K.Ruby www.rogueruby.com
IUH Founder & Headmistress
K.Ruby is an educator, gardener, beekeeper, artist, performer and activist.with 20+ years experience gardening in an urban setting. 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. She has experience with a multitude of art media including ceramic, mosaic, glass, textile, printmaking, puppetry, collage, assemblage, costume design and photography. Ruby is known for her work as founder and artistic director of the non - profit arts group, Wise Fool Puppet Intervention, and has perfomed 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 thrity years. She has taught music, art, puppetry, design, theatre, gardening, beekeeping, stiltwalking and more to people ages five to ninety-five. Ruby has studied and taught body-based healing, massage and sexuality. She holds certificates in massage and somatic sexology and continues to practice and teach both in the Bay Area and Germany.

Zsuzsi Fern www.divinelyaligned.com
Medicine Dancer Potion Fairie Facillitator
Zsuzsi Fern loves dancing in nature and creating herbal medicine magik. She has been concocting herbal medicines and body-care products for better health and enjoyment with her company "Enchanted Herbals" since 2005. Zsuzsi studied herbalism and health at Living Awareness Institute with Kami McBride for two years. She is also a certified Angel Therapy Practitioner® using her intuitive skills to work with the spirit realm for healing and guidance. Zsuzsi is devoted to movement of the body. She earned a Bachelor's Degree in Dance and Holistic Health from San Francisco State University and later studied at Moving On Center in Oakland and with Martha Eddy in New York City\, where she gained experience as a Somatic Movement Educator and Therapist. This work has expanded her knowledge of the body and of our innate wisdom on all levels of being. Zsuzsi uses this experience in teaching children's movement classes. She also expresses her deep love of dance through professional performing as a dancer, singer and choreographer with the troupe Think13. Zsuzsi is thrilled to explore the joy of herbalism, nature and well-being with you at the Institute for Urban Homesteading!

Dori Midnight www.dorilandia.com
Dori Midnight is an ordained interfaith minister and intuitive counselor who has come from a long line of tough ladies who healed people in their kitchens. She believes that healing is an "of the people, for the people" practice and works to keep healing accessible, affordable and full of magic. She teaches folk & community herbalism and magic to kids and adults, provides intuitive counselling and healing (including plant medicines and energetic bodywork) for individuals, creates rituals and ceremonies, and makes delicious potions in San Francisco.

Anastasia Nicole
Anastasia Nicole is a permaculturist, compost teacher and urban forager. She began her baking career as a child by making desserts for her family. Her experiments with chocolate have continued for over 40 years, resulting on the consumption of large quantities of Theobroma in the process.

Dawn Pillsbury garden2table.blogspot.com/
Brent Eubanks a-steep-hill.livejournal.com/
Dawn is a writer, gardener, permaculturalist, fungophile, brewer and cook who lives in the Cerrito Creek Watershed with her husband and co-gardener, Brent. A former newspaper journalist, Dawn ventured into the world of activism with the Measure M, the campaign to ban transgenic crops from Sonoma County in 2005, serving as the campaign's media coordinator. She managed Kokopelli Farm, a small boysenberry farm in Sebastopol. She is also a veteran of BlackSheep BellyDance, a trend-setting American Tribal Style troupe in Sonoma County. She is a certified permaculture designer, Occidental Arts & Ecology Center, fall 2004. Check out her gardening blog at the link above,
Brent is a Caltech-trained mechanical engineer and honest-to-goodness former rocket engineer living in Contra Costa County with his partner and co-chicken wrangler, Dawn. He worked as co-proprieter of Kokopelli Farm, and took his permaculture training at the Occidental Arts & Ecology Center in fall of 2004. He became involved in sustainability in 2001 with Cooperative Community Energy, a solar power co-op in Northern California. He is now in great demand as an expert in energy analysis and efficiency in buildings. He blogs about energy at the link listed above.