Ridgemeade Farms was started in the middle of the last century by Robert McElroy, an engineer and professor at Cornell University who befriended Rudolph Steiner, creator of the BioDynamic movement and a regular lecturer at the University. Decades later, as America moved toward World War II, McElroy purchased the original 200 acre farm with an organic homestead in mind. As the world seemed to fall apart he felt that creating food security for his family and his community was of utmost importance. The farm is replete with McElroy’s engineering brilliance layered on top of Steiner’s teachings about BioDynamics and Biomimicry. Having passed away in 1984, McElroy is survived by his daughter, Elizabeth Geer. The farm, having raised upwards of 40 beef cattle annually, has seen no chemical fertilizer, herbicides, fungicides, or pesticides.
Encompassing more than 200 acres of diverse habitat, the property is capable of sustaining a host of interrelated regenerative enterprises, utilizing the vast water catchment the property provides, the wooded land, multiple pastures, a deep, clean aquifer, historic barn structures, multiple riparian tracts and wetland areas, an extraordinary micro-climate provided by Lake Erie only a few miles away, and a central location within an affluent and educated community interested in nutrient dense, local foods. The Farm is also in relative proximity to several major urban and suburban zones, including underprivileged neighborhoods which could be accessed to provide educational and inspirational opportunities and produce.
Ridgemeade Farm consists of two roughly 100 acre parcels once part of a larger, 200+ acre farm. Immediately adjacent to this property to the West are 54 acres owned by our family who maintain a home nestled amongst woods. Immediately to the East of their property sits the central 100 acre farm parcel containing a large bank barn with attached cowshed, silo barn, garage and the original farm house as well as significant pastures and woodland. East of this parcel lies another 100 acre tract still resided upon by the original owner (who turned 101 years old in July 2021). This property includes a late 19th century bank-barn, a garage and a large collection pond as well as significant woodland and pasture area.
The pastures have not seen active ruminants since the 1980s and the Southern and Eastern most tracts were used primarily for winter silage stockpiling. The lands remains in very good ecological condition thanks to the previous owners dedication to Biodynamic farming and as such, the property has seen little to no artificial fertilizers, herbicides, or other unnatural amendments. Great care was taken by the owners to tile wet areas, directing water to collection points, namely an ‘endless’ water trough, an ‘endless’ spring trough, for livestock and a beautiful 1 acre collection pond. A deep valley adjacent to a steep hill on the north side of the property gives rise to an opportunity for another collection pond and restoration of the natural riparian area. Utilities include septic systems, wells and connections to the city power grid. The property is minutes from major highways and less than half an hour from the urban center of Erie, PA.
Being an inactive farm for more than 40 years, the farm requires various infrastructure upgrades, primarily in the form of new utilities to the barn, minor to the buildings, fence repair and replacement, and potentially one or two new outbuildings for offices, kitchen and processing facilities. The forests on this and the Eastern adjacent property have been managed by a forester for half a century. Our proposed farm plan includes a cutting edge regenerative agriculture design following time tested permaculture principles. The farm would be holistically designed and supported by a multi-enterprise ecosystem whose primary aims are to simultaneously increase soil carbon levels by <2% annually while harvesting enough growth from each enterprise to sustain the farms activities with a reasonable and annually increasing margin of profitability. It would be our goal to preserve and steward this historic farm well into the future in an age and geographic area where suburban sprawl is quickly eating away at beautiful, practical, useful rural areas with the sharp teeth of cookie cutter cul-de-sac developments from profiteering, out-of-town developers, and when the industrial agriculture system is breaking down amidst a boom in small, organic, local farming and lang management.
Following the lead of Joel Salatin of Polyface Farm, Richard Perkins of Ridgedale Permaculture, and other leaders at the forefront of the movement, we aim to create a highly successful example of a sustainable, profitable, Regenerative Agriculture Farm which moves beyond a simple demonstration site into the practical realms of education and substantial production, balancing all Eight Forms of Capital* on farm, and for our community.
This would provide a carefully designed and managed lifestyle based in greatly increased self-sustainability, a surrounding of diverse and healthy ecosystems balancing natural areas with cultivated land, and a surplus of nutrient dense foods and food security, both for our own family and the greater community through on farm sales and events, farmer’s markets, CSA, online sales, and local retail outlets.
*8 Forms of Capital
Rudolph Steiner at Ridgemeade, One of America’s Original BioDynamic Farms
Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), founder of the biodynamic approach to agriculture, was a highly trained scientist and respected philosopher in his time, who later in his life came to prominence for his spiritual-scientific approach to knowledge called “anthroposophy.” Long before many of his contemporaries, Steiner came to the conclusion that western civilization would gradually bring destruction to itself and the earth if it did not begin to develop an objective understanding of the spiritual world and its interrelationship with the physical world. Steiner's spiritual-scientific methods and insights have given birth to practical holistic innovations in many fields, including education, banking, medicine, psychology, the arts and, not least, agriculture.
In the early 1900s, a highly mechanistic view of nature was beginning to take hold in agriculture, which led to the development and use of synthetically produced fertilizers and pesticides. As they adopted these chemical inputs, farmers quickly began noticing declines in the health and fertility of their soil, plants, and animals. A number of farmers who were familiar with Steiner's work to renew medicine, education, economics, and other aspects of society asked if he could provide some insights into how they could renew the health and vitality of their farms.
After many such requests, in June 1924, Steiner finally held an "Agriculture Course" with many of these farmers in Koberwitz, a small village which was then in Germany but is now Poland. The eight lectures and five discussions of that course have been transcribed in the book Agriculture(link is external) and form the basis of the biodynamic method. Steiner was one of the first public figures to warn that the widespread use of chemical fertilizers would lead to the decline of soil, plant and animal health and the subsequent devitalization of food.
He was also the first to bring the perspective of the farm as a single, self-sustaining organism that thrives through biodiversity, the integration of crops and livestock and the creation of a closed-loop system of fertility. Steiner also brought forth a unique and comprehensive approach to soil, plant, animal and human health that recognizes the importance of the healthy interplay of cosmic and earthly influences. With this knowledge, he developed a set of homeopathic preparations used by biodynamic farmers on soil, compost and plants that help build up the farm’s innate immune system and vital forces. In the 1980s, biodynamic farmers in the northeast U.S. used Steiner’s economic ideas to pioneer the concept of community supported agriculture (CSA), which has since been adopted by thousands of farms across North America.
By applying these diverse ideas and methods, biodynamic farmers have established a worldwide reputation for creating socially responsible farms of extraordinary health and beauty and for producing organic products of the highest quality and flavor.
For a more in-depth overview of Steiner and resources for further reading, see Hilmar Moore's Biographical Introduction for Farmers.
Information Courtesy of Biodynamics.com
“So, friends, every day do something that won't compute...Give your approval to all you cannot understand...Ask the questions that have no answers. Put your faith in two inches of humus that will build under the trees every thousand years...Laugh. Be joyful though you have considered all the facts....Practice resurrection.”
― Wendell Berry, The Country of Marriage
