorp David Thorp is a jeweler, cook and Ayurvedic healer. He has been studying nutrition for over ten years, at first to regain and maintain his own health and eventually leading to a fascination with Ayurveda, the wellness system of India. His study and practice of nutrition is ongoing both here and with his Upaya Guru in Kerala. David graduated from CCAC with a focus in metalworking and jewelry and has worked for many years in various jewelry stores around the Bay Area. He currently runs a modestly sized custom metal working business, and is on the jewelry faculty at The Crucible, where he has taught lost wax casting and fabrication. He also teaches classes in nutrition independently on diverse topics from the role of fat in our diets, to the role of the heart in Ayurvedic philosophy. The common thread that weaves through all of his interests is a fascination with transformation, both of material substances, and of our bodies. He feels strongly that nutrition is a vital homesteading skill, as to him, health is the epitome of self-reliance.. |
| 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. |