by Bill Day, Threefold Educational Foundation
Over the past two years we have watched history in the making as the Fellowship Community’s farm has united with the agricultural and educational work of the Pfeiffer Center to create the a new farm initiative devoted to care of the land, education, and service to community through life sustaining food production. In biodynamic agriculture, every farm aspires to be a self-contained individuality that produces everything it needs to generate fertility and thrive. The impulse for the Fellowship and Threefold communities to combine their biodynamic farming and work sprang from the realization that managing our fields, pastures, dairy, and gardens as one could help bring us closer to achieving that goal.
Never before have these neighboring Anthroposophical communities collaborated on such a large scale. At bottom, our community’s ideals are the same; but our respective cultures, daily work, and farming methods have always been very different. Gardening was always part of Fellowship Community life, even before the 1997 acquisition of Duryea Farm made the dairy and expanded production possible. The Fellowship’s mission was to provide Members and Co-workers with home-grown produce and dairy products from a farm run according to the Fellowship’s high ideals of intentional community life. The Pfeiffer Center, by contrast, was founded to teach and spread awareness of biodynamics. The Pfeiffer Center’s produce supported a farm stand and CSA, but its focus was on cultivating the exoteric and esoteric practice of biodynamics while developing educational programs for adults and children.
The Threefold Community Farm brings together the best of the Fellowship Community’s farming heritage with the Pfeiffer Center’s commitment to agricultural research, education, and outreach. With 9 acres under cultivation, 39 acres of pasture and hay, dairy cows, draft horses, greenhouses and honeybees, the Threefold Community Farm keeps the Fellowship provisioned with the best produce, milk, yogurt, and even a taste of honey. Fellowship Members and Co-workers contribute through regular volunteer opportunities on the farm. Under the able guidance of Mac Mead, Megan Durney, and Kim Pace, the farm also feeds its neighbors through its CSA, farm stand, and sales to the Hungry Hollow Co-op and the Threefold Café.
The Threefold Community Farm is a living model of a productive, diversified, community-based farm that reliably feeds its neighbors while caring for its land, plants, and animals in a way that is healthy, safe, and respectful of nature. Neighbors and visitors, interns, course and workshop attendees, and children from Green Meadow, Otto Specht School, Nature Place Camp, and elsewhere experience a way of farming that points toward a clean, sustainable agriculture that is intimately woven into the local social fabric.
Please watch for opportunities to be involved through volunteering, internships, and workshops by visiting the Volunteer section of our web site.
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