The ideal biodynamic farm is a self-contained individuality to which cows contribute milk, meat, and soil fertility. Megan Durney shares about the essential nature of the animal, and Kim Vaughan covers the basics of biodynamic dairy herd management, including rotational grazing and pasture management. The day includes a visit to our herd, cow barn, and dairy, the only one in Rockland County.

Hugh Williams, one of the best orchardists in the East and a biodynamic farmer for over forty five years, brings his perspective on harnessing the local ecology to cultivate the farm individuality. Also covered: the science and art of pruning fruit trees, including a few hours of pruning the Pfeiffer Center’s orchard under Hugh’s expert guidance.

In the morning, Craig Holdrege explores how to work with the living dynamic qualities of plants and animals to better understand the world around us. In the afternoon, Sherry Wildfeuer, a long-time editor of the Stella Natura planting calendar, explains how the calendar is created, what it tells us, and how we can use it to learn to work with, rather than against, nature’s rhythms and forces.

Water is crucial to biodynamics: Not only to water plants, but for the process of stirring, which potentizes the preparations. But do we really know what water is, what tasks it has in life processes, or how it carries them out? Jennifer Greene of the Water Research Institute takes us far beyond what we commonly know, or suppose we know, of this element.