workshop

Tom will share his experience bringing biodynamic methods to gardening in the third poorest census tract in America — the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, where we've been growing seedlings and tilling gardens for 33 years. Our highest number was 535 gardens; we average half that each year. The congruency of Native thinking and biodynamics is at the basis, and the need for our people to prosper and thrive is our subject matter. We will include our use of buffalo horns and manure for making biodynamic preparation 500, which was our biggest achievement.

This workshop will focus on the role of agriculture in the Camphill movement, particularly for adults with developmental differences, but also for all land workers. We will explore the meaning of work through the lens of biodynamic healing plant gardening and some aspects of the interactions that emerge when human beings and nature come together. We will look at the inner path of development of the social therapist and of the gardener striving to co-shape a farm individuality.

You recognize the transformative and healing power of biodynamics, but how do you share it with the wider world? The right image can speak instantaneously to countless hearts and minds, inspire vision, and ignite action. Building on her extensive experience as an international fashion model, as well as her deep dedication to biodynamic agriculture, Arizona Muse will share her insights into content, messaging, aesthetics, and attitude, to help you create and share compelling images that tell your biodynamic story.

Photo credit: Sarah Hearn

Modern biological farming practices, including organic and biodynamic, include many practical requirements, down to actual soil testing and fertilization formulae. Yet most guidelines and methods used by labs offering insights in this soil field are markedly reductionistic and mechanistic, based on the long history of scientific-industrial manipulation of nature and conventional academic research supporting it. Soil Labs generally do not acknowledge or affirm non-reductionistic models and have not received training in it.

The basis of biodynamics studies the interplay of formative cosmic forces and earthly material stages. These same forces are active in the human body and are the foundation for health and healing. Anthroposophical medicine is based upon an in-depth understanding of the correspondences between nature and the human being. Even as the cosmic forces have influenced the natural world of minerals, plants, and animals, so also their influence extends into our human form. Planetary forces are active in the human organs; zodiacal forces in the skeleton.