S&S HOMESTEAD FARM - Key Persons

Elizabeth Simpson grew up on a farm in Hood River, Oregon and was always involved with gardening, canning, freezing and making jam. She received her bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Oregon and her Ph.D. from the University of Washington, where she later taught and met Henning. In 1994 when Henning's youngest child left home for college, Henning and Elizabeth decided to make the switch to full-time farming. Research and education continues to be an integral part of her life. In addition to farming, Elizabeth teaches English and sustainable farming classes as a part-time faculty member at Lopez High School. Elizabeth serves as a member of the Future Farm Council.

Janet Lia has been teaching art and Bio-Dynamic Gardening to all ages for over 20 years. After finishing a 2-year training in Bio-Dynamic Agriculture in Scandinavia, Janet completed her B.A. with public teaching credentials (K-12, endorsements in Visual Arts and Agriculture). She continued her post graduate education, earning certificates inWaldorf Education, Figure and Portrait Drawing and Painting, and a 2-year Fine Arts Program. Janet lives with her family in Seattle where she teaches art in her studio, AWE Studio (Art With Everyone, www.janetlia.com). She also teaches at local schools, art centers, and as a Waldorf Teacher Trainer. With this background, Janet leads artistic activities contributing to the various biodynamic themes of annual workshops on the farm. Together with his wife, Janet, Barry Lia has been practicing biodynamic husbandry ontheir urban homestead in Seattle for nearly 20 years, and they have led workshops introducing biodynamics locally in many venues. He completed a 2-year training in biodynamic agriculture with Dr. Andrew Lorand. Barry coordinates the Washington Biodynamic Group and works and consults on local biodynamic farms. As a member of the Section for Agriculture at the Goetheanum, he participates in biodynamic research. He is practicing the picture-forming method, capillary dynamolysis, and Goethe's scientific methodology. Barry holds a Ph.D. in neurobiology and works as a clinical technologist at UW Medical Center. He helps plan and presents at annual workshops on the farm and serves on the Future Farm Council to explore the farm's transition to community ownership.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), who was a natural philosopher and scientist as well as a poet, argued that the life history or development (ontogenesis) of organisms is not reducible to mechanistic explanation; life processes must be understood in teleological rather than causal terms, and the teleology (end goal or indwelling purpose of life force) of an organism is best understood in terms of its holistic "form" or "type." Holistic science must factor in the human observer and therefore is necessarily qualitative rather than reducible to quantitative measurement and mathematical abstraction. Goethe's scientific method involved sustained observation of phenomena in nature through all of the five senses, but also through intuition and the imagination. Observation intensified through experimental variation would provide the observer with multiple perspectives and gradually lead him to intuit a unifying concept, the "form" or "type" of the organism under study. Ideally the observer becomes intuitively one with the phenomenon studied instead of objectifying it through mathematical abstraction. Macro-level understanding of the living form rather than micro-level (molecular or submolecular) construction is the goal of Goethe's science, the diametric opposite of the goals and methodology of nanotechnology. Goethe demonstrated his methodology in important applied studies to develop a theory of color that corrected and amplified Newton's theory of light; he developed a theory of plant metamorphosis that laid the foundation for the study of morphology in contrast to Linneaus's reductionist model; and he discovered the intermaximillary bone through holistic analysis of human anatomy. Long ignored by natural scientists because of his rejection of mathematical abstraction as an adequate tool to understand natural phenomena, Goethe is today recognized as a founder of the science of ecological systems.

Roy Ozanne (M.D., 1975, H.M.D., 1998) began his career as an allopathic physician and ecologist at the University of Wisconsin. Postgraduate studies in health lead him to study homeopathic medicine in Belgium, and he practices homeopathy on Whidbey Island today. He was the co-founder and medical director on Sandhill School of Healing Arts (1980-1993), and Cress Spring Farm Yoga Health Retreat (1996-2001). In 2007, he started Whole Health Programs and began participating in health-related workshops at S&S Center for Sustainable Agriculture. Roy serves on the Future Farm Council. Roy will take up residence on S&S Homedtead Farm in June, 2016.

Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) studied mathematics, physics and philosophy in Vienna and in 1891 earned a doctorate at the university in Rostock, Germany with a dissertation on Fichte's theory of knowledge. Between 1888 and 1896, Steiner was editor at the Goethe Archives in Weimar and there wrote introductions and commentaries to four volumes of Goethe's scientific writings, as well as two books on Goethe's theory of knowledge (1886) and worldview (1897), in which he developed Goethe's phenomenological approach to the study of nature. The book Steiner considered his most important philosophical work, Philosophy of Freedom, appeared in 1894. In 1913 Steiner founded the Anthroposophical Society, and that same year building began on the Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland, as an organizational and cultural center, where Goethe's Faust has been performed regularly. In 1919 the first Waldorf school based on anthroposophical thinking opened in Stuttgart, Germany. In 1923-4 Steiner founded the School for Spiritual Science at the Goetheanum, an open university for study and research in fields of natural science, philosophy, literature, sociology, economics, agriculture, medicine and education. In 1924 Steiner responded to requests by farmers in eastern Germany concerned about falling fertility of chemically farmed soils and declining animal health. He laid the foundations of what is later known as Biodynamics in a series of eight lectures known as the Agriculture Course. Steiner explained that continued applications of chemicals in the form of fertilizers and pesticides had destroyed the soil micro-biological life and that farmers had lost the traditional understanding of what life is. He urged farmers to restore humus levels by composts and biodynamic preparations, and he called for an holistic view of agriculture conceiving of soil, farm, and cosmos as one integrated organism manifesting life force, or spirit. The followers of Steiner (Maria Thun, and others) developed a lunar-astronomical calendar to determine planting cycles following the rhythms of the sun, moon, planets and stars. Biodynamics laid the groundwork for the world-wide organic movement, pioneered food certification, and fostered Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), based on associate economics. As a system of ecological and sustainable farming, Biodynamics revives the Aristotelian concept of oekonomia, which literally means "stewardship of the household," a household which Steiner understood to include not only the farm itself but also the larger ecology and community as well.