Meet The Instructors

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.

Robert Beech is an educator, reenactor, and professional artist.

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.

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.

Over 22 years of experience with leading classes in the community this duo opened up the studio: MOVE WITH JOY in 2021. They offer a community yoga class via the Kalmazoo Community Foundation, as well as breakdancing, acroyoga, and many more! Joy has also taught at the YMCA, Kalamazoo Public Library and studios throughout Michigan. 

Fergus has taught at Lake Superior Traditional Ways Gathering since 2019; Superior Rivers Watershed Association; Lincoln Community Forest; Michigan Folk School as of 2025; Libraries throughout Michigan as of 2025

Bio coming soon!

Corinne Denomme (she/her) is a folk herbalist, herbal medicine crafter, forager, and eco artist born and raised in Southeast Michigan. Since 2015 she has offered seasonal herbal products through her business, White Pine Rising, with a primary focus on the local flora of the Great Lakes bioregion. Outside of a curious self-led journey with the plants, Corinne's studies also include Lindera Energetic Folk Herbalism with Jim McDonald, Vitalist Herbal Practitioner Program with the School of Evolutionary Herbalism, traditional natural dyes with Mel Streetman, and nature connection programs under Jon Young's 8 Shields Institute. Corinne hosts botanical dye workshops, community gatherings, herbal mutual aid, private plant walks, and is the previous owner of a brick-and-mortar herb shop. She finds joy through creative expression despite ephemeral results, learning through play, and wandering the outdoors.

Miranda is a local forager and wild crafter who celebrates the natural world through integrating plants and other wild materials into her daily life. She specializes in wines, syrups, kombucha, herbs, fungi, lichens, and natural dye, and she seeks to foster love of the natural world with everyone she meets.  She has been teaching classes in the Michigan region for 15 years.  

Cofounder and Administrator here at Friend of the Woods Nature School. As a Michigander, most
of my fondest memories as a young child took place outside where I’d spend hours playing with my brother, cousins and
neighbors... climbing the old apple tree, walking the dirt road foraging wild black raspberries with my mom, helping in the
garden, playing in the neighbor’s corn

eld, or camping with my family. As I grew older, I reca

in my pre-teen and teenage

years seeking restitution outside when I needed the calming embrace that Mother Nature provided.
Nowadays, some of my favorite things to do are gardening, foraging, hiking, yoga, crafting and spending time with my family,
friends and especially my little sprouts.

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.

My name is Alycia Lee and I reside in Kalamazoo, Michigan. My death doula journey began several years ago with the deaths of some family members and pets. In realizing that I had a high comfort level and an affinity for being in the space of dying, I started to look for ways that I could serve in that space. I discovered that I could train to become something called a death doula, and in many ways realized that I already was one! 

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I began to research training opportunities and settled on Going With Grace for my death doula education and The Dying Year for my home funeral training. I have since attended several other conferences, trainings and workshops for advance care planning, home funerals, pet death and other doula related training. I now seek to serve my community by providing these services.

Morgan has taught at Tillers International and the Kalamazoo Nature center. She is a wonder at all she lays her touch to. 

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. 

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 Marie Schofield is a plant tender, willow farmer, and weaver of baskets and caskets based in Southeast Michigan. She stumbled upon wicker basketry while touring green burial cemeteries with a family member preplanning their eventual funeral. After seeing a photo of a willow casket at a cemetery, she was strongly pulled to learn to weave one of these gorgeous baskets for her loved one. What followed was a bit of a quirky mutli-year journey involving a forever growing collection of out-of-print textbooks, long road trips for rather hard-to-find in-person learning opportunities, and finally an amazing apprenticeship with an established funerary artisan. She finally gathered with her family in this past autumn to collectively weave the casket that began her basketry journey. It is being utilized as a rather gorgeous but eccentric bookshelf until its time to return to the soil.

Michael also weaves a wide variety of other baskets and items. More recently, she’s begun weaving her love of ethnobotany into invasive species management and land stewardship and is beginning to weave many of these plants into her baskets.  She believes reestablishing relationships with these overabundant and controversial plant species can improve ecosystem health, deepen our relationship with the living world, and make a lot of crafts more easily accessible. 

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 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.

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.

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.

Ok soooo, My name is Mia and I’m a ceremonial magician and an evolutionary astrologer, practicing for the past 7 years. My astrological focus is to help people understand who they are and why they are here from a soul focused paradigm.  We look at where your soul has been developing in past lives, the current life and the trajectory for the next life, As well as finding way to achieve balance and purpose in current incarnation.

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 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 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

Hanna Hasselschwert is a compassionate Death Doula, the founder of Acacia End of Life Services and co-founder of Michigan Deathcare Collaborative, dedicated to supporting individuals and families through the dying process. A graduate of the Going with Grace End of Life Doula program and an advanced planning facilitator trained by Respecting Choices, she brings a wealth of knowledge to her practice. As the host of the Ypsilanti Death Cafe, Hanna fosters open conversations about mortality, helping to demystify death and celebrate life. She also manages the Last Chapter Collective, a book club that meets monthly for meaningful discussion centered around death and dying portrayed in literature.

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

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 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

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.

Alicia Dawn Siegel is an Interfaith minister in Kalamazoo michigan. Her work in the world involves bringing spiritual Harmony to the home by offering spiritual lifestyle Retreats at Mother's trust mother's place. She believes in Dynamic World change first starts in the home she is excited to share men the line at the ancestral skills Festival because many of the patterns that give us the most issues stem from modeled behaviors from our family lines. While we make other choices, the impulses may follow us through life. By mending the line, we open to ancestral healing- clearing the slate for the next generation, and restoring a deep generational respect, and appreciation.

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. 

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