Meet Our Instructors!

Driftless Folk School expects our instructors to uphold a culture of respect for everyone, regardless of race, gender, age, sexual orientation, religious affiliation, national or ethnic origin, or socioeconomic status. We expect instructors to create a welcoming environment for students of all identities, lifestyles, and backgrounds. By agreeing to teach with the Driftless Folk School, instructors agree to uphold these terms.

We ask that everyone involved in the programming of the Driftless Folk School, including instructors, students, staff, and community members, approach each event that we host with an attitude of respect, empathy, and an open mind tuned for community building.

Please reach out to us with any questions or concerns.

Brennan Henry Allsworth

Brennan Henry is an avid musician, farmer, and food advocate living in Decorah, Iowa - the Driftless South. They have been studying, composing, and performing music in myriad ways (contra dances, music festivals, international artist residencies) for almost two decades. When not plucking the banjo, Brennan is often enjoying a delicious meal with his wife Mo, fermenting something, spending time with family and friends or watching the birds.

Jon Anderson

Jon Anderson started Star Hill Timberworks to share his passion with Jon. Jon has been building log cabins and timber frame structures for more than 25 years. He has expertise in design, layout, frame cutting, rigging, raising, and sharpening.
Star Hill Timber Works offers workshops, partnered timber frame builds (collaborative construction), plan development, and consulting. Most of our activities are designed for beginners. The intent of our operation is to provide clients and students the skills and confidence such that they become comfortable and confident in embarking on their own projects. All that is needed is a desire to learn. We teach safe work practices using both traditional hand tools and modern power tools.

Peter Allen

Peter is an ecologist-turned-farmer that owns and operates Mastodon Valley Farm, a 220-acre regenerative farm in Southwestern Wisconsin where he has planted thousands of fruit and nut trees, and grazes cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, and poultry across their fertile valleys, steep hillsides, and restored native tallgrass prairie pastures, producing nutrient-dense meats which his farm sells in their meat CSA. He also built a traditional timber-framed house with the logs he hauled and milled on the farm where he and his wife Maureen have a busy homestead homeschooling their kids, gardening, milking a cow, and producing and preserving everything they need to thrive through the long Wisconsin winters. Peter combines his background with over a decade researching and teaching ecology, restoration, and complexity science in the University, together with a decade of running a regenerative farm to provide unique and effective consulting and educational opportunities, helping people design, build, and manage diverse, ecologically functional, and economically profitable agroecosystems.

Anneka Baird

Anneka Baird is a master craftswoman based in Wisconsin's driftless region. Baird maintains a practical curiosity about the technological foundations of life as we know it-- foundations which have often been obscured in layer upon layer of successive technologies. Baird is an MFA graduate of the University of Iowa Center for the Book, a sitting board member of the Midwest Ox Drovers Association and a persistent student in the school of experience.

Ellie Barbeau

Ellie has never met a craft she didn't like. With a background in Anthropology and Archaeology, Culinary Arts, Massage Therapy, Library work, and Art she is still trying to make her mind up about what she wants to be when she grows up. For now, she is the mother of 2 children, a passionate knitter, enthusiastic crafter, and constant dabbler, keeper of chickens, bees, and a wild garden. You will find her living with her family, happily nested among tall pine trees that are filled with birds and squirrels in Wisconsin, discovering the magic in the mundane.
Follow Ellie on Instagram: @littlefernfibers

Jordan Bendel

Jordan has been keeping bees for over 25 years in the driftless region. He has experienced many facets of the beekeeping industry and experimented with a variety of beekeeping techniques. He currently runs a migratory beekeeping operation focused on queen and nucleus production. (Website: www.wildcomb.com)

Bjorn Bergman

Bjorn Bergman is passionate about growing food, saving seeds, and eating seasonally. Each growing season, he and his family keep a large garden and love spending time preserving the harvest by drying, canning, freezing, and fermenting. Beyond the garden and kitchen, Bjorn dabbles in a little bit of this and that including mountain biking, juggling, spoon carving, cider making, and birdwatching. He lives in Viroqua, Wisconsin with his wife Heidi and son Ardea.

Andi Reisdorf (née Bruce)

Andi is a professional mycologist, avid wild food forager, and amateur rockhound with a green thumb and a love affair with the natural world. She has a bachelor’s degree in environmental studies with a focus on environmental sustainability and social justice. She also has a master’s degree in biology with a focus on mycology, the study of mushrooms and other fungi. Her master’s thesis represents the first published study examining the spread of non-native golden oyster mushrooms in the United States. After spending 4 years as a scientist in the San Francisco Bay Area’s biotech industry, the Wisconsin woods have called her home to focus on the transfer of cultural knowledge and traditional skills.
She is also currently the DFS Registrar!

Martha Buche

Since Martha noticed other kids copying her artwork ideas, ages ago, she has considered herself an artist and teacher! She spends her autumns and winters teaching in classrooms to all ages. In the springs and summers she teaches at Folk Schools around the Midwest. She loves making meaningful and beautiful things, often with natural materials, and sharing those skills. Martha believes that everyone has a measure of creativity and feels called to help others find outlets for their own unique expression. She is lately delighting in helping her family rediscover the traditions and language of her Potawatomi heritage. After galivanting for years on three continents, she is happy to call the Driftless region of Wisconsin home.

John Carlson

John Carlson is an artist and woodcarver living on a farm in the Driftless region, near Winona, Minnesota, with his wife, cat, dogs, goats, geese, ducks, turkeys, and chickens.
John has been woodcarving since 1995 and was trained in Scandinavian-Chip Carving by Walt Gritner. John is also skilled in Shallow-Relief Carving, 3-D Figure Carving, and Kolrosing. John has taught both youth and adults woodcarving through the Boy Scouts of America, at woodcarving shows, carving clubs, school programs, community education, and the Driftless Folk School. In addition to working with wood, John enjoys practicing many traditional artforms, including weaving, painting and the art of *pysanky*.

Steve Carrow

Steve was raised on a farm, but only came back to the land a few years ago, when he and his wife “retired”. They have been planting hundreds of trees, and are transitioning their farm acreage to a permaculture based arrangement, which will be a many year project. Acquiring self-reliance and the various homesteading skills gives them satisfaction, and they are steadily making our lives more sustainable.

Linda Conroy

Linda M. Conroy, MSS, MLSP is a bioregional herbalist, myco-herbalist, traditional food educator, traditional skills educator and a community organizer. She dedicates her life to connecting with the green world and sharing the earth's wisdom. Her primary mentors are the plants who never cease to instill a sense of awe in her daily life. Linda has a certificate in permaculture design, which she completed through the International Earth Activist Program, has studied with Isla Burgess of the International College of herbal medicine and has been a student of compassionate nonviolent communication for over 30 years. Linda has participated in the doula training through the Seattle School of Midwifery and the Midwifery Assistant Program through The Farm Midwives in Tennessee. In addition, she is trained as a Wilderness First Responder. For close to 3 decades, Linda has presented well-received programs and apprenticeship programs. She is the creator of the ever popular Wild Eats Community Meals, Moonwise Herbs, The Midwest Women's Herbal Conference, Mycelium Mysteries Women's Mushroom Conference as well as Women's Wellness Series. Participants in programs as well as events produced and facilitated by Linda walk away with an appreciation for the natural world. Her programs inspire people to incorporate plants, mushrooms and traditional skills into their daily life. Linda is a vibrant, passionate woman who continually seeks to deepen her connection to the green world!
To find out more about Linda's work, visit www.moonwiseherbs.com and www.midwestwomensherbal.com

James Fleming

I'm a combat veteran, a professional bladesmith and blacksmith. I started to get interested in smithing after leaving the Army in 2014 while I was going to college in Texas. I moved to Iowa city in 2015. I started diving into forging knives as a hobby in 2017, right before moving to Dubuque, Iowa. I worked full time as an industrial maintenance technician while making knives and blacksmithing as a side business. I earned my Journeyman bladesmith in June 2022 and will be testing for Mastersmith in 2025. I am now bladesmithing and blacksmithing full time, as well as offering classes and educating in both. I specialize in early American fur trade era knives, as well as kitchen cutlery!

Sara Freedman

Sara has spent the past 18 years raising all manner of critters on her small farm outside Viroqua. In addition to being the shepherdess of her flock of fiber sheep, Sara and her wife are restoring an abandoned farm with an emphasis on regenerative farming, rotational grazing and conservation practices that protect and support the watershed. Sara also works off farm as a Nurse Practitioner and is passionate about improving access to quality healthcare in rural communities.

Jacob Hundt

Jacob Hundt grew up on a dairy farm in the Driftless Region and was one of the founding students of the Youth Initiative High School in Viroqua. He studied at Deep Springs College, the American University in Bulgaria, and the University of Chicago. Since 2004, he has worked as a trained Waldorf high school teacher and guidance counselor at Youth Initiative High School and was a founding board member and instructor of the Driftless Folk School. Currently, Jacob is Director and faculty member of Thoreau College, an emerging microcollege inspired by Waldorf education, Henry David Thoreau, Deep Springs College, and the Scandinavian folk high school movement. He lives on a 10 acre farm near Viroqua with his wife Sofya and 4 children.
Jacob is also the Executive Director of DFS!

Vince Hundt

Vince Hundt is a native son of the Driftless Region, born and raised on a dairy farm near Middle Ridge. For nearly 50 years, he and his wife Dawn have farmed organically and stewarded the land with artistic grace at St. Brigid’s Meadow Farm, near Coon Valley, WI. During those years, they have raised a family of four children and started several successful innovative equipment businesses, including Rotochopper and Shade Haven. They have also served as key leader and supporters of several cultural organizations in the Driftless Region, including Pleasant Ridge Waldorf School, Youth Initiative High School, Thoreau College, and the Driftless Folk School.

Rikardo Jahnke

Rikardo has been orcharding since 1996, and grafting longer than that. He has been selling apples, berries, cider, jams, and other value-added products at the Viroqua Farmer’s Market since 2000. He gets great joy from satisfied customers who are “fruit explorers.” He grows 53 varieties of apples. Rikardo lives in Crawford County, WI at the Dancing Waters Permaculture Co-operative, an intentional community that has existed for almost 40 years.

Kayle Karbowski

Kayle Karbowski (she/they) is a facilitator and artist living on the western banks of Lake Michigan. In 2019, she founded Other Dust, a psychospiritual consultancy and technoapothecary focused on developing intuition and reclaiming interdependence in an age of disconnection. A driving force of Kayle’s work is rekindling the relationship between our intellect and intuition. Kayle works between herbalism, animism, mythology, and homesteading in contemporary urban living.