Dalmore Farm: Victoria’s first biodynamic farming venture (1933-1934)

Summary

Dalmore Farm (1933-1934) was Victoria’s first biodynamic farming venture. A letter, written in Milan, Italy, in Italian in 1934 by Rosa Genoni (1867-1954) \ enables details of this venture to be finally revealed. Rosa wrote of her youngest brother, Ernesto Genoni (1885-1975): “Now Ernesto … is at Dalmore, a farm of my brother Marino (the father of the boy [Alfredo Genoni (1913-1999)] who was sent to us years ago from Australia and we sent him to Dornach where he stayed for two years, and two more to the school at Stuttgart) and in part by my brother Angelo, who asked Ernesto to go and organise the farm biologically”. “Ernesto had a small wooden house built there for his use. It has only two rooms but it must be fairly comfortable, as Ernesto invited [Alfred] Meebold [1863-1952] to lodge with him for his future visit for the Melbourne group”. Ernesto Genoni had spent 1924 at the Goetheanum under the tutelage of Rudolf Steiner in both art and spiritual science. Ernesto recalled: I started in a small way to work a farm on Dr Steiner’s bio-dynamic methods in association with Fred Genoni”. Ernesto was the first Australian to join Rudolf Steiner’s Experimental Circle of Anthroposophic Farmers and Gardeners (in 1928). Ernesto subsequently embarked on an extensive study tour of Experimental Circle farms in Europe, visiting the leading practitioners of biodynamics: “In 1930 I went to Dornach again to become acquainted with the BD farming. [Ehrenfried] Pfeiffer … [Erika] Riese … Count Lerchenfeld … [Ernst] Stegemann at Marienhöhe … [Erhard] Bartsch near Berlin, [Max] Schwarz near Bremen … London [Carl] Mirbt … Pfeiffer farm at Rosendahl [Netherlands]”. The fate of the 80 acre Dalmore Farm was settled by the floods of 1934 which extinguished the hopes for this first BD venture in Victoria. The December 1934 flood was the “largest flood on record”. Ernesto went on to establish another biodynamic farm, Demeter Farm (1934-1954).