Instructors

Alex (he/they) has twelve years of combined architectural and construction experience working as a designer, educator, and builder. He received a five-year professional degree of Architecture from Auburn University, where he spent two and a half years attending Auburn University’s Rural Studio. After graduating, he joined the staff of Auburn’s Rural Studio and worked for four years as 3^rd Year Instructor and Construction Coordinator. Alex moved to North Carolina in 2017, and helped start an alternative craft school called the Cabbage School in Leicester where he ran a yearly design/build program called the Two Week Shack Class. Alex received a Permaculture Design Certificate from Wild Abundance in 2019 and now runs a permaculture and architectural design practice called Somewhere Design.

Alexandra Miller

Alexandra Miller (she/her) started out her career as a manufacturing engineer. In 2016 she fled corporate life to hike the AT and travel, and has spent as much time as possible in the woods since. She has an encompassing love for the natural world, especially mycology, botany and the interdependencies of ecology. The active alumni community at Nature Camp in VA has played a huge role in cultivating her curiosity about the natural sciences, but also in construction skills for repairing the old camp buildings and empowering her to lead building projects and teach classes at adult sessions of camp every year.

She has been following her curiosity from DIY shelters to natural building techniques such as rocket stoves and cobb structures, and recently moved to Asheville for a job cutting, installing and designing timber frame houses. She knows how intimidating these skills seem at the beginning, and how grateful she was for the warm and patient teachers she met along the way at volunteer projects, workshops, and timber frame community builds. She is so excited to be sharing her enthusiasm and opening new doors of possibilities with you!

Anna Littman is a farmer, teacher, mom, and an artist whose current media are soil, vegetables, and flowers. When she was 9-years-old Anna could be most often found in the garden, in front of a loom, or standing on a chair at the kitchen counter cooking recipes from a Julia Child cookbook she checked out at the library. Anna loves introducing people to the joys of learning, gardening, and vegetables through farm exploration and gardening workshops. Anna has directed Ivy Creek Family Farm for 15 years. She grows food year-round for two thriving markets, 80 CSA members, a community farm stand, restaurants, and her local food pantry. Check out her farm at www.ivycreekfamilyfarm.com. Check out the organization she founded at https://www.artsforlifenc.org

An inveterate adventurer, Becky (she/her) has grown to see life itself as the adventure. That life is made richer in community at Earthaven where Becky, her daughter Willow, and her co-parent Sanne moved in 2018.

Becky loves taking lofty creative visions and bringing them to life—whether her own or others’. In her first career as an educator, she taught at an arts-integrated charter school, mentored gap-year students in India and Guatemala, and created a holistic middle school. Since then, she has produced two documentary films, coached individuals and couples toward greater wholeness, and begun holding mediations.

Bevelyn Afor Ukah (She/her) works as a consultant to train youth and adults in building skills that encourage equity, organizational efficiency, cultural connection, and collaboration. She has traveled around the world and has lived in three countries.

She is a self-taught artist, developing her practice as a form of inner resilience, hoping that her work inspires others to build their own self and community-love practices.  She is a part of the Black Women’s Art Collective of Public Art Practice.

Bevelyn is passionate about discouraging divisiveness and she works with audiences in their journeys to recognize multiple truths. She is moved most when working in multigenerational settings.

To her, so much is possible with self-reflection and building true methods of accountability.

Bevelyn received her Bachelors in International Studies, Sociology and Anthropology from Guilford College where she was a Bonner Scholar and Multicultural Leadership Scholar.  She completed her Masters in Intercultural Service, Leadership and Management (with a concentration on facilitation and social justice).

Bevelyn is the founding consultant of ​AFI Oak Consulting​, co-founding consultant of the Auralite Collective and the co-founder of Mekafi​, a social enterprise that supports Black farmers through moringa oleifera.

She coordinates the Food Youth Initiative Program (FYI), a program of the Center for Environmental Farming Systems (CEFS), which engages youth that lead food justice work across North Carolina. She also co-coordinates the Racial Equity in Food Systems initiative at CEFS, which develops a shared understanding of language, history and race. She works as the Capacity Building Director at W9 Solutions, supporting the continued growth of youth leadership development through soccer, especially for youth most marginalized from the sport.  She serves on the Transplanting Traditions Community Farm Board, the National Rooted in Community Board and the NC Climate Justice Collective.

Brandon (he/they) is the Online Growers School Consulting Director and Sustainability Coach, providing support services to farmers, homesteaders, gardeners, and those seeking sustainability solutions. His background is in Renewable Systems, Earthworks, Energy, Water, Homesteading, Permaculture, and specifically providing consulting, design, and technical services for the creation of low impact, energy conserving, and integrated systems.

Brandon works with chainsaws, hand tools, heavy equipment, construction projects, water systems, and most everything having to do with the practicalities of ecological design. Meanwhile he also is pursuing trauma and body based therapy to support his work with people, community and Earth. Brandon currently lives at Earthaven Ecovillage in WNC in an off grid duplex, practicing community, partnering, parenting and philosophizing about existence and how to optimize it.

Brandon Ruiz (he/him) is a Community Herbalist and Urban Farmer based in Charlotte, NC. His farming project Yucayeke Farms focuses on providing equal and affordable access to herbal medicine and culturally-relevant foods to his community. He specializes in medicines of his native Puerto Rico, throughout the Caribbean and Appalachia.

Brian Snedeker (he/him) has had a lifelong love-affair with old tools and craft. He’s been timber framing for over 15 years, from repairing and stabilizing historic barns and homes in New England, to designing and building frames and practicing carpentry here in the Asheville area for the past decade.

Brian has been sharing skills for the craft of timber framing for many years. As a member of the Timber Framers Guild, Brian participates in conferences, skill sharing, and continuing education. Brian not only loves building timber frames, he also finds joy in sharing the craft with others. Indeed, he’s excited to continually adapt this time-honored building style for modern applications. Along with lots of building, Brian cares for a bustling rural homestead with his partner and their twins. All of this is to say: his skill is accompanied by patience and flexibility.

Originally from New Hampshire, Brian grew up rurally being active and outdoors. His love for old tools, craft, and building began young with influence from his father. Timber framing, however, didn’t come into his life until his early 20’s when he came upon the good fortune of getting a job in historic preservation in Huntington VT. While working there, he repaired, stabilized, sometimes disassembled and rebuilt historic, mostly English, agricultural buildings regionally. The beauty and function of these buildings really spoke to him. Naturally gravitating towards homesteading and craft he fell in love with this architecture and with timber framing immediately. Today he feels as thrilled to be a part of keeping this tradition alive and attached to its spirited roots as ever. Every building is a discovery. From historical preservation to modern timber frame designs and techniques, Brian loves being a part of a hard working team dedicated to high level craftsmanship, integrity, and learning. Brian owns Ivy Creek Timber Frames. 

Brit Josa (she/her), is an herbalist, astrology & tarot enthusiast, and word-weaver who resides just outside of the Linville Gorge area. She was first inspired to study herbalism and natural medicine over 10 years ago by her mother’s journey to healing through holistic healing practices.

She is the founder of Torches Ceremonials – a small business with a focus on channeled potions created with sustainably wildcrafted weeds and plants sourced from farmers in Western Carolina.

Brit believes in cultivating a relationship with and a reverence for the plants used as medicine, as well as the people who used those plants and tended to the land before us.

She hopes to inspire others to find magic in the mundane, and become ignited to help & heal themselves – with the ancient energies of earth medicine as Guides.

Callan Burton-Shore (she/her) is a nature connection mentor, earthskills teacher, and craftsperson. She aims to live as connected to the land as possible and does not like to be kept indoors. She feels most connected most when climbing trees, tanning hides, making fire, and processing animals.

Callan grew up in the woods of Virginia at the Living Earth School where she first learned the basic survival skills and fell in love with the natural world. She made her spoon and friction fire there at the age of eight, and has never stopped learning since. She has taught at multiple nature connection schools, including The Living Earth School and where she currently teaches, Forest Floor Wilderness School in Asheville. For the last two years she has been a student in Luke Mclaughlin’s Deep Remembering Immersion program, where she was able to deepen her knowledge and assist in teaching skills and crafts. This fall she took over Luke’s role of teaching hide tanning at the Earthskills Rendezvous Gathering. She also sells wooden spoons and bowls she makes at markets and gatherings.

Instructor for Online Gardening School, Co-Visionary, Copywriter

Chloe (she/her) is passionate about nurturing a more beautiful, reciprocal, respectful relationship between humans and the rest of the living world. She is the co-director of the Online Gardening School, and also writes for Wild Abundance’s blog, newsletter, and website. In addition, Chloe jumps in to help out with management and strategy as the co-visionary for the business as a whole; she and Natalie have been working together for over 8 years. Chloe has been passionate about food and farming for over 20 years, with a special love for the interactions between human communities and their food systems. She studied Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems at UC Santa Cruz, has learned and practiced gardening in five countries, and continues to feel delighted every time she serves a homegrown meal to friends and family. Along with working at Wild Abundance, Chloe gives her life energy to growing food, parenting, community care, lifelong learning, and maintaining meaningful relationships.

Chloe Vieira is a proud trans woman, a wife and parent of two incredible children, and a community member, hearth tender, farmer and ritualist at Earthaven Ecovillage. She is also a musician, a storyteller, an educator, a builder, an integrative ecosocial designer, and a holistic life coach specializing in gender exploration and transformation as a part of the journey of rewilding and remembering our interconnectedness with the more than human world. You can read more about her work and get in touch at about.me/coachchloe

When Chris (he/him) was 20 years old, he realized that he had never eaten a single thing that he knew where it came from. At 22, he helped start an organic vegetable farm outside of Olympia, WA. Journeying home to the Carolinas to be closer to family, he moved to Earthaven Ecovillage.

Since his arrival to EH in 1997, Chris has cleared his own farm field, designed and built passive solar homes using the wood from the trees he has killed (including his own Microhut), held leadership positions in the community, raised turkeys, grown vegetables, co-founded the Forestry Cooperative, designed and installed multiple off-grid energy systems, and a few other things.

His newest excitement is dabbling in small-scale biochar production and wood gasification at Gateway Farm. Regardless of how Chris is spending his days he’s often wondering what it’s going to take to get us through these upcoming troubled times.

Dallas Conyers (she/her) is the instructor for “yoga for gardeners” in the Online Gardening school. She reminds us all to stay limber and strong while we work! She works as a Body Restoration Specialist: teaching yoga, foods for healing, and spiritual reestablishment to help people become ABLE to live out their creation purpose. Dallas is also a certified Sustainable Agriculturalist, Beekeeper, and Greenhouse Husbandman. She uses her micro-farm to practice and educate others on: eco-system restoration, soil regeneration, no-till square foot farming, and pollinator cultivation; for our world and for our survival. Reverend Dallas delightedly sits under the leadership of Rev. Dr. M. Keith McDaniel as an associate at Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church.

Daniel (he/him) grew up at the base of a fourteen-thousand-foot mountain in far Northern California and has loved plants all his life. He graduated from the University of California, Davis with a degree in Plant Sciences and an emphasis in Crop production and Viticulture. After college he went to work for a pesticide and fertilizer retailer as a consultant and salesman of these products. During this time he looked at over 10,000 acres/week of wine grapes, almonds, pistachios, processing tomatoes, alfalfa, and every crop in-between. He learned an incredible amount, but also saw first-hand the detriment  pesticides have on ecological systems and the air and water we all depend on. An opportunity arose to work on a 1000 acre organic vegetable farm as the pest management and fertility specialist. He jumped at the opportunity and immediately figured out that it was indeed possible to grow large amounts of food in a more sustainable way. It was here that Daniel became invigorated with the ecological systems of pests and diseases, and how to intervene in ways that would disrupt these cycles but not at the expense of our environment. I took a deep dive into how the health of the soil translated to plant health. He then set out to expand his influence from just those 1000 acres to the broader agricultural systems and to try and promote systemic change. He currently works as an  extension agent and works with a diverse group of growers using many practices. Guest teaching a course like this is exactly the type of knowledge he wants to promote! 

“I want people to feel excited about plants and the food that they  eat. I want people to grow their own food and feel rebellious, but also the deep biological  connection we all have to plants and the rich soils that they grow in. If I can help you feel  passionate about plants and how to grow them, then I feel like I am on my way to fulfilling my  greatest goal.”

DeLesslin “Roo” George-Warren (he/him) is an artist, educator, and community ecologist from Catawba Indian Nation whose work ranges from performance to installation art to community education to food sovereignty to language revitalization. From 2017-2019 he was the Special Projects Coordinator for the Catawba Cultural Preservation Project where he facilitated the Catawba Language Project (including developing and programming online digital assets such as the Catawba Language App), several food sovereignty initiatives, and other community education projects. Since 2019 he has continued to work for his tribe as a consultant on many projects including: language revitalization, food sovereignty, educational sovereignty, cultural healing, teacher training, grant writing and much more. DeLesslin’s work focuses on reweaving Catawba culture with policy, fundraising, program development, and community education to create a resilient community for future generations. DeLesslin is a 2017 graduate of the Wild Abundance Permaculture Design Program and has applied that experience to his personal gardens, Catawba community gardens, and other tribal community programs.

Delia Jovel (she/her) was born and raised in El Salvador and has always been passionate about the social justice movement. In 2014 she came to North Carolina and started working supporting Hispanic communities in the Henderson and Buncombe area. In 2020, she started ABUNDANCIA, a culturally appropriate food distribution and TIERRA FERTIL COOP, a Hispanic-owned farm cooperative. In 2023, she also worked developing ESCUELA CAMPESINA, a collaborative initiative oriented to reconnect hispanic community with farming, food and health.

Elijah Strongheart (he/him)grew up in the Appalachian mountains. With deep influences from Ch’ann and other philosophical traditions, he has engaged much of his life in the study of communication. Elijah draws his class material largely from tracking, ritual, and play. When not reading or playing go, he might be building something artistic, or functional, or ideally both. Then again, he might be climbing the side of a mountain or paddling down a narrow gorge. Diversity breeds immunity. Organizing oneself in the context of survival and thrival brings much resilience and peace. One of his deep loves of earthskills is the way it draws forth the creativity in every individual and community.

Elizabeth Díaz (she/her) has been getting her hands dirty in Western North Carolina since 2004. After graduating from Warren Wilson College in 2006 with a made-up degree in “Social and Activist Theater,” she soon began pursuing a life more deeply connected to food and other basic human needs. In April 2010, she began a love affair with cows while work-exchanging on a farm at Earthaven.

Elizabeth now runs a small subsistence farm in the community, where, along with the support of many others, she tends to a variety of animals and the plants and land that feed them.

Elizabeth’s father came to the U.S. from Cuba in 1959, her mother’s father came here from Sweden on a ship transporting prisoners of war during World War II, and her maternal lineage came to the U.S. from the Netherlands and Sweden. She grew up in the Appalachian foothills of Middletown, Maryland.

Elizabeth is dedicated to a life of feeding that which feeds her. In addition to animal agriculture, she is involved in Earthaven community governance and death care midwifery.

Emileigh Zola (she/her) has a passion for curating spaces of depth, connection, and inspiration.Through her own trials of loss, transformation, and the unexpected, she has learned many key tools for self growth that she loves sharing with others.

Emileigh is a life coach and loves working with women who are ready to commit themselves to creating long term, sustainable change in their lives.

She also owns her own craft business – Rhythm & Ritual – where her mantra is “Devotion to the Beauty of the Ordinary.” She teaches others to craft handmade brooms with mindfulness and also has her own virtual storefront.

When Emileigh is not working or crafting, she loves spending time with her two daughters, hiking, cold plunging, traveling, and connecting to community.

Era Keys (they/them) is a queer, non-binary permaculture educator, consultant, and designer. They have experienced living and working in Permaculture since 2013. In the past 10 years has seen Era living and managing permaculture farms, permaculture design business, educating in North Florida, Puerto Rico, Oregon + North Carolina, and living in an EcoVillage based in permaculture. Era currently resides outside of Asheville, NC with their family where they are creating a permaculture homestead. Era’s ultimate goal is to produce high quality permaculture education and tools that are accessible and digestible for the everyday person, so that together we may weather the ever-evolving challenges of today’s world through their business Earth Minded Landscapes and Farm. 

Evan (she/her) is a queer, cis-gendered, Jewish herbalist, birth doula, and creator of many things magic. She has lived in the mountains of Asheville, NC since 2008 where she has fostered a deep love and connection with these ancient mountains and the lessons they have to teach.

Evan grew up on the coast of Georgia, a place which still deeply holds a piece of her heart. Her mother introduced her to flower essences and homeopaths at a very young age, when she began seeing a healer named Beverly Holt. Bev later moved to Asheville where she began teaching Evan about flower essences and tapping into intuition. In early 2020, Evan had the privledge of supporting Bev through the portal of death, and she hopes to carry on her legacy as a healer and flower essence practitioner. Evan strongly believes in honoring those that came before us, taught us what we know, and inspired us to be the people that we are.

Evan’s passion for support, noticing the unseen, and slowing down, all deeply inform her work, her activism, her teaching style, and the way that she shows up as a doula and in her herbal practice.

When Evan is not at a birth or in the garden, you can find her dancing in the living room (or on the dance floor in another world!), drinking Japanese green tea, and snuggling her cats.

You can check out her website to learn more at www.bigcatbirthbotanicals.com

George Brabant (he/him) and his wife have been creating a permaculture designed food forest in Asheville NC for a little over a decade now. At Phat Ninja Foodforest, they grow the majority of their food on a 1/2 acre located in the city of Asheville, NC. The entire property is planted in a series of interconnected swales and ponds and guilds with chickens and ducks ranging free throughout.

Germaine Jenkins (she/they) is the co-founder of Fresh Future Farm Inc. which operates a nonprofit farm and grocery store that grows the quality of life their neighbors deserve in North Charleston, SC. 

Ms. Jenkins is a nationally-recognized, visionary leader in the urban agriculture space and passionate advocate for food justice. Born in Hartsville, SC and raised in Cleveland, OH, Germaine returned to South Carolina to earn degrees from Johnson & Wales University and pursue liberation for her family through food. Ms. Jenkins and the FFF team have collaborated with Seedlight Pictures on a 1,000+ hour oral history archive for upcoming social impact website Rooted Stories and 90-minute documentary, Rooted Film, where she serves as principal participant and Co-Producer.

As Community Network Manager for Equitable Food Oriented Development (EFOD), they are excited about curating in-person and virtual content aligned with BIPOC community led food system principles across the United States.

Jennifer (she/her) is a Licensed Landscape Architect, Master Gardener, Master Composter, and a Permaculture Design Certificate Holder. She teaches classes at the North Carolina Arboretum and has taught at conferences across the country.

Jennifer has been passionately involved in landscaping and environmental work as long as she can remember. She studied landscape architecture at the University of Massachusetts and California Polytechnic State University, and has traveled extensively around the world, exploring place-based landscape design, permaculture techniques and the ways people built their life around self-grown organic produce.

She loves to help people re-connect with their food source, through effective design. Her mission is to bridge the gap between ornamental and sustainable landscape design. She currently works with homeowners and contractors in the Asheville area to build aesthetically pleasing landscapes and intentional spaces. Through the use of creative design solutions every planned landscape serves a purpose and that is Jennifer’s purpose.

Jewel D. Pearson/Ms. Bohemian Soul (she/her). After downsizing her homes and lifestyle over the course of 10 years, Jewel designed and built a beautiful tiny house, in May of 2015, that she calls home. Her home represents a desire that many have to reduce their ecological footprint and focus more on practices of intentional living, living with less and sustainability. 

A product manager by day, Jewel’s also a tiny house advocate and community leader sharing her experiences, offering consulting services and workshops throughout the country to assist others in achieving their tiny living dreams. Jewel also serves as representation within the movement, ensuring space for those who most often don’t see themselves represented and is focused on doing the work of changing and challenging the status quo of housing and community.

Connect with Jewel here: 

www.thebohemianbrand.com

www.tinyhousetrailblazers.com

Justin Holt (he/him) has worked in agroecological design, education, and production for over 12 years, with a particular tap-rooted commitment to tree crops. He is co-founder and worker-owner of the Nutty Buddy Collective and Asheville Nuttery, and co-founder of Kudzu Culture. He also teaches foraging and works as a freelance permaculture designer and consultant.

Kearsley (she/her) is the bioregional Chef, folk herbalist, & artist cooking up local flavors in Kearsley’s Kitchen. She shares her seasonally inspired meals and musings in the form of pop-up dinners, private catering, wildcrafted herbal elixirs, & seasonal cookbooks that detail her favorite recipes, herbal remedies, and rituals for connecting with each season. In 2018 Kearsley apprenticed under Becky Beyer and studied Appalachian & European folk traditions that included bioregional wildcrafting & medicine making as well as learning the animistic rituals of her German- British Isles ancestors. She describes her way of life to be the “slow simmer” – a delicate balance between actively tending the skillet and unraveling the need to be perpetually productive by wandering the lush ecosystem of Southern Appalachia, practicing Irish Step dancing, & exploring the art of symbolism, dreams, & earth-based ritual.

Read more about Kearsley’s seasonally inspired musings at Kearsley’s Kitchen

Lewis Blake (he/him) loves plants! He’s been growing and tending both annual and perennial crops for many years. He and his family grow berries and salad for market at their farm, Bear Necessities, based out of Weaverville, NC. They also bring potted, perennial plants and fruit bushes for edible and otherwise “useful” landscaping to Asheville-area tailgate markets. He’s excited to be teaching berry growing to our Online Gardening School students.

Madison’s stoked to be teaching with Wild Abundance because she’s super passionate about empowering women with skills in a safe & welcoming environment. She’s been building on her own since middle school and also worked for a number of years on a framing crew doing residential carpentry. When not teaching, Madison spends a large portion of her time making art and metal-working.

Mary Morgaine Squire, aka Mary Plantwalker, was born a tender and documentarian. She naturally tends to the beings within any space she is in with the utmost attention and care. As the matriarch of Herb Mountain Farm, Mary creates sanctuary for plants, birds, humans and many other creatures through earth stewardship.

Documenting the life unfolding on this magical planet through writing, photography and collage, she hopes to inspire others to also care deeply for our Mother Earth. Mary’s community work is centered around being a folk plantwoman and ceremonialist and she invites the directions, elements and plants to lead the way for our collective growth and healing. As mother to two fiery red heads, she prioritizes the path of motherhood and family above all. Follow Mary on Instagram for more vivid green talk.

Monique Mazza, founder of Elements Naturopathic Medicine, is a unique Naturopathic Physician who embodies her teachings by living a sustainable off-grid lifestyle at Earthaven Ecovillage since 2016. After a decade of clinical practice in a busy city, she grew tired of telling people how to be healthy and wanted to show them instead. Her home at Earthaven provides the precious space in nature to be a part-time clinician, a regenerative biodynamic gardener, homesteader, mother, and enthusiastic community member. She is dedicated to a life of service. Outside of her clinic, she can be found deep in her garden or kitchen, creating beauty around her community, or at her  desk serving on the legislative committee for the North Carolina Association of Naturopathic Physicians.

Her Caribbean ancestry introduced her to the healing power of plants and reverence for nature at an early age. Her passion for food as medicine fuels her efforts to sustainably grow and raise much of her family’s food, including a diversity of vegetables, herbal medicines, fruits, berries, laying hens, broiler chickens, turkeys, and even rainbow trout!

She has a personal passion for learning, which currently has her focused on studying the evolving science around the human microbiome and its origin and relationship to the soil.

She is grateful and excited to be offering experiential health retreats in our 5,000 sq. ft organic garden nestled in the heart of Earthaven, where the art of healing is supported and consciously woven through our connections to nature and community.

Nadi (they/them) has been on a quest to study traditional woodworking, metalworking and ancestral skills ever since leaving behind their Aerospace Engineering path in Germany where they grew up. While attending University in Germany they turned an old early 1900s circus trailer into their first tiny home they lived in for the duration of their studies. Building with no prior experience and figuring everything out on the spot empowered them to leave the corporate world in Germany behind and take their life into their own living, breathing hands.

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Founder and Director of Wild Abundance; Instructor for Permaculture & Gardening

Natalie (she/her) is the visionary behind Wild Abundance, as well as the founder, director, and an instructor. She also dreams up new classes, is a big part of curriculum development, manages the campus and designs buildings. Natalie is passionate about teaching and sharing skills to help all kinds of people live in an empowered and earth-centered way. This includes her staff, and the skills of running a cooperative and sustainable values-based business.  

In 2008 Natalie founded the Firefly Gathering, an earthskills gathering focused on bringing people together to teach and learn. Under Natalie’s management, Firefly became the most well-attended event of its kind in the country, and the only one that was led by a woman. Natalie felt a strong desire to see the impact of sharing these skills with people throughout the year, not just at a once-a-year event, so in 2010 she founded Wild Abundance. 

At its inception, the school was a one-woman show with the goal of teaching people important skills (and earning enough of a living to keep doing that). As Wild Abundance has grown and matured, Natalie has embraced her role as a leader and an ecologically and socially-minded business person. (This has been challenging, given her anti-establishment, anti-capitalist, and anarchist background). She now works collaboratively with her beloved staff to create and innovate, so that Wild Abundance can be wildly successful at embodying and spreading its core values and growing its influence as an inspiring force of positive change in the world.  

Natalie and her daughter live at the Wild Abundance homestead campus in the Southern Appalachians. She balances her time between managing the logistics of the school, teaching, tending the garden, building, playing with her daughter, visiting wild places, connecting with her community, and basking in the beauty of nature. Read more about Natalie’s life and adventures here.

NikiAnne (she/her) was born and raised on a horse and cattle ranch on the ancestral lands of the Salinan people in the Central Coast of California. She currently lives at Earthaven Ecovillage on unceded lands of the Catawba and Cherokee (Tsalagi) people. Her ancestors come from Eastern and Western Europe — France, Germany, and English Isles as well as Belarus, Lithuania, and Russia, from Ashkenazi Jewish heritage.

Throughout the last two decades, NikiAnne has been immersed in community and in service to a wide range of educational endeavors focused on nature connection, personal empowerment, and community resilience. NikiAnne considers herself the grease and glue – that which helps things run smoothly or holds things together. Before co-founding SOIL in 2012, she worked and traveled through much of Asia, the Americas, and Europe, which made her formal education at George Washington University in International Affairs come alive in ways that can only happen through personal experience and relationships.  Collectively, these experiences have undeniably shaped her cooperative cultural values and commitment to supporting leaders to think, feel, act and design from a foundation rooted in interrelationship. No matter what she’s teaching, NikiAnne is always on the same mission: to raise awareness of our whole selves – gifts, passions, blind spots, shadows – and help those whole selves find and fill niches in their communities. This is how the web of life is woven, and the fabric of culture repaired. She’s especially eager to support those in transition – between vocations, stages of life, and stories of world and self. Within this context, she is particularly passionate about community grief tending and death care midwifery.

Noah (he/him) is a farmer, writer, and educator that has gratefully called Western North Carolina home since 2014. At the core of all he does is an interest in relationship, both human-human and human-earth. This is why he farms: so that he can spend as much of his waking life as possible engaged in all forms of deep relationship with his community.

Noah has worked as a field biologist, forestry technician, arborist, land design consultant, and farm manager. His farming philosophy is grounded in a strong understanding of ecological patterns and a passion for effective small farms that revitalize rural communities and economies. With his diverse background and wide knowledge base, Noah co-runs Wild East Farm, facilitating a thriving farm ecosystem and educational space in which the community can become immersed native ecology, soils, animal physiology, and viable farm production systems. 

He looks forward to a lifetime living alongside and learning from the agrarian community of this place.

Originally from British Columbia, Canada and raised in Tampa FL, much of Quetzal’s (she/her) time is currently spent side by side with Mel Chin a conceptual visual artist in Burnsville, North Carolina. Quetzal’s day to day experience consists of her making and installing sculpture art, utilizing such skills as carpentry, welding, masonry and basic construction.

Quetzal an alumnus of the Women’s Carpentry Classes (Basic and Advanced) as well as the Tiny Home Building Workshop at Wild Abundance. Through these workshops, she met Barron Brown and started her carpentry career as his apprentice in 2019. Quetzal is currently living in Swannanoa (Asheville NC) with her partner, two cellos, and three cats.

“One of my greatest passions is to teach useful skills to people who are ready to learn!” – Quetzal

Rebecca Beyer (she/her) is an Appalachian folk herbalist, huntress, and wild food forager dedicated to living simply on the Earth. She has taught and presented at universities, conferences and gatherings over the last nine years with the hope of showing people that living a seasonal life grounded in connection with the Old Ways is possible. Through growing, foraging, hunting, fishing and preserving her own food, she strives to create a life as close to her ancestors as possible while paying homage to the diverse peoples who created her beloved Appalachia.

She makes her living tattooing, teaching foraging and Appalachian folk herbalism and craft classes at  her school, Blood and Spicebush School of Old Craft. Rebecca currently spends her days dedicating herself to Appalachian folk arts, primitive skills, folk music and learning the names of all the beings she shares her bioregion with.

Robin Greenfield (he/him) is an activist and humanitarian dedicated to leading the way to a more sustainable and just world. He embarks on extreme projects to bring attention to important global issues and inspire positive change. His work has been covered by media worldwide including National Geographic and he’s been named “The Robin Hood of modern times” by France 2 TV.

Robin’s life is an embodiment of Gandhi’s philosophy, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” In a time when many feel disempowered, he believes that our actions really do matter and that as individuals and communities we have the power to improve the world around us. Robin donates 100% of his media earnings to grassroots organizations who are primarily BIPOC and women led. He has committed to living simply and responsibly for life.  https://www.robingreenfield.org/

Sam (he/him) is a therapist, poet, and small-time farmer who lives, works, and is regularly brought to his knees in Earthaven Ecovillage in the mountains of Western North Carolina.

Scotty’s first experience growing plants was growing up with his mother in her suburban Maryland garden. He received his degree in Industrial Engineering from Penn State University in 2007. When Scotty was introduced to Permaculture on a WWOOF farm in 2008, he realized he was able to apply his engineering brain to living systems. Scotty received his PDC in 2009 and immediately started getting hands-on experience.

Shawn Jadrnicek has nourished his interest in agriculture through his work as a farmer, nurseryman, extension agent, arborist, landscaper, manager of Clemson University’s Student Organic Farm and manager of Wild Hope Farm. From his earliest experiments with no-till farming in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California to his highly functional bio-integrated designs in the Southeast, Shawn has learned how to cultivate food in a variety of climates and landscapes over 25 years of working with the land.  A snapshot of his knowledge is available in his book The Bio-Integrated Farm.  

Tyler (he/him) and his family align their life with the cycles of the seasons and the bounty of the wild. They harvest and utilize as much as they can – straight from the woods around them.

Tyler first fell in love with Southern Appalachian ecology as a student at Warren Wilson College, where he received a degree in Environmental Education. The children’s novel My Side of the Mountain sparked Tyler’s passion for traditional skills and wild foods. Since then, he’s been blessed with teachers and mentors who continue to draw his attention into deeper layers of mystery and the possibilities around crafting a handmade, wild life.

Over the years, Tyler has studied, apprenticed and taught at many traditional skills schools and events, including Wild Abundance, The Roots School, Living Earth School, Earthskills Rendezvous, The Firefly Gathering, Florida Earthskills, Whippoorwill, and others. He’s worked with hundreds of children and adults through public and private schools, homeschool cooperatives, and special events. 

Passion and experience

Tyler has experience in all aspects of survival skills, with a special passion for primitive technologies. In 2015, he was hired by the Catawba Historic Society to build an authentic replica of an 18th-century Catawba bark lodge for the organization’s living-history site. In 2018, he was featured on the cover of Asheville Made magazine for his handmade buckskin clothing.

Tyler is devoted to understanding material use in the context of its ecological niche – that of unveiling ancient and scientific wisdom of appropriate technologies. Whether he’s preserving wild foods or working with stone tools, bows and arrows, animal hides, or natural fibers, Tyler orients his life by the skills that have kept our ancestors alive for thousands of years.

With his wife and their son, Tyler’s also now focused on developing his Shelterwood Cove homestead.

Zev grew up in a patch of kudzu in Sylva, NC, embraced by the wild Appalachian landscape and layers of ecological and human communities here. He specializes in hands-on, in-depth education in permaculture and earthskills and has been doing residential and community-based professional design and installation throughout Western North Carolina since 2007. Almost a decade of study with world-renowned teacher Martín Prechtel helped feed his passion for regrowing our own diverse Earth-based lifeways through youth initiation and ritual.

Zev currently serves as Creative Director for Cooperate WNC, which harnesses the power of cooperation at a regional scale to meet human needs and address our most pressing ecological and social challenges. He can also be found teaching many of these same concepts as a faculty member of the School of Integrated Living.