Creating Space and a Place for Mindful Relationship
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Over the past 45 years, The Hawthorne Valley Association has been quietly demonstrating—through an array of educational, cultural, and economic initiatives—what it truly means to commit to live and work in harmony with all natural systems, guided by a spirit of reciprocity and mutuality. HVA’s gentle yet profound influence has been spreading to an ever-widening circle across the Greater Hudson Valley. No one spins a story like Martin Ping, HVA’s executive director, and we were honored to spend a day with him last spring for this exploration of an organization that has emerged as a central node in the growing network of regenerative practice in our bioregion.
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Martin Ping directs an organization founded on Rudolf Steiner's integral vision of a regenerative society, culture, and economy. All video clips: Create Class 6
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A Wish Granted
In 1990 Martin Ping joined the faculty of Hawthorne Valley Waldorf School in Harlemville, New York, a hamlet nestled between the Taconic Range and the Berkshire Hills. His son and daughter were already enrolled there as students. Waldorf Schools—which now number over 1,000 globally— follow the educational philosophy of the Austrian social reformer and scientist/spiritualist Rudolf Steiner. Curious to learn more about this singular transdisciplinary thinker who inspired the founding of the school at Hawthorne Valley and the Biodynamic® farm that surrounded it, Martin decided to take a deep dive into all things Steiner when a course was offered by veteran Waldorf teacher and Hawthorne Valley co-founder Henry Barnes. “By the end of that course I felt I would give my right arm and left leg to keep this place going,” Martin recalled on a recent spring morning. “I had never heard of anything that was so supportive of creating the space for each individual to emerge and step into their own destiny. I wanted in on that. I wanted my children to have that, and my grandchildren.” As it turns out, Martin’s wish has been granted. Today he directs Hawthorne Valley Association, an organization founded on Steiner’s integral vision of a regenerative society, culture, and economy. Martin begins his day cooking breakfast for his granddaughter in the house adjacent to the farm that he built. “I get to eat the best food, live and work in a beautiful place with amazing colleagues who inspire me, have deep meaningful relationships, and have the ability to develop personally and professionally,” he reflected, “and I get to walk my granddaughter to school every day on the same path I walked her mother to school as a child. No dollar amount would I trade for that.” A Quick Dive into the Steinerian Worldview We visited Hawthorne Valley hoping to experience our own mini-deep dive into the history and culture of the Association and the world of Rudolf Steiner according to Martin Ping. We started off the morning on a picnic bench eating fresh-baked bagels from Hawthorne Valley Farm Store as children performed sometimes unnerving acrobatic maneuvers in a surrounding grove of trees. |
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“It was Steiner’s belief,” Martin began by explaining, “that we can’t be healthy if someone else is suffering. In his cosmology he imagined society moving to a place where our consciousness became so attuned to our interconnectedness that we would not act in a way that caused harm to another human or another species on the earth. It is a belief we try to practice here at Hawthorne Valley in our own imperfect way.”
Steiner, Martin went on to recount, believed that an ideal world economic system should be based on mindfully cultivated relationships of mutuality and reciprocity among the producers, distributors, and consumers of goods and services. An integral consciousness, he said, should guide all human activities—economic, spiritual, cultural, and social—and should extend to our relationships with all the natural world.
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Lucy Marston, Co-Director of Farm Operations, Field Vegetables & CSA Manager at Hawthorne Valley. She had no previous experience in farming but never looked back after her Whole Farm Apprenticeship in 2011. Photo credit: Creative Class 6
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Living in this kind of conscious relationship requires considerable intentionality, Martin admitted: “Relationships are not easy, and to think in terms of wholeness, especially in this period of human history, where we have moved to hyper-individualization—the consequence of the Cartesian split—requires a massive shift in thinking.” However, it was Steiner’s belief that only when we embrace relationship will we be primed to play our part in the continuous regeneration of the natural systems of planet earth. “My sense is that in the evolution of the planet we are still becoming human,” Martin confided, “still reaching our full human potential.” This striving is embedded in Hawthorne Valley’s founding mission statement: “This work together will create a place where it is possible to become in the true sense a full human being.” |
Martin's granddaughter enjoys a walk around the farm after school, stopping to visit with a favorite pig. Steiner School students at Hawthorne Valley enjoy a near seamless connection between classroom and farmyard. Photo credit: Creative Class 6
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A Short History of Hawthorne Valley The search for this place of possibility began in the mid 1960s when a group of teachers at Manhattan’s Rudolf Steiner School decided to explore purchasing some land outside the city to offer their students access to farm life. That children should have the opportunity to connect to the natural world at the earliest possible age while acquiring the knowledge and skills to contribute to the greater good had long been a central tenet of a Waldorf education. Over the course of the next seven years, the teachers toured over 70 farms before settling on the Curtis Vincent Farm, a 331-acre tract of land in Harlemville. At the time of sale the property was no longer actively farmed, but had been both a dairy farm and previously had grown hay as fuel for New York City’s transit system. In addition to fitting the requirement of being able to serve school children in the New York-Boston area, the farm had appeal due to its close proximity to Camphill Copake, a community working out of Steiner’s insights into serving individuals with special needs. Three donors contributed funds for a down payment and in September 1972 the first class of students from the Manhattan Steiner School visited for their week on the farm. |
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Early days and today, children connecting with the soil and its bounty at Hawthorne Valley Farm. Photos courtesy Hawthorne Valley Farm Association.
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“In the beginning Hawthorne Valley was embryonic, an organism without differentiation,” Martin explained. “In the first year this was a farm with no farming going on. Kids stayed in a hostel on the grounds and were sent to working farms in the area during the week. The rest of the time they were busy picking rocks out of our field. In 1973 Hawthorne Valley Steiner School was established, drawing elementary school students from neighboring Camphill Village in Copake. Over time the school began to attract students from a wider radius and expanded into a high school. Many New York families, lured by the draw of a Hawthorne Valley Waldorf School education for their children, have taken up permanent residence in Columbia County. Today there are over 270 students from pre-K to Grade 12 enrolled at Hawthorne Valley Waldorf School. In 1975, a Swiss farmer was hired to return a portion of the original farm’s acreage to productive agriculture. He operated the farm under the guiding biodynamic principles Steiner had expounded in a series of lectures to German farmers in the 1920s. Biodynamic agriculture is grounded in something close to a reverence for soil and its life-sustaining attributes. |
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An overcast day reveals the magic of the Hawthorne Valley landscape. Photo credit: Creative Class 6
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Often called “organics plus,” biodynamic practice avoids whenever possible inputs external to the farm, and focuses on producing and balancing its soil fertility, treating the farm to the extent possible as a closed-loop living entity. Manure from livestock, referred to as “black gold,” provides fertilizer for produce. Homeopathic “preparations” are applied to the soil and compost as revitalizing agents, introducing an element of ritual into the practical workings of the farm. Biodynamic farmers are particularly attuned to the subtle influences of the natural world—believing that the alignment of stars and the cycles of the moon can affect the growth of plants and the behavior of animals. Like all living organisms, Hawthorne Valley has evolved by adapting to often unforeseen and challenging circumstances, and has needed to find a balance between what can sometimes be experienced as conflicting goals and polarities. For example, running a productive farm using sustainable or regenerative practices can be challenging enough. Doing so while training the next generation of farmers, with over 1000 children underfoot during the course of a given year, provides ample opportunity for conflict. “This built-in tension zone has invited us to develop important social muscles that I believe will only become more important as we all navigate the real challenges that we will collectively face as a species going forward," Martin reflected. In 1994, a failed attempt to enter into the food distribution business nearly brought Hawthorne Valley Association to the brink of bankruptcy. There was a subsequent change in leadership on the farm, a Transition Task Force was formed to implement a turnaround, and Martin was appointed to the Association’s board. He wrote fiscal guidelines that required each entity to balance its budget or to maintain sufficient reserves so that the Association would avoid being put at financial risk. The Rudolf Steiner Foundation (aka RSF Social Finance), which was located adjacent to Hawthorne Valley until it moved to San Francisco in 2002, helped refinance the Association’s debt, and it emerged once again solvent. The organization was at a crossroads that threatened its holistic vision when a proposal was advanced by the Transition Task Force to form a Hawthorne Valley Land Trust and spin off all then-existing operating entities— the school, the farm, and the Visiting School’s Program—into separate operating businesses leasing land from the Association holding company. The plan was put to the Hawthorne Valley community and, based on wide input, rejected by the Association’s board. “For me, it was as if the distinct organs were now in search of the organism”, and from that day forward, Martin reported, “if there was one word spoken here it was that we need more integration. It was our distinct offering, this push to integral consciousness. It is our story and our strength.”
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"I get to walk my granddaughter to school every day on the same path I walked her mother to school as a child," Martin says. "No dollar amount would I trade for that." Photo credit: Creative Class 6
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Holding the Center for the Organisms on the Edges Hawthorne Valley’s farm-related “revenue-generating” enterprises have grown over the years and now include five (including the farm itself) others operating under the nonprofit umbrella. The Hawthorne Valley Farm Store is a full service grocery and café offering organic and biodynamic foods, and select locally grown produce. It operates out of an 8,000 square foot building which also houses the Hawthorne Valley's bakery, which produces breads, rolls, granola, scones, muffin and cookies sourced from flours, grains, nuts, seeds, and fruits, 100 percent either biodynamically or organically grown, with as much of the Biodynamic grain sources from the farm as possible. The Hawthorne Valley's creamery, housed next to the milking barn produces yogurt, raw milk, and hard and soft cheese, all organic and Biodynamic certified, sourced from milk drawn from its 65-head herd of 100% grassfed dairy cows. The Greenmarket business, which operates eight markets in the NYC metro area, is experiencing perhaps the greatest challenges as it has invested in infrastructure and labor to keep pace with the proliferation of New York City greenmarkets, while aggregate sales at those markets have been on the decline since 2011. “There are so many that you have to have a presence in multiple markets in order to meet consumer demand where it is,” Martin admits. “This adds complexity and cost into the system.” While none of these food-related enterprises are high margin, and their earnings fluctuate year over year, all contribute on an ongoing basis a portion of their revenues to the notprofit educational and cultural missions of the Association, and reduce the Association’s reliance on philanthropic support. Hawthorne Valley has, over the years, advanced and supported numerous initiatives, operating as Martin notes “at the edges,” including the Institute for Mindful Agriculture, Free Columbia, and the Center for Social Research. All are grounded in Steiner’s profound commitment to a mindful, often spiritual, interweaving of the arts, education, and farming. “The farm holds the center of gravity to make possible these more agile, smaller organizations to exist,” Martin explained, “sensing what is going on in the field and feeding it back to the center.”“The center, he elaborated, “provides the gravitas to have them do this without spinning off, because they are very small and nimble but they are not necessarily financially stable. They have what they need to do every year, no more no less, through fundraising and modest fees. They represent a cultural holding space for our capacity for new thinking.”
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Inviting the Greater Community Into the Story
In Hawthorne Valley’s early years considerable tensions existed between it and the surrounding community. “Some said we were just a bunch of hippies,” Martin recalled, “There was this level of misunderstanding about what we were because we didn’t invite people in.” Martin now seizes on every opportunity to draw the community into the Hawthorne Valley story, inviting road crews working in the area over for a cup of coffee and a bagel, and a tour of the farm. Waldorf School students often work side by side as apprentices alongside subcontractors on building projects, and children have been known to serenade crusty construction workers, sometimes reducing them to tears. “It’s our way of letting them know we appreciate people who can do things with their hands,” Martin acknowledged, “that we don’t consider their work menial labor but rather a noble vocation. The ability to do practical work and educating through the work are foundational to Hawthorne Valley.” |
At work in bakery and creamery; Fall Fest at the Farm Store. Photos courtesy Hawthorne Valley Association.
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Over the years, as the Association’s various entities have grown to employ a workforce of over 200 it is now acknowledged by community members as one of the county’s prime economic engines. But its contribution is just as much about community building as economic value. “We are creating jobs and products, and are drawing people into the community when they move here to be part of the school,” Martin explained. “All of that has had an impact. We are an example of what a local living economy can look like. Find your place, dig in, and add to it.”
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Going With the Urban Rural Flow
Hawthorne Valley was founded on the impulse to connect New York City children with the natural world and the arts, and over the past half-century its ties to the urban communities of “New Amsterdam,” Martin’s quaint appellation for New York City, have only deepened and become more complex. “The idea of food going down to the city and children coming up has been a piece of our work for the past 40 and 46 years, respectively,” Martin reported. The food going down includes Hawthorne Valley yogurt and kraut, which are widely distributed in the greater New York City metropolitan area and can be found in stores like the Park Slope Coop, Whole Foods, and others. One of the founding farms at the Union Square Market in 1976, Hawthorne Valley now has a presence in eight New York City greenmarkets and operates four New York City CSAs. Although he doesn’t get down to the city markets as often as he would like, one of the highs Martin has experienced is looking down at a child at a green market and recognizing one of the kids who has visited Hawthorne Valley farm with his/her class and who is still connected with the farm through the weekly ritual of visiting the neighborhood greenmarket. “It burns a hole right through you,” he told us. Martin reported that a recent back-of-the-envelope mapping exercise undertaken at Hawthorne Valley revealed that the source of more than 50 percent of its revenues and funding (including philanthropy, food sales, education programs, and Waldorf School tuition) can be tied to New York City. Finding a way to work with those connections and knit them more closely to create more strength and resilience in the Hawthorne Valley economic model is an ongoing strategic challenge for the organization. |
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Farmer apprentices at work in Hawthorne Valley's veggie fields and enjoying a relaxing moment with livestock. Photos courtesy Hawthorne Valley Association.
But Martin is quick to point out that dependency goes both ways between rural and urban communities of the Greater Hudson Valley.A map of the Hudson Valley beginning in colonial times created by Conrad Vispo of Hawthorne Valley's Farmscape Ecology Program illustrates changes in population centers in decade increments and how they have spread into open space. “You see densification spreading around the metro areas with almost everything filled in in the Hudson Valley,” Martin reported. “There are now very few places left that are not set in impervious construction and Columbia County is one of those few places. To some degree, we still have a choice here. People drive through Columbia County on the weekends and love it but what they don’t know is that we are now 75 percent forest and 25 percent open space and that is the inverse of what it was 100 or so years ago. All the forest came back because of the decline in agriculture as it was practiced then.”
The challenge to food security in the Greater Hudson Valley is writ large across the landscape, Martin asserted: “New York City now has only a 3-day food supply. There is not much resilience in that model. How are we finding new ways to provision our growing population? It is a massive question.” Creating a strategy for local food resiliency must be recognized across the state’s political divide. “We have to create the containers for meaningful conversation so everyone is mindful of our shared needs or we will be disagreeing till the end of time,” Martin said. |
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Reinterpreting the Hudson Valley Commonwealth
By its very nature biodynamic farming is small-scale and labor intensive. Martin had difficulty restraining his vocabulary when he talked about the unlevel field small regenerative farms must play on as they compete with the big, soil-destroying players of industrial agriculture. “The irony,” he said, “is our tax dollars subsidize a system that is depleting soils and creating eutrophic zones. Meanwhile here we are trying to grow food in partnership with building soil and we are penalized because our costs are not recognized. Then we have the Costcos and Amazons and Wal-Marts of the world coopting terms and driving down prices. Four letter words are close to rolling off my tongue as I think of this. We need to be honest about the system we are up against… we are less than David to their Goliath.” |
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Photos courtesy Hawthorne Valley Association.
Today farms like Hawthorne Valley that invest heavily in soil health are viable only with significant private subsidies.Those investments are critical, as a recent UN study indicates that if current industrial agriculture practices continue to prevail, the world will run out of top soil in sixty years. Topsoil not only provides key nutrients essential for plant growth and human health, it is also a powerful carbon sequestration tool.
Hawthorne Valley has been the fortunate beneficiary of generous private donations and flexible capital providers like RSF Social Finance. While that takes some of the pressure off the farm in the short term, Martin admitted, “the bigger question is how do we educate society to value food and land stewardship over the long term so that we can operate without those supports? We are trying to get a conversation started around the regenerative economy that not enough people have been talking about.” At Hawthorne Valley, that conversation often strays into the territory of radical reinterpretations of what it means to be a commonwealth. “If you are so fortunate as to be in a high margin business that generate excess profits,” Martin elaborated, “then maybe you should plow some of those profits into education, the arts, or into biodynamic agriculture with no strings attached, recognizing that in order to thrive a community needs to nurture minds and soil fertility. So in the best-case scenario if Hawthorne Valley were a microcosm of this healthy economic commonwealth we would have businesses [in the community] that would return money to our lower margin businesses and even into those that were not by nature designed to be profitable.” Hawthorne Valley’s latest venture was the spin-off of Hawthorne Valley’s own sauerkraut cellar into a for profit subsidiary, Whitethorne LLC. Formerly housed in the confines of the basement of the administrative building, Hawthorne Valley recognized that this higher-margin and growing business had potential to provide a greater impact and financial contribution to Hawthorne Valley outside the walls of the basement. To realize that potential, Hawthorne Valley partnered with local impact investors and values-aligned debt provider RSF Social Finance to move the business into a facility in nearby Hudson, NY. With room to grow, Whitethorne now produces Hawthorne Valley’s brand of sauerkraut and hot sauce, as well as two smaller values-aligned local brands. This goal of co-packing for other brands will hopefully unlock production economies of scale for these smaller brands, and support the economics and impact goals of Whitethorne. Long-term, Hawthorne Valley and the other owners hope for the model to be a market engine for local biodynamic and organic farmers, and generate dividends back to the members, including the nonprofit parent (Hawthorne Valley), the workers in the facility, and the initial investors. Martin is eager to see the Greater Hudson Valley participate more fully in the grand holistic experiments that Hawthorne Valley has been incubating over the past half century. |
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The strategic challenge for Hawthorne Valley in the coming decades will be to find new ways to connect and engage with the region to share its unique vision, beyond its customer base, and other existing relationships. He left us with these parting words: “We all need to think about some of these ideas and concepts and create more collaborative networks to foster them. To me the end goal is to create those throughout the Hudson Valley, joyfully linked.”
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Martin and Kevin Irby, director of Threadspan and a consultant to Hawthorne Valley Association, reflect on the web of relationships Hawthorne Valley has woven over the years across the Greater Hudson Valley. Photo credit: Creative Class 6