The Spiritual-Scientific Foundations of Biodynamic Agriculture, Part I

Rudolf Steiner intended to inaugurate a rational and scientific, as well as spiritual, method of agriculture. In the first four lectures of his Agriculture Course, he outlined the spiritual-scientific foundations for the biodynamic preparations at the heart of this new method of agriculture. Unless these foundations are understood, the preparations will remain a riddle. We will review these initial lectures with their many difficult-to-understand details and uncover the systematic principles contained in Steiner's highly condensed indications.

Event Type: 
workshop
Date: 
Saturday
Location: 
Pendleton

Introduction to Round Filter Chromatography and the Soil Food Web as Qualitative Assessment Tools for Soil and Compost

Join us for an introduction to Dr. Ehrenfeid Pfeiffer's Round Filter Chromatography and the Soil Food Web by Dr. Elaine Ingham. This workshop will cover the importance of the beneficial aerobic soil organisms, to build and maintain fertile, healthy, vibrant soils and composts. How can we use and integrate Round Filter Chromatography and the Soil Food Web, Fungal to Bacterial biomass ratios (F:B ratio) as a quality control tool to assess soil and compost?

Event Type: 
workshop
Date: 
Saturday
Location: 
Lovejoy

Community Seed Systems: Connecting Soil to Table and Vase Through Seed

Within our annual crops, seed saving is quite likely the defining element of agriculture, yet most farms purchase all of their seed in from the outside, often from abstract foreign locales. Through their work with Siskiyou Seeds and the Seed Academy training, Stacey and Don have forged many connections towards fostering community seed systems, which include plant breeding, trialing, varietal adaptation, field days, education, outreach, seed growing, and distribution.

Event Type: 
workshop
Date: 
Saturday
Location: 
Glisan

A Biodynamic Understanding of Trees

In response to the repeated requests from area farmers for Rudolf Steiner to provide guidance on how they could reverse the trend of soil degradation and reduced yields, Steiner gave an eight-part lecture series on agriculture. These lectures outlined principles to improve soil and plant health; afterwards they became the basis of biodynamic farming. Steiner offered a perspective on trees that was rather radical for his time in 1924. Still today, a reading of his lectures continues to provide a unique and refreshing understanding of Earth’s largest and oldest life forms — trees.

Event Type: 
workshop
Date: 
Saturday
Location: 
Flanders

Thinking in Indian: Biodynamics at the Pine Ridge Reservation

We will share our 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.

Event Type: 
workshop
Date: 
Saturday
Location: 
Pettygrove

The Farmer's Twelve Senses: Nourishing Our Senses as a Foundation for Healing Our Land and Creating Our Farm Individuality

In this workshop we will explore how our twelve senses can serve as a foundation for engaging in a more conscious, responsible, and participatory way with our farms. With a greater understanding and awareness of our senses, our experience of our landscape and farm can become deeper, intimate, and more meaningful. Within this context, we'll also explore questions such as: How do I participate — inwardly and outwardly — in the development of my farm and all that lives in its landscape? How can I become more conscious of the different qualities of my place?

Event Type: 
workshop
Date: 
Saturday
Location: 
Multnomah

How to Invite Elementals onto Your Farm

In biodynamic agriculture, the role of elementals is often skimmed over or skipped completely. Yet these unseen helpers are eager to participate and increase the health of our farms and communities. We can invite them to come into partnership with us. Jacqueline's farm is a haven for nature spirits and elementals whose presence on the land is both palpable and visible. Using stories and images from her farm, we see how a relationship begins and how it progresses into a lively and responsive language.

Event Type: 
workshop
Date: 
Saturday
Location: 
Flanders

Aiming for a New Generation in Finca Irlanda, Mexico

Farming and farmers are still at the end of the production chain, almost invisible to the modern world. Justice is the main idea we want to develop in our project in the farm: social justice, education justice, and welfare justice. In a 300-Ha coffee farm in Chiapas, Mexico that started in the 1920s, there have been a lot of changes and improvements, but there are also things that haven’t changed.

Event Type: 
workshop
Date: 
Saturday
Location: 
Overton

Original Aims and Ideals of the CSA Model as Embodied in the Temple Wilton Communmity Farm in New Hampshire and the Slow Hand Farm in Portland, OR

In this workshop, we will describe the original ideals out of which our Community Supported Farm was founded in New Hampshire in 1986. This model goes beyond marketing and was based on Rudolf Steiner's social ideal of the farm in relation to the surrounding community. We will pay special attention to Steiner's description of the farm as a part of the cultural (agriCULTURE) and rights spheres and not exclusively as an economic activity. This implies an understanding of his observation of the threefold nature of social life.

Event Type: 
workshop
Date: 
Friday
Location: 
Multnomah

Results and Reflections from the International Biodynamic Research Conference

Join BDA Research Program Coordinator Sarah Weber and a panel of biodynamic researchers as they share the what they learned at the 1st International Conference on Biodynamic Research: "Evolving Agriculture and Food - Opening up Biodynamic Research," held this September at the Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland.

Event Type: 
workshop
Date: 
Friday
Location: 
Crown Zellerbach