Meet some of the 2026 Instructors
Shelley Touloupas
Awakening Alignment Sound Healing was formed through the hands of Shelley Touloupas. Her 40+ years of alternative health care led her on her own personal healing journey to discover the beauty and benefits of sound frequencies.
Shelley eagerly decided to bring this non- invasive approach home to share and has since become certified & is providing group & personal sound healing & tuning fork therapy sessions.
Through instrumental frequencies, guidance, balancing, soothing, opening & aligning we can help our energies flow more freely.
Rachel Mifsud
Rachel Mifsud, founder (and everything else)
“I hate going to the store. I do my grocery shopping in the woods.”
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As a child I often camped, hunted, trapped, and harvested and preserved foods with my family. Through years of practice, I have learned to gather, process, produce, and preserve a large proportion of the foods, medicines, and household products that I need. I am a lifelong student of the environment and primitive skills, with a special interest in understanding why nature creates those characteristics that give plants and animals their unique and useful qualities. I have my BS in Environmental Biology and my MS in Ecology. I have worked as field biologist and ecologist throughout the Eastern U.S., and am a Biology lecturer at the University of Michigan- Dearborn. I have been teaching for over 20 years and have spent considerable time working with students in the classroom, in the woods, and on-line.
Roger Labine
Roger is an enrolled member of the Lac Vieux Desert Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. Roger is a water resource technician in the tribe’s environmental department, with responsibilities including Manoomin restoration for the tribe’s ceded territory and water quality monitoring. He was inspired by his mentor and uncle who had a vision of Manoomin returning to the traditional lands, and has over 38 years of experience. Roger is the current tribal delegate on the Michigan Wild Rice Initiative, and he co-chairs the Native Wild Rice Coalition. He was the recipient of the 2019 Michigan Heritage Award presented by the Michigan State University Museum’s Michigan Traditional Arts Program in statewide partnership with the Michigan Council for the Arts & Cultural Affairs and the State of Michigan. He enjoys visiting tribal communities, schools, and colleges, and conducts wild rice camps to share the cultural, spiritual, ceremonial, and traditional importance of Manoomin. His personal goals focus on conservation, protection, restoration, and management of the limited resources in Michigan for present and future generations.
Aurora Rosewood
Immensely mystical, artistic and a visionary healer. A force to be reckoned with due to her anointing and plethora of natural born gifts. A true alchemist who is wise beyond her years and intuitive to the forces of life, realms and energies.
Tyler Davidson
​Tyler Davidson is a board-certified holistic health coach and nutritional therapist with over a decade of experience helping people reverse chronic disease. Specializing in the therapeutic use of functional mushrooms, he combines modern research, hands-on foraging experience, and practical strategies to restore health and vitality.
He is the founder of Elden Medicinals, where he crafts small-batch, wild-foraged mushroom extracts, and the author of Wild Healing with Medicinal Mushrooms, a comprehensive guide to foraging and therapeutic use in the Midwest and Northeastern United States
Janice Marsh- Prelesnik
Always a student of nature and keeper of the old ways, Janice Marsh-Prelesnik is excited to offer music from plants generated by the Plants Play machine and Earth based chants and songs. Janice is a retired home birth midwife, continues her work as an herbalist, offers therapeutic music to those in hospice and memory care, and is a member of The Music Medicine Collective. You can listen to her newly released album, The Wheel of Life, on all platforms.
Abi Fergus
Fergus (they/them) is a tracker and has been able to study and apply the ancestral lifeway of tracking in wildlife conservation, regenerative agriculture, and nature healing/land connection. They cultivated their skill as a tracker as an employee of Mashkiiziibii (Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa) and have helped monitor and learn about species such as Ma'iingan (gray wolf) and regularly share and teach tracking with others. They also work with tracking to help those in agricutlure better understand how to coexist with wild predators and to help folks such as trans and queer people reconnect to their internal and external ecosystems.
Jenna Gray Shomler
Jenna Gray-Shomler is a nature-based educator, business owner, wildlife rehabilitator, and teacher at a local forest school from West Michigan. For many years she has guided children and adults through hands-on learning experiences in forests, classrooms, and community settings. Jenna is passionate about helping people build confidence through traditional skills, creativity, and meaningful connections with the natural world. She enjoys exploring a wide variety of earth based crafts and loves sharing practical skills that bring people closer to nature.
Cortney Collia
Cortney Collia is a Licensed Massage Therapist (LMT), traditional healer and Founder of CC’s Natural Arts, a holistic healing practice that aims to promote healing from the inside out. She is an enrolled member of the Sault Ste Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians and an Education and Outreach subcommittee member of the Michigan Wild Rice Initiative. She is an activist and artist who has worked to preserve and protect Water, Manoomin and all wildlife and wild places. With 25 years in environmental science and 8 years in bodywork/ healing she brings a unique perspective and understanding to caring for all life.
Ben DeYoung
Ben is a fourth-generation butcher who approaches his craft with care, mindfulness, and deep respect for the animals and the land that provides our food. He sees butchery not just as a set of skills, but as a way to engage thoughtfully with the work, honoring the effort, knowledge, and tradition that comes with it.
His hands-on classes combine practical skills with thoughtful guidance, encouraging students to slow down, pay attention, and connect with the process from start to finish. For him, teaching is about more than just technique. It’s about creating a space where people can connect to their food, to each other, and to the labor that sustains us. His goal is for students to leave with not only confidence in their skills but a deeper appreciation for the craft, the animals, and the traditions that make responsible butchery possible.
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Lauralina Melendez (Ro)
Dollmaking was passed down from my maternal liniage. Becoming a mama i felt called to share the skill rather than a product, this is what made me transition into teaching. I have been teaching at skills gatherings for 11 years now.
Rodney Cole
I went to my first winter survival training when I was 12 in the Boy Scouts. I then had training in the army after both Ranger and Special Forces School. As a reservist I was sent to survival training 11 times including in Canada and Alaska. Because I like to long distance hike I have taken training at 8 different survival schools. I taught survival in the Army for several years and about 2004 I started instructing at survival schools.
Kira
Greetings Friend! My name is Kira, and I am so happy our paths have crossed. As the director of Friend of the Woods Nature School, my
heart’s work is connecting kids with their sense of place in the natural world. Growing up, I always oriented myself by the trees, trails,
and bodies of water around me. My home base was in Grand Haven, MI where I would spend hours exploring and
shing the bayous, inlets,
and channels of the Grand River Basin. Climbing trees, spying on the creatures who made the land and water their home, and noticing
how it felt to be more than just an observer to the natural world around me. To know and feel myself as an integral part of these
ecosystems early on tangibly shaped the way I perceive the world.
Yadira Ayala
I work full time as an outdoor educator at a wilderness academy in Indiana studying and teaching primitive survival and experimental archeology. Cultivating community, implementing ecological awareness and building resilience through earth based living skills and self efficacy is something I have been really passionate about. I have practiced traditional skills and developed naturalist knowledge for over a decade, which has opened the pathway to reconnect with the long history of life on this planet- our human ancestors and the many other animals who shared these landscapes before us. This work has also encouraged a deeper awareness of the ancestral lifeways of First Nations peoples and the living cultural traditions that remain rooted in the land today.
Social links: instagram @wildmamasita
Lexie Schroeder Kobb
I have been working with a collaborative of Free Seed Libraries and garden educators in the Kalamazoo area for the past three years as part of the Kalamazoo Seed Collaborative. I'm the Assistant Director of the Kalamazoo Valley Museum, seed steward, beekeeper, and continuous learner. To me, seeds and gardening are a strong connection with the past, a conversation with future, and an embracing of what is most important in life now.
Jen
I'm deeply passionate about rewilding- not only the land, but our inner landscapes as well. I
believe in guiding children back to their bodies, their instincts, their creativity, and their sense of belonging. In a world saturated with screens and noise, it is more vital than ever to slow down, notice the scent of the rain, feel the moss beneath our bare feet, hear the bird songs, taste wild foods and remember that we are nature, too. It is about returning to the wisdom and rhythms that our Ancestors knew- that live in our bodies, our senses and our relationship with Earth.
Co-founding Friend of the Woods with Kira has been one of the most meaningful journeys of my life. Together, we've built space where families can step into relationship with the land and one another- where curiosity is honored, stewardship is practiced, and childhood is protected.
I am endlessly grateful to be doing this work and to be surrounded by families, teachers, and little explorers who remind me every day that hope, joy, and connection are still very much alive- especially in the woods.
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IG: @FriendoftheWoods
website: www.friendofthewoods.com
John Brown
Hello, my name is John Brown, and I am the owner and maker at Double Nickel Leather & Canvas, LLC. I specialize in the custom fabrication and repair of holsters, sheaths, bags, rucksacks, and various outdoor gear. Hand-sewing leather is one of the most relaxing hobbies I’ve found, and my goal is to share this rewarding craft while embracing the EarthCraft Skill Share vibe.
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Lori Evesque
I’ve been interested in fibers for most of my life starting at age 8 learning to knit and adding most other fiber related crafts over the ensuing years. I learned to spin nearly 40 years ago in Australia and my background in chemistry and interest in growing plants lead my interest in natural dyeing over 25 years ago. (Picture a mad scientist knitting…) I’ve demonstrated natural dyeing at Viking reenactments over an open fire as well as in more conventional places like dye kitchens and studios. My natural dye interest started with dabbling with local dye materials near me and expanded to a desire to see the full range of colors possible, using a range of mordants and modifiers and being able to reproduce those colors.
I source many dye materials locally from fields and forests as well as growing many dye plants on my farm. Expanding the range of colors possible from locally sourced materials, including Japanese indigo and madder, is not only my passion but belief that sharing this knowledge with other interested dyers is important for our local community. I’m increasingly interested in the idea of the “Fibershed”: relocalizing the production of fibers for our needs from sourcing our fibers locally to mending and making the textiles we have last longer.
I currently live on a 36 acre farm (Natural Cycles Farm) outside Allegan, MI with my partner Pete, 2 dogs, 1 cat, 5 geese, 40+ chickens, ducks, Jersey beef steer, and 65 or so fiber sheep.
I process our farm fiber sometimes with the help of regional fiber mills and sell raw fleeces, cleaned fiber, naturally dyed loose fiber, naturally dyed and undyed yarns, roving, combed top, and custom batts from my sheep or from other fiber producers in Michigan.
Kat Pfeiffer
Kat is a mama and wife living and learning on a small homestead in Montague, Michigan. With work rooted in community nutrition, organic vegetable farming, early childhood development, & shamanism, she is now seeking further connections with her own community with her family. Scaling down to gardening & branching out now alongside community members, Kat actively practices shamanism & community supported healing through reiki, sound, & natural connections and is holding events connected to these in
her own community!
Robert Beech
Robert Beech is an educator, reenactor, and professional artist.
Morgan Pell
Morgan has taught at Tillers International and the Kalamazoo Nature center. She is a wonder at all she lays her touch to.
Gabrielle Sorgenfrie
Roadkill Connoisseur
My name is Gabrielle Sorgenfrei. I am a self proclaimed roadkill connoisseur from Southwest Michigan. I have a background in butchery, hide tanning,and taxidermy. Every fall and winter, I salvage deer hit by cars. I use roadkill deer for meat, hides, bones, tallow, and sinew. My favorite part about my craft is utilizing beautiful animals that would've otherwise gone to waste.
Larissa Touloupas & Ondrej Pekarovic
Larissa is a nature enthusiast who has been growing food and foraging most of her life. She is the founder of Solfed Farms CSA and began a farm school three years ago to teach children and adults about farming and homesteading skills.
Larissa's true connection with the wild started many years ago when she began teaching wilderness therapy in Utah. She has been embedded in many different ancestral crafts and projects since then.
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Ondrej has over 20 years of experience in systems design, architectural components, renewable energy, alternative construction methods, forestry, farming and his passion is in natural building and retrofitting strategies in wind and seismic areas. Ondrej currently works as a building research engineer for Western Michigan University. He enjoys sharing his wealth of knowledge and getting muddy with hands-on natural building.
Michael Murray
Chef Michael Murray is the chef owner of West Michigan Provisions LLC, a chef driven, artisan pasta and specialty foods company, he is an ACF Certified Executive Chef (CEC) and has worked as a culinary professional in restaurants, hotels and private country club dining. His craft has been honed at notable properties including BluePointe (Atlanta, GA), Grand Hotel (Mackinac Island, MI) and exclusive NY country clubs. His style has developed within a traditional culinary background of American and classical European training with a strong
understanding of international flavors. Chef Murray has progressively integrated local farm relationships
including, organic/biodynamic produce, fabrication, and preservation.
Studying at Kalamazoo College and a year in Rome, Italy Chef Murray then worked in the Department of
Genetics, at St. Jude Children’s Hospital, Memphis, TN. Opting to follow a passion for cooking in place of a medical career he attended The Culinary Institute of American, Hyde Park, NY.
Additional accomplishments include 2022 Grimod de la Reyniere, 2018 Chef of the Year-Kalamazoo ACF, 2017 People’s Choice-Downtown Kalamazoo Chili Cook-off and 2017 Salsa Cook-off Winner, ACF Cutting Edge Award; development of Taste Our Local Harvest Farmer and Chef Events, Board Member Chef and Cook Association Kalamazoo/Battle Creek Chapter, President of the Chef Association of Westchester and Lower Connecticut and on-going participation in numerous community and charity food events.
Chef Murray is enthusiastic about utilizing traditional and local food sources developed through farmer-chef relationships and supporting slow food activities. He regularly presents classes on food topics and works with students as an adjunct culinary instructor.
Recent activities through West Michigan Provisions LLC include artisan pasta production utilizing traditional old-world techniques, specialty sourced grains, and modern chef driven specialty creations that help our customers ‘Cook Like a Chef at Home’. A line of restaurant quality jarred tomato sauces based on chef’s recipes are now available and fine local restaurants highlight our pasta on their menu. Retail activities are centered around the local farmer’s market and specialty grocery sellers. Find us every Saturday in the Kalamazoo area! Wholesale and mail order are also available: www.westmichiganpastaandprovisions.com
Chef Murray can be reached at 616.730.2095 or westmichiganprovisions@gmail.com for additional information regarding his career and credentials.
Michael Maria Schofield
Michael Marie is a Michigan-based fiber and funerary artisan. She crafts woven caskets, burial trays, and urns and dyes burial shrouds with local plants. She also weaves and crafts more conventional items and enjoys sharing her craft with others around our wider Michigan region. Outside of this work, she is also a co-founder of the Michigan Deathcare Collaborative, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit working to educate and re-root the care of our death, dying, and grieving in our local community and ecosystem. You can learn more about her work on her website, www.hickorynutfarmstead.com or follow her on social media @hickorynutfarmstead.
George Hedgepeth
George has studied and taught traditional and wilderness skills all over North America since 1990. He leads classes on plant skills, toolmaking, fire-making and more. George has also founded primitive skills gathering in Michigan. George is an advisor for Earthcraft
Zerah Hernandez
Zerah is a fiber artist, mother and traditional postpartum caregiver living on occupied Anishinaabe land (Ann Arbor, MI). Her love of natural fibers and plants brought her to plant dyeing almost a decade ago, and she has been on an intuitive and experimental path of building relationship with fiber, plant and minerals to achieve beautiful earth pigments on fabric ever since. Along with her love of creating beauty from nature, she is called to be in service of mothers and children as a postpartum caregiver and nanny of over 10 years. Preserving traditional ways of creating and caring for each other is woven deeply into her work in the world.
Asher McLaughlin
I am passionate about helping all humans connect back to the earth, community, and our ancestral ways. I am a lover of all things wild and strive to live a life as close to the earth as possible.
I have practiced earth skills most of my life. Starting early on in my childhood, going to survival gatherings and herbalism classes, and deepening in my adult years. Most recently, completing a ten-month earthskills course in AVL, NC. Friction fire, hunting, and animal processing are the skills closest to my heart. They are the things that connect me to the earth over and over again because I love them, but also because of necessity. They are skills that keep me alive, even in our modern age.
When we practice these physical skills of survival we also create a deep bond with the landscape. We learn what trees are good for friction fire, what terrain feels safe to the deer, what rocks we can break into tools, and what plants will feed us. All of a sudden, what once was a sea of green and brown becomes an alive, interconnected ecosystem that sustains us and we are an integral part of. My mission is to help as many as I can to feel this connection again.
Karen and Kal Vander Weele
I've been crocheting and knitting since I was 12 years old. I've been spinning and weaving for about 25 years. I learned naalbinding to participate in Viking age reenactments.I've been part of the Weaver's Guild of Kalamazoo for 24 years and am a past president and the current Education Chair. Nothing makes me happier than teaching and showing others the skills I enjoy.
KAL
He has been a weaver for 8 years and creates and makes potholders, weaves rugs, and inkle bands. He also enjoys lucet cording and needle felting. A member of the Weavers Guild of Kalamazoo for 8 years, he is the Chair of the Service Buearu and enjoys demonstrating historical fiber crafts and learning about the different things you can do with fiber.
Jen Davis
Born and raised in southeast Michigan, Jen Davis loves to spend time in the natural world. With the help of her husband, Jason, she has raised an amazing daughter to adulthood. Jen now spends most of her free time outside, hunting, hiking, boating, trapping, foraging, wrangling dogs, pulling invasive species, planting trees, shooting bows, shooting guns, mentoring others, and generally having a great time.
Rob Collins
Rob Collins is a high school teacher and Oxen Instructor at Tillers International. He farms with 5 oxen of his own and writes extensively about oxen training, driving, and equipment building. In 2023, he published a book of interviews with oxen teamsters in many different settings, from movie sets to international development projects.
John Sarge
John Sarge is on staff at Tillers International and knows just about everything there is to
know on the farm, from maintaining equipment to farming and driving draft animals,
making yokes and wooden wheels, and much more. He has been the lead blacksmithing
instructor at Tillers for many years and is adept at working in a simpler, hand-tool
environment. sarge@tillersinternational.org
Melissa Alcorn
My name is Melissa and I started carving in the last 2 years. I made a stone pipe at a gathering and have not stopped. Love working with my hands and creating really anything. Working with wood or stone when I carve I feel like there is something there and I am helping it shine.
Joey Traynor
My name is Joey Traynor and I am an arborist and greenwoodworker out of Detroit, MI. I bought my first set of carving tools over ten years ago but really committed to the craft after taking a class with Jarrod Dahl at North House Folk School in the summer of 2018. The following winter I moved up to Ashland WI for what came to be a nearly two year stay as his assistant and apprentice. In that time I took a deep dive into the world of treen, crafting hundreds of wooden spoons, cups, and bowls. I attended many courses at North House as both a participant and teachers assistant, both expanding my craft community and skill set. After moving back home I became an instructor at the Michigan Folk School, and have very much enjoyed sharing my passion for green wood craft with the community.
Tom Nehil
Tom Nehil is a structural engineer in Kalamazoo, Michigan, where he specializes in
evaluation, preservation and adaptive reuse of historic buildings. He is a member of the
Association for Preservation Technology, the Timber Framers Guild, Timber Frame
Engineering Council, Michigan Historic Preservation Network, Michigan Barn
Preservation Network, and others. He is a regular instructor at Tillers where he teaches
wood identification, timber frame design, traditional stone masonry, ox driving and
farming with draft animals. tnehil@nehilsivak.com
Mike Bouve
Mike built Juniper and Co. and the mobile sauna after leaving corporate to spend more time with his daughter and wife. The mobile sauna was the answer to his desire for a way to focus his energy on health, longevity, and building a local sauna community.
Alicia Neibor
After practicing yoga for 20 years, Alicia got certified to teach yoga through @superyogapalace in 2023. Her passion for yoga is influenced by Vinyasa, Ashtanga, and Katonah yoga, as well as seasonal wellness. She believes that by connecting breath with movement we can tune in to conversation with the body and calm the mind. Alicia believes yoga should be accessible to all and is dedicated to sharing its physical, emotional, and spiritual benefits. Prioritizing pranayama, Alicia seeks to bring an experience that yields grace for effort.
Rick Eshuis
Rick Eshuis cannot remember a time in his life when he was not working with horses.
Starting with raising horses for 4-H, Rick and his father Ron raised Halflinger’s for more
than 25 years. Rick now drives his own team of Percherons. Over the past several years
at Tillers, Rick has developed an understanding and ability to also work with donkeys
and even oxen. Volunteering at Tillers for the past 15 years, Rick joined the team about
three years ago managing the farming operations and overseeing animal care.
farm@tillersinternational.org
Drover
Curiosity has been the reins in Drover's life. Always trying to know how things work, what makes them tick, and how to fix them. To be well versed with the things that we use; not some distant user of unknown technology. This leads Drover to learn things of ancestral skills to modern technology. It is important to note that the only way we have advanced so far is by knowing the past but desiring the future. Ever since a Wilderness Survival class in college Drover has been learning and teaching these skills. He has taught in gatherings all across the US, helped start one in Washington and ran another gathering in Colorado, participant in Discovery Channel’s Bushcraft Build Off. Runs Sarqit Outdoor Living School in Whitehall Michigan. Fueled by his passions in life: teaching, being outdoors, and making things; if he can do these three things he’s a happy guy.
Joe Flatlander
Joe is an avid member of the re-enactor community. A self taught craftsman. He is practiced in pipe-making, trade silver, and active gamesman. He also is a blacksmith, toolmaker, and flint-knapper.
Jamie Crawford
Herbalist and artist with massage therapy and cosmetology background and licensing. Have been working with hair for 15 years and with herbs for over 10 years. Have a deep love for all things plants and people .
Samantha
Retired road kid now mama bear of two. I've been a crafter since I was wee and recently decided I wanted to learn wire wrapping and metal work. Mostly using copper wire and tubing, torch,tools and stones. It looks difficult but is an easy skill to learn and progress with!! It's a craft i think many would enjoy but feel it's too hard or overwhelming
Badger
I went to Wilderness awareness school Anake intensive, and studied with Nate summers and Jon young from 8 shields. I grew up tracking in the woods, it is a calming meditative practice that is accessible to most everyone. the idea of invisibility in the forest, being seen and accepted as belonging in the natural world, is something that sings in my heart. So I want to share it!
Clay Wykes
I started out finding arrowheads on the farm in Illinois and wondered how in the world do you make arrowheads out of stone it was just a Wonder and then 29 years ago I came across a modern-made blade at Jay's sporting goods in Clare, Michigan.... I just had to know ..... got hooked up with the Michigan Flintnappers and have been chipping rock ever since, other primitive skills passions are birch bark basketry... cordage... stone axe and pipe making
Auld Kath
Auld Kath has been serving as healer and psychopomp (one who guides souls to the realm of the dead) for more than a quarter century.
She provides opportunities for soul wound trauma resolution because resolving soul wound trauma increases our ability and agility to cope with our past, present, and future.
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Auld Kath the presenter will be on site for individual consultations upon request.