Vivian Griffiths from Star and Furrow magazine
If you looked at Star and Furrow issues of the mid 1990s the address for correspondence was c/o
Rudolf Steiner House, London. No longer the Clent Office at Woodman Lane on the site of the
Sunfield Children's Home in the rural hinterland near Stourbridge where the BDAA had operated
as a national natural farming and gardening organisation for many decades.
This change of address belied many changes at The BDAA after the sale of Broome Farm in 1987
and included a retirement of Secretary Ann Parsons in 1993 - part of the Clement Family, two
Chairs Joachim and Tyll, the drawing to an end of Pat Thompson's (then MacManamon) long
running tenure as Editor of Star and Furrow and the closure of not only the office but also the
retail sales section of the organisation. It coincided with the ceasing of trading of The Caradoc BD
supplies business. Memories of rooms at the old Natural Science Section building at Clent stacked
with leaflets, books, exhibition materials waiting to go into storage and rooms where desks and
tables and chairs strewn with papers abide, no longer the site for meetings and AGM gatherings in
Middle England. It was actually quite a sad sight. A national organisation, the first humus farming
charity to be formed way back at the start of the 1930s now looking for a new home.
It is a small but significant chapter of BD History that describes a moment at this time when a
group of Gloucestershire Biodynamic Practitioners wondered if actually a national home and office
for The BDAA was even necessary: why do we wear out secretaries and staff, travel huge distances
and encourage motorway building across our green and pleasant land (remember Swampy and
The Newbury Bypass) when we have perfectly good BD Farms and Gardens to visit in most if not
nearly all regions of The UK. Why not a regional approach to Biodynamic Practice, do away with a
national office altogether!
This Gloucestershire Biodynamic Group which included Bernard Jarman and Oakland's farmer Tim
Harmsworth wrote to Council on this matter and could certainly show how a region could be
demonstrated. Oaklands Park on the edge of The Forest of Dean was a Camphill Community, a
pioneer Agroecology centre boasting a Biodynamic Farm and Garden run as a Community
Supported Agriculture project in the economic and social spheres with a huge fruit and vegetable
growing distribution business. There was also Camphill Water a remarkable project using the
flowforms created by John Wilkes at Emerson College to clean sewage water with the help of reed
beds.
In the cultural sphere an active Christian Community Congregation. All in all a demonstration farm,
garden and food producing project. And across the Severn Ruskin Mill was developing land based
college activity with a fishery and market garden with the students at Nailsworth as well as
William Morris House not far away at Eastington with its student gardens, the rise and rise of
Stroud as a centre of community land projects and the established centres of Wynstones Rudolf
Steiner School with its Kolisko Farm named after Eugene and Lilly Kolisko who had come to
England in the 1930s with remarkable scientific knowledge on the efficacy of the BD Preparations.
The region presented itself especially when you added a farm apprentice training scheme for BD,
Hawkwood College and it's adult education Programmes and gardens and a regular celebration of
the seasonal festivals on the land with the making of The Preparations in the autumn and their
digging up in the spring.
A brief look at other regions showed that the south east of England had the farms like Tablehurst
at Forest Row in Sussex, The Sheiling School Ringwood, the Bradleys at Hungary Lane, and Trinity
lFarm in the East Midlands, Botton Village on the North York Moors with Larchfield Community
developing on the edge of Middlesbrough. In Scotland BD centres near Aberdeen and Edinburgh
not to mention a herb nursery on The Black Isle near Inverness. And in Ireland a separate BD
Association was establishing itself in Co Kilkenny. You could say that you were never too far from a
Biodynamic land project to visit and get involved so why all the necessary fuss of a national
office?!
To add to the situation, there is so much "what if" going on around this mid 1990s point - a couple
of figures Hamish McKay (Treasurer) and Charlie Wannop (Secretary) who showed so much
promise in the BDAA Council melted away to other lands as quickly as they had come but they left
an "if only.." flavour on The Council because of their natural land charisma and the subsequent
team had to work very hard to gain credence in the aftermath I would suggest - I think that is a fair
statement to make - but also to add to the mix the rise and rise of a competent Demeter
Standards Office in Edinburgh started by Jimmy and Pauline Anderson and continued by Timothy
Brink with Fiona Mackie as Secretary. So a national office had a question over its head!
Towards the end of the 1990s the question of a demonstration Biodynamic farm and garden in a
community setting had begun to come to the fore again with memories of the Broome Farm sale
only ten years distant. This came about because of the possibility of purchasing Kolisko Farm
which was owned by Wynstones School and presented itself in 1996 as a community land project
with productive walled gardens with a box scheme and a small farm with buildings for offices
beside teachers houses for the School. A utopian dream you might say and certainly this home of
BD in the UK would have been a vibrant little land community between Gloucester and Stroud
nestling below The Cotswold scarp in a truly beautiful setting.
After quite some negotiation and meetings with the School Trustees at Wynstones the idea was
not accepted and this caused some frustration. As a result the thought that maybe just
concentrate on a Stroud town based office for The BDAA where people could come and visit and
no more highly ambitious farm based schemes. After all within a stone's throw of the office BD
farms and gardens could be visited.
So it was in readiness for the new century The Biodynamic Agricultural Association opened a
national based office in The Painswick Inn Project on Gloucester Road very near the BD Garden to
be developed at Upper Grange and just across from Hawkwood College.
Perhaps it became a reluctant national office by necessity, The Soil Association was having a
moment of glory as the world took notice of organic farming - from margin to mainstream it was
called - and in all this the question around The BSE crisis which asked about what you fed animals
and reflected on Rudolf Steiner's comment that if you fed a cow with its own meat then it would
go mad.
If organics was going mainstream with organic produce finding a home on supermarket shelves
and Patrick Holden - soon to become Patron of the Biodynamic work appearing regularly on TV
and in the Press - then maybe a national office was needed again with regular hours, secretarial
support and response to the media and to an increasing membership.
Yet perhaps this office begun in a strange environment of many retirements and stepping away of
key personnel and had its challenges mapped out to rebuild a BD national awareness. A new A4
sized Star and Furrow with a new editor Richard Swann was an early result as well as a
comprehensive leaflet outlining the Biodynamic approach and featuring a range of books and
contacts available to all enquiriers and well designed!
If there was to be a national office then there were to be healthy regional centres as well
emphasised by the start of travelling AGMs going all round the country and taking place on a
Biodynamic centre of activity.
The office, well set out with new furniture had certainly its work cut out with an early challenge
with The Foot and Mouth pandemic of 2001 especially when for perfectly sound reasons Oakland's
Park refused to allow the government vets to slaughter the herds of the farm and making natIonal
headlines as a result. The interest in the case had the office flooded with enquiries and much
information was shared. Other incidents like film star Elizabeth Hurley's like of Biodynamic
Sausages from Tablehurst also caught the imagination and enquiries rolled in once more as well
from features on Radio 4's The Food Programme.
So the office provided a touchstone but it's Secretary Jessica Standing who was appointed in 1999
just after it began always emphasizes that the office itself can't exist without regional support and
activity and that philosophy continues to this day!
Vivian Griffiths
Nov 21
Sources include personal interviews, Star and Furrow Council Members Lists and the author being
on The BDAA Council from 1997 into the new century.