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Who We Are |
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There is a world-wide class of farmers who practice spiritual farming techniques as originally described by the scientist and clairvoyant, Dr. Rudolf Steiner, in 1924. SFNM was established to support those farmers who are laboring to produce pure and vital food, by relieving them of marketing responsibilities. |
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The
following articles and book excerpt will give you more information about SFNM and
Camphill Village, Kimberton Hills, one of the farms which supplies
Spiritual Food CSA. |
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| Profiles in Farming I: Camphill Village at Kimberton Hills By Rich and Rose Lord On a conventional farm, fighting Codling moths is a relatively simple affair; you spray the heck out of the buggers with the pesticide azinphosmethyl. At Camphill Village in Kimberton Hills, it’s a lot different, says Thomas Roemer, who works the orchards at this unique farm and must contend with the moth’s apple-ravaging larvae. Using Rudolf Steiner’s farming approach, “you have to be very aware of the cycles of the insect,” says Roemer. Using lures with moth-attracting smells, you track the moth’s population. You search the trees and remove infested apples. And you spread the ashes of burned pest larvae at certain times of the year in order, says Roemer, to “deter those organisms from coming to your fields.” |
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Its methods for combating the Codling moth are just one example of Kimberton Hills’ use of Steiner Agriculture. The 280-acre farm in southeastern Pennsylvania has used the teachings of Dr. Rudolf Steiner since 1972. Today it raises cows, chickens, goats, pigs and bees; and grows all manner of vegetables, grains, fruits, and medicinal herbs. Camphill Village at Kimberton Hills is a community rather than just a farm, says Roemer. It is home to about 40 developmentally disabled individuals, of whom 10 work on the farm, while the rest handle other duties. It also employs seven full-time farm workers and an equal number of half-timers, and relies on volunteers from a local high school, and helpers who come from as far away as Germany and Japan for one-year stints. “On a Steiner inspired farm, you often find people willing to volunteer in one way or another,” says Roemer. Not so on a conventional farm; farmers who have to strap on a gas mask to walk their fields don’t typically get many volunteers, says Roemer, who worked a year on a conventional dairy farm in Wisconsin before embracing the Steiner approach.. |
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“You have to have had experience in conventional farming to appreciate fully what is happening to people, animals, plants and soil on conventional farms in the U.S.,” says Roemer. What’s happening, he says, is that plants are being poisoned with herbicides and pesticides, animals are being imprisoned in tiny enclosures, and the soil is being robbed of its health. Like organic farmers, those farmers who practice Steiner Agriculture eschew the use of chemicals, hormones, and non-therapeutic antibiotics. But this method of farming adds what some might call a spiritual, or holistic element. “Essentially, you’re dealing with the complexity of living systems,” says Roemer, and seeking to understand how living things behave, how they interact, and the spirits that underlie them. Roemer and his compatriots, for instance, use the cycles of the moon and planets to guide their planting schedule. In fact, the Stella Natura calendar, which many Steiner farmers use to schedule their plantings, was developed and is updated annually by Sherry Wildfeuer of the Kimberton Hills farm. |
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They also treat their soil and even soak their seeds in some of the preparations developed by Steiner. That’s not always easy. “Some of the things that are needed [for the preparations] are hard for a person to come by, like a stag’s bladder or a cow’s skull,” says Roemer. And the plants used in the preparations have to be harvested at precise times in their life cycles. “It’s another one of these many details that you have to keep in mind being a Steiner farmer, which some people would find terribly annoying, but I find interesting.” Kimberton Hills leaves 65 acres of their farm wooded, for several reasons. For one, the woods are a place for the spirits of living things, called elementals, to “play,” as Roemer puts it. For another, the woods and other patches of uncultivated land provide an environment for beneficial insects, which eat pests. And Steiner teaches that providing a place on your land for, say, an unwanted fungus “might reduce the presence of molds and such things in other places,” Roemer says. “In Steiner’s view, a healthy farm needs to be differentiated like a human body is, into organs with different functions,” Roemer says. The woods, for instance, serve as a sort of liver for the farm, purifying its air, water and soil. The humans serve as the farm’s ego. “Human beings shouldn’t be the controlling agents in nature. They can be a guiding and facilitating force.” Just as a body couldn’t survive if it consisted entirely of kidneys, a farm needs many different components to function properly. That means no mono-cropping – the practice common in conventional farming of planting endless rows of the same vegetable, fruit or grain; Kimberton Hills grows scores of different things, from apples to hay to strawberries. It also means that the flesh and blood of the farm – soil and water – have to be healthy, which in the case of Kimberton Hills means carefully protecting the stream and fish pond, plus lots of composting, crop rotation, light tillage, and the planting of cover crops in the winter. It also means worshipful devotion to the earthworm, whose tunnels aerate the soil and whose secretions nourish it. “They are the doctors of the soil, and whereas we may not hold some doctors in high honor, we do hold earthworms there,” says Roemer.. |
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The vitality of the soil gives Steiner farmers a leg up on conventional farmers, Roemer says. That helps Kimberton Hills produce yields of berries, grains and some vegetables that are comparable to those of conventional farmers. (It’s harder to compete in the orchard, especially in humid, insect-friendly southeastern Pennsylvania, Roemer notes.) And since Steiner Agriculture doesn’t rely on large, expensive machines or costly chemicals, the debt loads of its practitioners aren’t as high as those of many conventional farmers, he says. That said, “You’re not going to get rich on this method of farming,” Roemer states. “Farming in this country in general isn’t economically sustainable.” Kimberton Hills stays above water, thanks to help from the nonprofit organization that operates Camphill Village at Kimberton Hills, and also because of a thriving community-supported agriculture system. With the CSA model, residents of the community buy shares in the farm, and then receive a percentage of its yields as their dividends. “They’re buying produce from animals and plants that are happy and healthy,” says Roemer. In the end, it’s the feeling of doing meaningful work, and making a good product, that motivates him. “With Steiner Agriculture, you feel like you’re farming in a completely healthy way.” Tim Rapsey has been practicing Steiner Agriculture since 1971 and with his wife, Fabienne, operating the CSA at Kimberton Hills for the past 5 years. The garden that supplies the CSA grows 35 to 40 different varieties of fruits and vegetables. Tim rattles off a couple dozen, including carrots, potatoes, sweet potatoes, onions, spinach, Swiss chard, cabbage, kale, broccoli, tomatoes, peppers, egg plant, zucchini, winter and summer squash, asparagus, strawberries, raspberries, beans, peas, and herbs – basil, parsley, dill, sage, cilantro. |
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When asked what the differences are between Steiner Agriculture and traditional farming, Tim states that “It’s different by degrees. We work with traditional good farming practices. Traditional farming is a basis but not enough, because nature has never had to deal with what it has to deal with now.” He points out that organic farmers may use “anything, as long as it’s organic.” Whereas the first aim of the Steiner farmer is to make the farm a self-sustaining organism, a closed cycle. This means the fertilizer, the materials for the preparations, the animal feed all come from within the farm. “We’re not talking about input to output,” Tim says. We’re talking about the optimum number of animals and the optimum plants that can support each other. We’re talking about a total farm economy, not a money economy, but relationships between plants, animals, soil, human beings.” When speaking about the preparations in comparison to commercial products, Tim states that it’s not so much quantity of nutrients but the forces inherent in the manure, the plants and other substances that are used to make them. He refers to the preps as a “medicament, almost like a homeopathic remedy.” “The earth is under a tremendous amount of stress,” Tim says, “from electric currents, magnetic currents, pollution, nuclear fallout. The earth is aging,” he adds, “and just like a human being, it’s not as resilient. It has to develop this other side and it can’t do it by itself. It needs human beings to help.” By developing and applying the preps, Tim says, “We are part of the cycle.” When asked how his produce compares with the other products on the market, Tim doesn’t hesitate. “Nutritionally and in terms of keeping quality, ours are much higher.” He admits that cosmetically they “probably don’t match up. They might not look as uniform, because we don’t’ use hybrid varieties or genetically engineered seeds. But flavor-wise,” he notes “there’s no comparison.” |
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Food and Peace(excerpted from “What I’ve Learned About Food and Peace” by Rose Lord)There is a profound connection between the way we eat and the degree of peace in our lives. By adjusting the way one relates to food, a person can begin to live a healthier, more joyful and peaceful life and contribute to the well-being of his/her family, community and the entire planet. This is not a new idea. Contemporary writers such as John Robbins and Peter Singer have proposed it, as have numerous others throughout the ages, going all the way back to the ancient philosophers. |
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In
my own life, both personal and societal events have made the
connection between our quest for food and our capacity to live in
peace and harmony ever clearer to me and the need for change ever
more obvious. The pursuit of food has been a driving influence in every aspect of man’s development. In comparison to times past and to some of the Eastern and African nations, contemporary western society finds a relatively small percentage of people who have to worry about whether they will have enough to eat. Rather than the avoidance of hunger and starvation, our pursuit has, for the most part, changed to a quest for a fast, tasty, inexpensive, unlimited and, overall, convenient food supply. This pursuit, and the drastic changes it has wrought in the way we eat, have affected our physical, mental and spiritual health; our cultural mores and social interactions, the way we relate to other sentient beings, our economy and the health of our planet. At a point in history where it is possible to provide all of Earth’s people with a healthy diet, we are instead producing an abundance of unhealthy food for ourselves and exporting it to other developed and undeveloped countries while elsewhere in the world people continue to starve. |
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We all must eat. Food, like air and water, is a part of the natural environment that we cannot help but interact with. Unfortunately, the way we grow, process and consume our food is becoming more and more unnatural and although there is increasing public concern about the quality of our air and water, too many people go blindly along eating whatever conveniently processed and packaged poison is made available to them. In 1990 a combination of personal and societal events made me keenly aware that mankind needs to make a correction in the way we are doing things regarding food. There is a growing faction of people who have realized this and, one by one, or family by family, they are making that correction. Many of these people find that a conscious shift in the way we look at food, can be the catalyst for attitudinal changes that will bring greater peace, understanding and contentment into their lives. That’s what happened to me. My sudden plunge into vegetarianism in 1990 stimulated an ongoing study of the food/peace connection and that has changed every facet of my life. |
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| For a while, after my conversion to vegetarianism, I was at peace with the way I choose to eat and equally at peace with the way other people choose to eat. Then came the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the anthrax attacks and the bombings of Afghanistan. Our comfortable little world was violated and nothing was the same anymore. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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Many of us, myself included, found ourselves in a state of stunned grief. The violence of the terrorist attacks, the violence of the response, the new awareness of the violence that precipitated the attacks – it was all almost more than I personally could handle.
My dear friend and teacher, Victor Landa, who knew what I needed, gave me some work to do - a job that could help to bring a little peace to this world.* It has helped me to go beyond my own grief and to connect with other people who abhor violence and are actively seeking peace. This work has pulled me away from the brink of depression more than once and given me some moments of great joy.
September 11th changed a lot of things for a lot of people. Just as the era of the Gulf War led to my awareness of the violence I was supporting through my dietary habits, this War of Terrorism has made me keenly aware of how violence in any form breeds more violence.
What was the crime, I asked myself, what was the injustice that would cause these people to sacrifice their own lives and commit an act of such atrocity? What had brought about such a combination of rage and despair? |
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Like
most Americans I was ill –informed of the conditions that gave
birth to those terrorist attacks on our country.
I became better informed after September 11th, as
to the relationship between the situations in Afghanistan, Palestine
and other parts of the world and the hatred towards the United
States. Do they really hate us because we are good, as has been
suggested? Do they hate
us because we are affluent? Or
could it have something to do with our exported weapons, our
government policies, our attitude of superior indifference to those
who do not serve our present needs, that inspires the kind of rage
that resulted in September 11th. And, of course, the terrorists’ acts of violence have only generated more violence in the form of our government’s response. And our response will no doubt result in even more violent acts towards our country, if not sooner than surely later.
Our eyes have been closed to the suffering and humiliation of certain people just as our eyes have been closed for many centuries to the suffering and indignities that we impose on other sentient beings. It’s okay; they’re only animals. They’re not like us. It’s okay; they’re only Arabs, Africans, Indians. They’re not like us. It’s easy to tell ourselves these things until one day the combination of their long-suffering plight and our ignorance or indifference explodes in our faces as it did on September 11th. |
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It’s easy to go to the grocery store and pick up a big juicy steak, take it home and grill it and eat it with no thought of the suffering behind that piece of steak; no thought of the chemicals, hormones and antibiotics that went into the production of that meat; no thought of the tropical forest that was sacrificed for grazing land or the contaminants that went into someone’s drinking water so that we could eat that piece of meat.
But once again, our ignorance and indifference are coming home to roost, in the form of mad cow disease and antibiotic resistant bacteria and contaminated drinking water and millions of Third World people who are hungry all the time, hungry and angry and desperate. This violence, this indifference, I concluded, has to stop somewhere.
So, I now find it unacceptable to support, in any way, the dietary practices that necessitate violence towards other sentient creatures. Do we have to eat meat? No! We know how to maintain a healthy diet without it. Would this world be a better place if we didn’t eat meat? Yes! For starters, we would eliminate a huge percentage of the violence perpetrated against other sentient creatures on a daily basis. We would eliminate a widely accepted form of violence which, like all acts of violence, generates more of the same. For another thing, there would be more food for the world to eat. Hunger and starvation could be eliminated. |
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We need to make this shift. We need a revolution in the way we eat.
The worldwide shift to a vegetarian diet would result in untold changes. The contemplation of such profound change is perhaps a little bit frightening. But, of course, this would be a gradual and peaceful revolution. So those who are willing to be on the front lines can reassure those behind them. There is no need to fear this revolution. There is much more reason to fear a perpetuation of the violent ways that we now practice.
We have to start somewhere to end the violence. September 11th was the world’s wake-up call. Unfortunately too many people are hitting the snooze alarm. Each one of us who wants peace in this world must start by making changes in our own lives, by committing acts of peace. One simple and effective way that everyone of us can do that is to stop supporting the daily torture and murder of millions of innocent animals. Vegetarianism is a lifestyle that says, “I know I am an integral part of this whole universe and I care about every part of it.”
In the words of Gandhi, “You must be the change you wish to see.”
*The work that Victor Landa gave me to do was the creation and upkeep of the Global Coalition For Peace website. |
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Suggestions for a Healthier and More Peaceful DietRemember that everything you eat was once a living thing. Consider where it has come from and what has been done to it. Then decide whether you really want to eat it.
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| We would like to start a dialogue about the food/peace connection. If you have comments, questions or suggestions that you would like to share please contact me, Rose Lord, at rose@food4peace.com | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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Order Rose's book, What I've Learned About FOOD
AND PEACE with menu planning aids, recipes and a comprehensive list of vegetarian sources of all the important nutrients. e-mail us at rose@food4peace.com or through Spiritual Food for the New Millennium 1-888-384-9642 $15 plus shipping and handling. |
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Spiritual Food CSA |
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4209 East-West Highway Chevy Chase, MD 20815 |
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