Sunfield takes on Broome Farm

David Clement purchases Broome Farm Clent in 1933 and offers it to Sunfield for student land training. This leads to the setting up of The Sunfield Agricultural Centre in 1936 with Dereyk Duffy as manager and Carl Mier as Secretary.

In a conversation with Dr. Ita Wegman and Mr. D. N. Dunlop at the Summer School at Bangor, it became evident that one of the great needs of the moment was a farm where the agricultural methods given by Rudolf Steiner could be carried out on a fairly large scale and where it would be possible to produce the kind of food needed for instance by children such as ours. Within a few days we had made enquiries and found that a very suitable farm within two miles of Clent Grove was to be sold. We also found that no artificial fertilisers had been used on it for many years, and so by the end of 1933 we were able to make arrangements to purchase it for just under £8,000.

The purchase of Broome Farm however, was not strictly speaking the beginning of our farming activities, for in April of the same year a neighbour of ours with a real love lor farming, had offered to get our small home farm into working order, and we had purchased our first cow, an entirely new kind of venture for me – and had begun to provide our children with home-produced milk.