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.

The Tao of the Chicken: A Virgo New Moon Reflection

Tapping in will forces, healing currents, and unexpected teachers under the new moon and royal star

Regulus, one of the four Royal Stars of ancient Persia, shines as the healer’s guide, connected with Archangel Raphael and the direction of the North…the place where higher destiny calls us. I have written about the way finding whale also going North. Under this Virgo New Moon we are invited to open to the Divine within (Virgo is connected to the high priestess and sacred ceremony). We are reminded to listen to the heart-centered intelligence that unfailingly guides us toward beauty, truth, healing, and connection.

Astrologer Tami Brunk reminds us: change is not the enemy. We must FLOW. As I opened my farm gate this evening (day of this new moon), I looked at a sign I have there with the word flower on it. I saw FLOWer, and now I will think about flowers with yet another dimension. Resistance is so often just the trembling before the unknown. What if we are more ready than we realise? And it is only the mind that lags behind the body, the spirit, the soul?

This moon asks us to soften, to trust, to allow the currents of life to carry us, especially when we feel clumsy, resistant, or unsure. I’m reminded how often I forget that I don’t have to hold it all together, or force a path forward. Sometimes, the clarity comes not from pushing, but from surrendering into the moment as it is. May we each awaken, again and again, to the colossal field of love that holds us, even when we tense up and even when we forget…. lets get into the flow of it all.

Here at Magical Farm, the new moon has already delivered its first lesson, and I have a funny story to share. Earlier today, six rogue chickens, wing-strong, garden-scratching, and impossible to catch…became my unexpected teachers. For 90 determined minutes, I leapt, chased, and wrestled until, one by one, I caught every single one. Their will forces were immense, but I discovered mine too. This afternoon, I was reminded of my own endurance and determination, not on a fencing piste, not in a policy meeting, nor while designing futures through my studio, but here on the farm, where the forces of life make themselves known. The Tao of the Chicken: when the time comes, strength meets strength, and balance is restored.

Even more beautifully, my son Raphael joined me in the chase! Full of passion, support, laughter, and determination. With Archangel Raphael’s star shining above and Raphael’s hands beside me, I felt the healing current of will, love, and joy moving through us both.

So may this Virgo New Moon gift you too with the will forces to complete what needs finishing, and to initiate what longs to be born. We are powerful beings, woven into rhythms larger than ourselves.

If you would like to tune into your will forces consider Dandelion Flower Essence from Magical Farm to support you.

See link to the farm’s FLOWer Essence Shop here: 🌼 Dandelion Flower Essence for Strength in Flow: Hand-harvested at Magical Farm, this essence captures the spirited resilience of dandelion thriving even in wild places, just like the unexpected lessons of farm life. Dandelion helps release tension stored in the body from over-effort or resistance, supporting you to meet life’s challenges with grounded determination rather than force. It’s the perfect ally when your will is strong, but your muscles are tight reminding you that true strength moves with the current, not against it. Take when life feels like a wrestling match, and you’re ready to find power in the now.

With love, soil and soul…
Dr. Demeter

High Magic in the Soil: Planting a Venus - Jupiter - Sirius Intention for Gaia

By Dr. Demeter | With gratitude to astrologer Jaime Lee Goldstein for illuminating the cosmic timing of this moment

This week, as astrologer Jaime Lee Goldstein describes, the two brightest planets Venus and Jupiter, draw near to the brightest star Sirius! Such a conjunction, seen by ancient eyes, was not just an astronomical event; it was an opening, a moment of high magic. The benefic planets joined the “Wishing Star” in a rare, exalted union which was a signal to seed what must endure, what must be blessed, what must be healed.

At Magical Farm, I feel this “high magic” most keenly in the soil and across the farms glow. The paddocks hold the happy ducks, geese and chickens, laughter of my children, those who have convened here in joyful moments, the soft night-steps of wallabies. Here, the farm is not only a livelihood but a hearth, a place to hold family, community, and the prayers I carry for the wider world.

Yarrow basket at Magical Farm Photography by Ness Vandebourgh Photography

Rudolf Steiner spoke of imagination as the first stage of spiritual knowing, and in the Michaelic path, imagination becomes courage: the will to picture a better world and bring it into form. In biodynamics, this is lived daily, stirring the preparations, planting to the moon, tending soil as a living being, each act a quiet magic in service to the whole.

In this rare alignment, I sense a vision wanting to be planted:

• Fields alive with bees and wildflowers, from my farm, across Tasmania, Australia and the world

• Economies that serve the people places and planet

• Governance as a weaving of many voices and traditions

• A political will that bends toward beauty, justice, and reciprocity

• A living Gaia where soil, sea, and sky are cherished kin

A High Magic Practice for August 11 and 12th…!

1. At dawn, face the eastern sky. If you can see Venus and Jupiter, greet them; if not, close your eyes and feel their light entering you. Sirius will be near, carrying the higher heart’s purpose.

2. Hold a seed, from your own land if possible and feel it as a vessel for your intention.

3. Speak one clear sentence for your home, for your community, and for the earth. Keep it as distilled as the seed itself.

4. Plant it in the soil. If you can, stir water in a figure-eight to awaken its life forces before you pour it over the planted seed.

A Collective Circle
I invite all who read this to join me, wherever you are in planting your own intention at this rare conjunction. Imagine our seeds, scattered across continents, joined by a filament of light running from Sirius through Venus and Jupiter into the soil of the Earth. This is high magic: intimate, domestic, and cosmic all at once.

The ancients knew that the brightest lights in the sky speak also to the brightest visions within us. This is high magic for the world we are willing to tend together.

✨ Magical Farm Yarrow ‘Acelia’ Essence
Gather the rare blessings of Venus, Jupiter, and Sirius into your own heart. This gentle yet powerful ally weaves protection and openness, so what is seeded in love may endure and flourish. Take it as a prayer in liquid form, a bridge between heaven’s light and the fertile soil of your life.
→ Order Yarrow ‘Acelia’ Essence from Magical Farm

✨ Full Set Offering

The Magical Farm Alchemy Set
For those who wish to journey deeper, this complete set of 17 Demeter’s Drops is handcrafted in Tasmania from herbs grown in our fresh, vibrant landscapes, infusing each drop with the life and rhythm of the land. Serving as your compass through the seasons of life, each drop supports integration, clarity, protection, and heartful action, creating a tapestry of living medicine to guide and harmonise body, mind, and spirit. Explore the full set and carry the farm’s magic, grounded in Tasmanian soil, wherever you go.
→ Order The Magical Farm Alchemy Set

Why Local Organic Food?

Food is part of our everyday life, so it crosses our paths many times in our days weeks and years. That is why the choices we make around food are so significant. Our choices cause ripple effects in wider systems. If we look at the industrial food system today we have been “designed” into this system. So it makes it hard to avoid the monopoly supermarkets and the mechanised food system that they reinforce.

So how do we ‘design’ our way out?

It’s a question I have been reflecting on and actioning for over a decade. At its essence, it is POWERFUL to buy local. Support local farmers. Eat food that is not laced with pesticides. Your local dollar does make a difference and can reinforce a regenerative food system. You also enter into the exciting and reassuring world of ‘living systems’ what I describe as “Con Viv” (with life)! Engaging with healthy and alive soil, meeting dynamic, zesty and caring community members and discovering opportunities to vision and share regenerative stories for healing the past and embracing the present and future in a new light.

Helena Norbert-Hodge from Local Futures states that

“If you want to create a more sustainable society, a good place to start is by helping to rebuild your local food economy: food is something everyone, everywhere, needs every day, which means that even relatively small changes in the way it is produced and marketed can have immense effects. And since eating is a natural part of daily life, we all have frequent opportunities to make a difference.”

So the Magical Farm food box is a special project for us to create. We hope we can inspire more regenerative conversations, local dollars spent, more support for our local organic farmers and growers, convivial celebrations and gastronomical events and further spread the much needed regenerative changes in our world. You can order our food box on this website www.magicalfarm.org

Local and organic veggie boxes are available fresh from the farm to your table. Magical Farm will provide you with delicious produce every 1st and 3rd Friday of the month. We will post 7 days prior to the next box so you can order before the end of the week prior to the ‘box day’. You can pick up from our farm gate in Allens Rivulet or our distribution points in Hobart. We are more than happy to hear from you! info@magicalfarm.org

Basil leaves - so yummy but also representing opening our hearts, minds and hands to a new way of living on our planet.

Magical Musing by E Samuels-Ballantyne

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!