First reflection on the 2026 Goetheanum Agriculture Conference

The 2026 Goetheanum Agriculture Conference has now closed, and I am sitting with a quiet, full heart. I will share photos and deeper reflections in time, and as Dr Demeter I have been in conversation with many extraordinary people here, farmers, researchers, doctors, philosophers, scientists, herbalists, compost makers, and quiet cultural stewards. There are stories coming. For now, this is a small field note from within the experience.

Dr Demeter / Emily Samuels-Ballantyne at Magical Farm Tasmania, just prior for departing for the 2026 Goetheanum Conference in Dornach Switzerland. Photography by Ness Vandeburgh Photography

People from forty-six countries gathered around a shared devotion: care for land, life, and the invisible relationships that make fertility possible. Across languages and climates, I felt a deep Con Viv truth alive, that food systems are not mechanical supply chains, but living cultural ecosystems shaped by soil, story, community, and cosmos.

Compost was spoken about as relationship, not waste management. Herbal preparations were described with reverence…. Yarrow, chamomile, nettle, oak bark, and valerian were held as mediators between Earth and sky. Many people here have simply followed their hearts into this work, often quietly, often without recognition, because the land asked them to.

Again and again, the conference returned to an ancient remembering: agriculture lives inside a cosmic conversation. Rudolf Steiner spoke of earthly life as inseparable from cosmic rhythms, and here that knowing felt practical, embodied, and quietly radical. I was also reminded of Johannes Kepler’s Music of the Spheres, and of Elisabeth Vreede’s work carrying forward the understanding that the heavens are not distant observers, but participants in earthly becoming.

What moved me most was presence. People were not performing knowledge. They were living it.

If there is one thread I carry forward into Con Viv practice, policy imagination, and the Grow Small, Feed All vision, it is this: the unseen world is asking to become visible again through how we farm, design, govern, and relate.

More soon…including voices from the conference, conversations across continents, and the quiet revolution already growing in soils around the world.

Photography by Ness Vanberburgh at Magical Farm Tasmania

Tarkind: Painting a Living World Back Into View

We began Tarkind in 2022 as a small collective, myself and my son Zach, invertebrate biologist Dr Keith Martin-Smith, and palawa woman Gemma O’Rourke, to weave science, story, and art into everyday care for place. We are excited to announce our 2025 Tarkind community art and citizen science day! Firstly I want to share why we want to educate about living systems.

Why a living-systems lens?

In Tarkind we work from a simple conviction: life works in relationships. Fritjof Capra calls this the systems view of life: living beings, communities, and ecologies are networks of relationships whose health depends on patterns, flows, feedback, diversity, and rhythm, rather than on single parts. For Capra, this isn’t only biology or ecology; it’s also ethics and meaning. When you see the web, a quiet spiritual intuition follows: we belong to something larger. That belonging is not a doctrine; it’s a practice of attention, of noticing consequences, caring for cycles, and letting our actions be accountable to the whole.

Daniel Christian Wahl extends this into culture. His question is: what kinds of cultures help places to heal? He invites us to design for regeneration, work that leaves people and places more capable than before. That means place-sourced learning, bioregional thinking, circular use of materials, and stories that grow responsibility rather than extraction. In his frame, art, education, and landcare are not extras; they are cultural technologies that renew our capacity to live well together.

How this shapes Tarkind

• Walk, notice, name. We use iNaturalist and field journaling to see the web, Capra’s patterns are therefore made tangible.

• Paint what we felt and found. The art is how the insight lands in the body and the community; it keeps the story alive.

• Plant and repair. Regeneration is Wahl’s litmus test: did our time together leave the place more resilient?

This is also the heart of my Con Viv work, head, heart, and hand in one movement, supported by David Orr’s reminder that all education is environmental education, and Satish Kumar’s call to hold soil, soul, and society in balance.

Photography by Ness Vandeburgh Photography

Why it matters: a living-systems worldview builds tolerance (difference is an asset), love (care becomes structure: roles, rhythms, and repair), and a gentle spiritual stance (reverence for the whole we share). If more of our schools, councils, and neighbourhoods worked this way, conflict wouldn’t vanish, but it would have somewhere useful to go, into listening, making, planting, and the slow renewal of culture.

What is citizen science?

Citizen science is everyday people helping do real science. We notice, record, and share observations, photos, sounds, simple measurements, and those data feed into research, conservation planning, and education. It’s hands-on learning that turns curiosity into evidence: you don’t need a lab coat, just attention, respect for place, and a phone or notebook. For kids and adults alike, it builds ecological literacy, confidence, and a sense of belonging to the living world.

Photography by Ness Vandeburgh Photography

Who are the Great Southern BioBlitz?

The Great Southern BioBlitz (GSB) is a southern-hemisphere biodiversity event held each spring that invites communities to document as many species as possible over one long weekend using platforms like iNaturalist. Local groups host walks, workshops, and mini-surveys; participants upload what they find; volunteer identifiers help name species; and the pooled results give scientists and land managers a richer picture of local ecosystems. We collaborate with GSB to connect our Tarkind walks and art sessions to this wider effort, so every observation we make together becomes part of a bigger, shared map of life in our region.

Next event: Magical Farm × Great Southern BioBlitz × Magical Farm Landcare Group, Sunday 26 Oct 2025, 10:00–2:30. We’ll gather at Magical Farm, convoy to Allens Rivulet Track for the Bioblitz, then return for a shared lunch, Tarkind community art, and a short planting. Bring iNaturalist, warm layers, water, a plate to share, and an art canvas (large or small) + paints. Families welcome. Message me for details.

Tarkind is a reminder: when we live with life, the future stops being an abstraction and becomes something we can touch, tend, and paint together.

Welcome to Magical Farm

Magical Farm welcomes you to our website and community. We have a vision to make holistic lifestyles a reality. Everyday life is our ‘canvas’ and the seven elements of food, art and crafts, conviviality, the land, hand skills, wellbeing and rest are our ‘paint brushes’. Everyday life makes up the seven days of the week so we have many opportunities to create moments, practices and actions that can change our life and systems (social, political, economic and ecological).

We are a critically focussed, convivial minded and heart centred business :) that offers:

• educational workshops and courses that enable holistic lifestyles such as living systems thinking philosophy, conviviality philosophy, food systems design, wood working, local food project making and much more.

• services such as local food production and delivery, wellbeing classes such as fencing, meditation, yoga and massage.

• products such as aromatherapy oils, flower essences, herbs, local food, local art and crafts.

Thank you very much to the talented Louise Thrush Graphic Designer and Illustrator from Tasmania for working with us on the brand for Magical Farm. http://www.louisethrush.com/

Thank you also to the beautiful rainbow which also has seven sacred colours that can enliven our everyday life canvas. The rainbow has been a wonderful symbol that has inspired me for over a decade, and as it happens now live in a valley surrounded by mountains, so I see rainbows on average once per week. Just recently for the first time in my life I saw a night rainbow!