What better time than Thanksgiving Day to look back with gratitude on all the amazing experiences I’ve had this year? I know, it might have been more exciting to blog about my trip while I was traveling, but I just didn’t have time. Besides, then there would have been an overload of information in one week and nothing the rest of the year. So for the rest of 2024, I’ll be sharing my travelogue of visiting organic and biodynamic farms and archives this summer. I’m still trying to decide how much of my personal experiences to weave into the book, so I welcome any feedback about what you like and don’t like about these travel narratives.
My big Pennsylvania organic research trip started on the morning of Sunday, June 9, when I got up at 5:45 a.m. and hopped into my rental car for a ten-hour drive from Michigan to Pennsylvania. I’d been planning this trip for a couple months and I had two main goals. First, I wanted to visit some historic biodynamic farms and see biodynamic farming in action, since I’d only read about it before. Second, I wanted to visit the Rodale Family Archives at Lehigh University and see what I could find about J. I. Rodale and the history of Organic Gardening magazine.
The drive through northern Ohio on the Ohio turnpike was familiar—miles and miles of flat land and big farms, with the newly planted corn just starting to poke its green spears up through the brown soil. After I crossed the border and turned south down the Pennsylvania Turnpike, the scenery changed dramatically. The turnpike curved between endless green tree-covered mountains and plunged through four perfectly straight tunnels, two of them back-to-back. Picturesque farms nestled in the valleys between the mountains, with grassy fields, strips of young corn or wheat, red barns, and concrete silos.
After stopping at Marsh Creek State Park to stretch my legs and get some fresh air, I arrived in Kimberton, Pennsylvania around 5:00 p.m. A few more miles down rural roads brought me to Camphill Village Kimberton Hills, where I’d made arrangements with my host, Sherry, to tour the village and biodynamic farms. Kimberton is one of the most important early centers of both biodynamic and organic farming in the US, because it’s where Ehrenfried Pfeiffer started the Kimberton Farm School in the early 1940s. The school itself was in a picturesque mansion on the far side of the river from the current Camphill Village, near Pfeiffer’s house and the first headquarters of the Biodynamic Association.
Following Rudolf Steiner’s philosophies, Camphill Village provides a safe home for special needs adults. Five to ten residents live with a host family in each of the village houses, and they’re given work on the farm according to their abilities. The atmosphere is welcoming and peaceful, and it’s a much more supportive structure than the typical adult foster care homes in my hometown. All the residents I saw seemed happy to be there, enjoying the fresh air and sunshine and helping to grow their food and make the biodynamic preparations.
Sherry was a Camphill house mother for many years, but now runs her historic home as a guest house for visitors to the community—like me! She had a dinner of homemade pizza with cheese from the farm and a salad from the Kimberton CSA waiting for me when I arrived. After dinner, she gave me a brief tour of the Camphill Village, and then I went to bed so I could get up early to watch the cows get milked at 6:30 the next morning.
As to a serialized travelogue, I like the idea a lot. I also am comfortable with intuitive, more-or-less spontaneous musings.