Demeter Certified Biodynamic® Farm

Summerfield is one of only a few Waldorf schools worldwide to have a working farm on the same campus as the school. The farm produces a seasonal bounty of fruits, vegetables and flowers. At the farm, students have the opportunity to learn many basic skills that are rapidly becoming lost in today’s industrialized society. By tending soil, turning the compost, planting perennial gardens, harvesting vegetables for soup, caring for farm animals, and pruning and grafting, each student gains a deeper awareness of the natural world.

Our commitment to sustainable agriculture goes a step further by choosing to uphold standards more rigorous than “Certified Organic” or even “biodynamically farmed” with our Demeter Certification. We proudly adhere to stricter requirements around imported fertility, greater emphasis on on-farm solutions for disease, pest, and weed control, and in depth specifications around water conservation and biodiversity. Demeter USA is the only certifier for Biodynamic® farms and products in America. It is part of a world-wide organization, Demeter International, that was first formed in 1928 and named for the Greek goddess of agriculture, to advocate Biodynamic® agriculture and to certify Biodynamic® farms. Demeter remains the oldest ecological certification organization in the world, active in fifty countries around the globe.

The younger students “play” on the farm, sowing and harvesting and tending the animals. The third grade curriculum, especially, which concentrates on basic practical aspects of food and shelter, has the students spend a greater amount of time on the farm, where they learn about barnyard structures and livestock practices, as well as actively participating in the life-cycle of one of the staples of our modern diet, wheat, in its metamorphosis from seed to plant to grain to bread. In the upper grades, through high school, students practice plant propagation, study and cultivate healing plants, and learn about nutrition through cooking, drying and processing food.

The school is deeply committed to preserving and maintaining the farm and the attached open space. That commitment to the land was affirmed in 1983 with a legally binding Land Trust requiring the school to protect and nurture the land and the wild life refuge in perpetuity.

“The plants and animals on Earth…cannot be understood in isolation…it is nonsense to seek within the compass needle itself, the reason why it always points to the north…Just as we have to look at the whole Earth when we want to explain how a compass needle behaves, so must we also consult the whole universe when it comes to understanding plants.” — R. Steiner, Spiritual Foundations for the Renewal of Agriculture. Lecture 6. June 14, 1924.3