The garden is our classroom and laboratory. It was on this plot, beginning in 1926, that the founders of Threefold Farm grew biodynamic produce for Manhattan's Threefold Vegetarian Restaurant – the first biodynamic garden in North America. For decades thereafter, the garden's produce fed attendees of Threefold's popular Summer Conferences, and Ehrenfried Pfeiffer conducted his research here from the 1940s until his death in 1961.
The garden had been fallow for a brief time when, in the fall of 1996, Gunther Hauk enlisted dozens of volunteers to break the soil and turn the beds that make up the Pfeiffer Center garden, creating an island of growth, learning, joyful labor, and life.
Today the garden's 70 beds raise produce and flowers; also on the property are a small orchard (apples, pears, peaches and quince), berries, a greenhouse, a wood-fired bread oven, a dye garden, extensive composting facilities, a self-serve seasonal farm stand, and an apiary. With few exceptions, all work in the garden is done with hand tools, and in our work and our teaching we emphasize the value of agricultural handwork. This can become an excellent foundation for farming and gardening, even on a commercial scale.
Mac Mead, Program Director
Mac Mead has farmed and gardened biodynamically for more than thirty years. As a co-worker at the Fellowship Community beginning in 1975, Mac had the "privilege and good fortune" to learn biodynamic methods directly from former co-workers of Ehrenfried Pfeiffer.
Mac was raised in the Connecticut River Valley and graduated from Dickinson College in Pennsylvania with a degree in psychology. After college he was a co-worker at the Camphill Village in Copake, New York, from 1972 to 1974, where he did therapeutic community work and also taught nature and games at the fledgling Waldorf school there. As a co-worker in the Fellowship Community, Mac helped start the Third Grade farming block at Green Meadow Waldorf School, and taught that block for fifteen years; he also helped initiate the Pfeiffer Center's public school outreach program, The Outdoor Lesson. Mac was the resident farmer at the Fellowship Community's Duryea Farm from 1997 until 2005. Mac has directed the Pfeiffer Center since 2007.
Megan Durney, Garden Assistant
Megan’s previous experience includes several years of volunteer and community service work, including two years in the southeast after Hurricane Katrina, and organic farming as a WWOOF-er.
Following those experiences, she says, "I wanted to do conscious agriculture--making more of the spiritual connection with the earth. I've always been interested in healing work with people and with the earth, so I felt like biodynamics would tie those together. Other farms I've been on were a lot of labor, but not a lot of consciousness; even organic farms could feel depleting." Megan interned at the Pfeiffer Center in 2006-7 under Gunther Hauk, and continued as Garden Assistant when Mac Mead became Program Director of the Pfeiffer Center.
Jessica Mansbach, Intern
Jessica has a longstanding relationship with our community; she lived at the Fellowship Community for four years with her family (having moved there at age 10), during the time when Mac Mead was head farmer there. After earning a degree in biology from Earlham College in Indiana, she returned to spend a year as a co-worker at the Fellowship, and then in October 2009 started her internship at the Pfeiffer Center.
Jessica came specifically to study with Mac, and particularly wants to look at substances and polarities: how they play out in nature and in the human body. With this goal, they have started working with chromatography, an exciting step towards strengthening the research aspect of the Pfeiffer Center. Currently most interested in having “physical experiences with substances,” Jessica is looking toward possible future studies in medicine.
Right now, she is also excited about the current goal of expanding the production capacities of the Pfeiffer Center, helping to move it beyond education to meet an outward need for high-quality produce.
Josh Jackson, Intern
Josh hails from central New Jersey, where, as in our own Rockland County, the landscape was very different 50 years ago: dirt roads, farms, and market gardens have been paved over and suburbanized, to the extent that starting a backyard garden might earn you some funny looks from the neighbors. Gardening is in his blood on both sides (with one grandfather having been a gardener in central Jersey and the other a tobacco and corn farmer in North Carolina), but Josh didn’t have much experience with the land growing up. Now he seeks to change that, and having discovered and “converted to” organic food a few years ago, his path led him to the Pfeiffer Center.
Before coming here, Josh’s primary focus was music; he studied and taught trumpet and guitar. He still manages to fit 10-12 guitar students into his busy week. He is also a student of the martial arts, particularly kenpo karate. Since he just started in January 2010, he’s looking forward to the coming growing season at the Pfeiffer Center, and all the learning experiences that lie ahead.
Peter Boyd, Intern
Peter is a licensed massage therapist, certified personal trainer, and also a functional integrative therapist. Though he comes to us from Gainesville, Florida, he spent a couple years living and working on Bounty Farms in upstate New York for the summer and fall harvest, as well as the turning and planting for the spring crops. He says, “My love of being outdoors with feet firmly planted in the soil has been with me since childhood. My work with clients and friends through massage and integrative therapies has reinforced the importance of quality organic foods and medicines.”
Peter’s intention is to explore the experience of biodynamic gardening, orcharding, animal care, beekeeping, and more, “for the life lesson and also for the potential of creating a space where I can live, work, and properly share the bounty of existence with nature.”
Elisa Saltet, Intern (2008-9)
Elisa completed her internship in October 2009. She reports that she found her internship eye-opening and inspiring, and imagines incorporating what she learned into working with children in an agricultural education program or community garden in the future. For the near future, however, she is headed to France to teach english as a foreign language and explore biodynamic vinyards along the way.
Emmanuel Vukovich, Intern (2008-9)
Emmanuel completed his internship in November 2009. Back in his native Canada, he is pursuing his twin passions of music and agriculture: performing regularly, teaching chamber music at McGill University, and farming with Belgian draft horses in Sherbrooke, Quebec.