At the first annual Farm Based Educators Retreat in East Troy, Wisconsin, like-minded folks came together to be able to serve one another and thus, ultimately serve the anthroposophical community with deep support in the realm of child and adult farming and gardening education.

After a rather tortuous drive to East Troy, having to navigate my way through Chicago's traffic jams, wrong turns provided by mapquest, and washed-out bridges, I at last arrived at my destination in the dark of a cold night. As soon as I walked through the door, a bearded man greeted me in a lighted portal and warmly said, "finally we meet, my friend." I had the sense that he wasn't just referring to this lifetime. Any anxieties I had about my time together with relative strangers melted away instantly. The rest was uphill from there.
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(Excerpts from an article originally published in Winter 2009 issue of Biodynamics. The original article was an edited version of a speech delivered at the Acres USA conference in December 2008).

Rudolf Steiner, the father of biodynamic agriculture, viewed the farm as a self-contained individuality.  His advice was to develop a personal relationship to everything in farming.   Steiner’s advice touches upon the core of what a biodynamic farm is about.  A biodynamic farmer relates to the farm just as we relate to our spouse, our children, our close friends.  By making a relationship personal, we make it real.  We learn to listen as we realize that there is a balance between what you have to give before you are able to receive.  Good and functional relationships have integrity—one of the key qualities that makes them work.
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In the early 1920's a group of practicing farmers, concerned with the decline of the soil, sought the advice of Dr. Rudolf Steiner, founder of anthroposophy, who had spent all his life researching and investigating the forces that regulate life and growth. From a series of lectures and conversations held at Koberwitz, Germany, in June 1924, there emerged the fundamental principles of biodynamic farming and gardening, a unified approach to agriculture that relates the ecology of the earth-organism to that of the entire cosmos. This approach has been under development in many parts of the world ever since.
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