Over 120 employees from Link’s Development and Asset Management team spent a day carrying out various gardening, joinery/construction, painting, clearing and grounds maintenance tasks to help improve the grounds for residents and visitors at Camphill Blair Drummond. Camphill Blair Drummond is a supportive community for adults with learning disabilities to live, learn, work and relax. It provides residential and day care activities for those with complex learning needs. (Friday August 19th, 2016 — Scottish Housing News - UK)

These new urban forests let you pick your own produce. But will the concept take root? (Tuesday August 16th, 2016 — Smithsonian online -USA)

I was taken aback for a moment when reading Rudolf Steiner’s verse for this week (Week 20). But then I realized that he was presenting an image as if in a photo negative. Now I can see that he was trying to convey how a person’s life would be if separated from others, if severed from the Spirit world. Each one of us would die if left alone. We are spiritual and gregarious creatures. (Monday August 15th, 2016 — Huffington Post - USA)

A COMMON sight on the modest, yet remarkable school campus of Tuburan Institute in Sitio Loon, at the foot of Mt. Talomo here, are children as young as five climbing trees, running, jumping, singing, playing freely, bare earth under their feet. In this school, there are no ringing bells, no warning signboards and no loudspeakers to prompt students. There is only laughter above the silence of the semi-forested campus. The children laugh like they’re the luckiest creatures in the world. (Sunday August 14th, 2016 — Inquirer Mindanao - Philippines)

Xtend soybeans are genetically altered to withstand both glyphosate and an existing herbicide called dicamba. ... 1. It’s illegal to use Dicamba on GMO soy ... 2. Dicamba has a drift problem ... 3. The vicious superweed cycle (Sunday August 7th, 2016 — Care2.com - USA)

Eurythmy can be best described as a form of movement using the human body to express the creative principles underlying speech and music. (Saturday August 6th, 2016 — New Straits Times Online - Malaysia )

Wine made from grapes grown without chemicals or on biodynamic farms scored better in blind taste tests by professional wine reviewers than regular wines. (Thursday August 4th, 2016 — Yorkshire Evening Post - UK)

To be exact, the study shows that ratings in three major publications – Wine Advocate, Wine Spectator and Wine Enthusiast – are four points higher on average for eco-certified wines compared to control group wines from the same regions and same vintages. Four points on average is a huge difference: bigger than the standard deviation in two of the three publications. In le (Tuesday August 2nd, 2016 — Wine-Searcher - Auckland, New Zealand)

Food Tank recently had the pleasure of speaking with Bruno Follador, a geographer, biodynamic researcher, and specialist in biodynamic composting and chromatography. Follador, a native of San Paolo, Brazil, first encountered biodynamics at the age of 18 through anthroposophy, a philosophy that postulates that the spiritual world is objective and can be comprehended by the intellectual. (Monday August 1st, 2016 — foodtank.com - )

While it’s not news that a variety of communication happens between non-human elements of the natural world, the idea of mycelia (the main body of fungi, as opposed to the more well-known fruiting bodies – mushrooms) acting as a sort of old-school planetary internet is still a fairly recent one, and may serve as a spore of a new breed of forestry, ecology, land management. (Monday August 1st, 2016 — Care2.com - USA)

Mark Rathbone lost parts from two tractors — the one with a flat tyre and another parked near it — about a month ago when he and wife Kathy were away selling produce at a weekly farmers’ market. The thieves’ haul included a generator, regulator box, fuel pump and gauges, as well as a $1000 brush cutter, angle grinder and tool kit from a bore shed. It was a major blow for the biodynamic farmers, who grow 40 varieties of vegetables on 43 hectares at Wyuna East near Kyabram under the brand Save Our Soil. (Sunday July 31st, 2016 — Weekly Times Now - Melbourne, VIC, Australia)

Boon tells Independent Journal Review that her family adopted the “no technology” rule after their eldest child attended a Rudolf Steiner school for a year. Steiner was a 20th century Austrian philosopher. He believed that “children’s creative, spiritual and moral dimensions need as much attention as their intellectual ones.” (Saturday July 30th, 2016 — Independent Journal Review - )

Here are five phrases that may not mean what you think they do: ... Biodynamic: Biodynamic farming is similar to organic farming but has additional requirements. It is an ecologically sound, sustainable and healthy food production system, but the benefits don’t automatically translate to a more nutritious food product. The regular version of Lundberg short-grain brown rice has 0 grams of sugars and 4 percent iron per serving. The biodynamic version has 1 gram of sugars and 2 percent iron per serving. (Friday July 29th, 2016 — Richmond.com - Richmond, Virginia USA)

The giant storm pipes out temperatures over 2,400 degrees Fahrenheit (Friday July 29th, 2016 — Smithsonian online -USA)

More than 800,000 volunteers planted saplings in public spaces in the state of Uttar Pradesh hoping to reduce greenhouse gases and reforest the countryside (Tuesday July 26th, 2016 — Smithsonian online -USA)

Summary: Natural objects, such as pebbles, sticks, wood, strings and boxes — referred to as unstructured toys in Waldorf education — make better playthings, she suggests. Unstructured toys eliminate the craving for materialistic entities, according to Divya B A, teacher and parent. Waldorf education, based on Rudolf Steiner’s ideas, has its origins in 1920s Germany. “My son owns both structured and unstructured toys but I barely see him play with the former. She has been following Waldorf education for six years. (Tuesday July 26th, 2016 — The New Indian Express)

Workers from 14 to 18 years old learn just how much work farming can be when they spend a summer on the Youth Farm Project, a 10-acre farm off Nelson Road in Danby. ... According to farm manager Ann Piombino, the Youth Farm Project is located on property owned by the Ithaca Waldorf School. (Monday July 25th, 2016 — ithaca.com - Ithaca, New York USA)

These were two of the takeaways from Napa Valley's 10th annual organic grapegrowing conference last week. Napa Valley Grapegrowers says it's the only annual conference of its type in the country, where growers can explain to each other how to give up the Roundup. More of Napa Valley's grapes are grown organically than is commonly realized. Some wineries are afraid to put the word "organic" – let alone "biodynamic" – on a wine label, even if they legally can. (Monday July 25th, 2016 — Wine-Searcher - Auckland, New Zealand)

The image above shows the galaxy cluster Abell S1063, which is “potentially home to billions of strange new worlds” according to scientists working with the Hubble Space Telescope. Visible near the center of the image, the cluster appears as it was four billion years ago. (Friday July 22nd, 2016 — Huffington Post - USA)

What is believed to be the first eurythmy performance in Malaysia will be held at the Performing Arts Centre of Penang in Straits Quay this weekend. ... Eurythmy is an expressive movement art combining music, poetry and storytelling that originated in the early 20th century. It has also been used as educational and therapeutic tools. (Saturday July 16th, 2016 — The Star Online - Maylasia)