Instructor Bios
 

Matt Rose-Stark: “Matthew and his wife Riley own and operate Keystone Land and Livestock, which manages grass-fed certified organic cattle across over 4,700 acres of grassland, oak savanna and chaparral in California's Sutter Buttes Mountains. They practice adaptive rotational grazing, which produces healthy cattle and resilient, abundant, and biodiverse rangelands. They work with like-minded cattle producers, local landowners, nonprofits and government agencies to care for and improve the land they steward.”

 

Azalie Welsh: "By profession, Azalie helps develop and implement prescribed burns, forest restoration projects, and other wildfire resilience work. She has had both formal education and years of on-the-ground experience in these fields. Personally, she holds a deep interest in observing and tending land and inquiring into how communities can relate to our ecosystems in more regenerative ways that support equitable human flourishing."

 

Tim Van Wagner: Tim was born and raised in Nevada City, California and spent much of his childhood roaming the hillsides of Banner Mountain and swimming in the Yuba River. In 2007, upon graduating from Pitzer College with a degree in, “Environment, Society and Design” Tim returned home to pursue his dreams of sustainable farming and developing local food systems.  For the past seventeen years, Tim has been actively involved in the local food movement of Nevada County; co-founding the Nevada City Farmers Market and the Living Lands Agrarian Network 501C3 (now Sierra Harvest) in 2008,  as well as founding his own farm, First Rain Farm, in 2012. Since 2018, Tim has devoted much of his energy towards understanding the diverse landscape of the Sierra Nevada foothills he calls home; developing a new business, First Rain Land Stewardship Services, which uses a host of methods to manage and steward land, including Rx fire, targeted grazing, and light mechanical treatments to achieve ecological objectives while improving the fire-resiliency of the landscape.  Tim is state certified for prescribed burning (CARx) and has assembled a diverse team of land stewards to accomplish landscape-scale projects. 

 

Andrew Beasely Baird: Beasley is an anamist biophial multidisciplinary land steward based at First Rain Farm that believes in the possibility of a new era of right relation with Earth. Experienced in prescibed fire, targeted grazing, fuels management and forestry, creek restoration and ceremony, he approaches the land with respect and devotion for a time beyond our own. 

 

Gregory Hawk Palmer: Raised in a farming, hunting, fishing and fire service family I am the 5th generation of my bloodline in California. I began my journey working with my father and grandfather in the citrus and avocado orchards of Ventura County while also studying Fire Science at Oxnard College. Then, after a few years of studying behavioral psychology and somatic therapies, I returned to land oriented work with an opportunity in holistic pasture management and permaculture design at a farm called Apricot Lane Farms, now known from the documentary “The Biggest Little Farm”.  After managing the pastures there full time for a year, I took an opportunity to help steward a 2,000 acre land project on the upper Klamath River. During this dedicated chapter I was met with the need to learn about the surrounding forests to adequately inform my management of herds when in silviculture spaces. This in turn wove in a chapter dedicated to arboriculture and general tree work which has continued to grow my capacity to address forests by knowing the trees. It has also been an incredible blessing to have heavy machinery operating experience throughout all the chapters of my working life. 

My applied experience spans the entirety of Permaculture Design from sustainable forestry, ecological restoration, and water retention earthworks to construction of rural roadways, and the design of sustainable human settlements. 

All the chapters of my life have also continued to highlight the relevancy of ancestral ecological knowledge held by the many indigenous people of the world but particularly the many original peoples of what is currently called California. 

Now, I bring all my life’s experiences together as a service to the lands and people around me via services and consultation for efforts in ecological restoration, permaculture design, and land stewardship of broad acre projects.  I offer these services while primarily living in the systems and methodologies I teach about near Arnold, CA. 

 

Nikki Hill: Nikki is a seasoned tumbleweed who has been engaged in an ongoing, experiential inquiry of the dynamic weavings of ecological relationships for the past 18 years. She can be found in a diversity of habitats throughout the Western U.S., from remote wild places and feral haunts to boardrooms and stakeholder halls where land management protocols are written. Nikki considers herself a plant ecologist who has been learning to read the patterns of plants on the landscape as a story of relationship to place. For the past ten years she has been living semi nomadically, gathering seeds and tending wild plants, with a focus on plants that benefit from or rely on human interaction. She has remained curious about beneficial disturbances that can enhance biodiversity and lend a sense of belonging to humans.

 

Matt Berry: Matt grew up roaming California's wild spaces, which sparked a lifelong love of nature. After earning his BS in Forestry and Wildlife from Virginia Tech in 1998, he's been on countless outdoor adventures, working with everyone from government agencies to non-profits, making a career out of getting his hands dirty (in the best way possible). As a professional botanist, Matt is a wizard when it comes to monitoring Sierra meadows and riverscapes. In 2021, he leveled up with a master’s from CSU Chico, where he delved deep into the linkage between groundwater and plant species change through meadow restoration.

Currently he works as a Program Manager & Meadow Ecologist for Anabranch Solutions and is also a research fellow with the US Forest Service Pacific Southwest Research Station, where he studies the effects of process-based restoration techniques like beaver dam analogs (BDAs) in conjunction with wildfires within Sierra headwater meadows.

When he’s not nerding out on plants and restoration, Matt's passions include indigenous ecological knowledge, cultural land stewardship through fire, ethnobotany, and embracing the great outdoors. Whether he's free-heel skiing, paddle boarding, or just soaking in nature’s splendor, Matt is always eager for his next adventure!