Posted on Mayo 16, 2016
By Megan Durney, Pfeiffer Center
There is a special quality about the mid-winter time of year, between January 15 th and February 15 th . Here on the East Coast, we try our best to imagine the next season’s beauty and bounty during the winter when we are more inside and inward. As winter shrouds us with snow and cold temperatures, a mid-winter festival where the mysteries and questions inspired by Rudolf Steiner’s Agriculture are gathered around and warmed by human hearts seems appropriate to light our way into the depths of the darkness and winter’s cold. For eight years the Pfeiffer Center has been hosting an annual mid-winter gathering with the Agriculture Course as the central theme, but each year stemming in a particular direction from the complex topic of earthly and cosmic nutrition to the horn manure and silica preparations.
During...
Posted on Abr 4, 2016
By Jeff Schreiber, Three Sisters Community Farm
Plenty of artists create works of art about farms, and there are surely many farmers who are also painters, poets or musicians. Many farms, even, offer artist-in-residency programs so that artists can create and be inspired in a beautiful and simple environment, away from the cares of the real world. But what about the act of farming as art, or the farm itself as an actual work of art?
We’re not accustomed to thinking of farming in this way. Farming is about the production of foodstuffs — it’s business ( agri business), not art, right? A farmer/artist, like Wendell Berry, does his or her farming and then — after the work is done — sets about writing beautiful poems.
We’re also not accustomed to thinking of art like this. A work of art, to most, is something static —...
Posted on Mar 14, 2016
The Biodynamic Winter Intensives were held at the Nature Institute and Hawthorne Valley Farm during the weeks of February 8-12 and 15-19. Jonathan Code from Crossfields Institute International , based in Stroud in England, joined the faculty for the second of the two weeks. Jonathan co-directs a distance-learning, postgraduate course called Researching Holistic Approaches to Agroecology , which supports research and inquiry into a variety of approaches to land stewardship and social development related to agroecological initiatives. The course currently supports students in Canada, the US, England, Malawi, and Denmark and is enrolling now for the autumn 2016. Biodynamics features as one of the strands of the course.
By Jonathan Code
I landed back in the UK from the recent Hawthorne Valley winter intensives to find a real buzz in...
Posted on Feb 11, 2016
Originally published by RSF Social Finance in the Winter 2016 RSF Quarterly
Abbot Hill in Wilton, New Hampshire, is home to High Mowing School , a Waldorf boarding high school, and Temple-Wilton Community Farm, one of the first biodynamic community supported agriculture (CSA) programs in the U.S. Also nearby is the Yggdrasil Land Foundation, an agricultural land trust committed to protecting biodynamic farmland. The result of such close proximity has been an extraordinarily collaborative project between High Mowing, which purchased farmland adjacent to its campus, and Yggdrasil, which purchased the conservation easement rights. The protected land is now used by the school, and is also leased to Temple-Wilton to support its grazing and feed needs. In the midst of all this activity, Brad Miller, a biodynamic farmer turned teacher at High...
Posted on Ene 28, 2016
By Rosemary Tayler
Calendar making, by its very nature implies basic assumptions, one of which is that it conditions our way of thinking and doing. Based on the research, teachings, and constellation calculations undertaken by Maria Thun, the Celestial Planting Calendar offers an intricate yet simplified understanding of the solar, lunar, and planetary rhythms, which enables readers to develop their own understandings and awareness and facilitates their participation in this cosmic dance from an agricultural perspective. Geared towards biodynamic and organic farmers and gardeners, this calendar is blended with breath-taking art that captures the bright, clean colors of nature, as well as the minutia of daily planetary aspects, lunar cycles, appropriate times for applying biodynamic preparations, and monthly night sky events. This information is clearly...
Posted on Dic 18, 2015
By Stewart Lundy
I went to Hugh Courtney’s November, 2015 biodynamic practicum at Earth Legacy Agriculture in Floyd, Virginia, with the expectation that I would get some practical experience working with the preparations. I learned a lot — and not just what I expected.
For anyone wondering about the magic of biodynamics, it isn’t foolproof. Oddly enough, it was my first failure at making a preparation, not my first success, which convinced me all the more that there was something to these preparations. My failure meant that there were objective quality standards — ones I could perceive for myself. After a year-long wait, I discarded the contents of forty horns and set about trying again. But now I knew that success at making preparations wasn’t automatic. If success was not automatic, then there was a spectrum of successes dependent on my knowledge...
