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Cultivating Place: Energetic – The Dynamics Of Biodynamics At Fern Verrow Farm

Close to 21 years ago, a Cordon Bleu trained chef and business woman named Jane Scotter left a busy city life in London and bought a farm. She was joined not long after by another professional chef, Harry Astley. Together the two have taken their 16 idyllic acres in Herefordshire, England and crafted a life fully integrated and interdependent with the land, its plants and animals, their food, their own sense of purpose and the energetic cycles of the moon and the seasons. 

Their farm - Fern Verrow - is not just any farm, it is a biodynamic farm and in 2015, Jane and Harry, with the photographic assistance of Tessa Traeger, produced a lushly reciped and photographed account of their energetic farming journey. I've always been fascinated by biodynamics - its earthy and yet other-wordly attributes and awareness, and I’ve been eager to learn more. 

As we near that universal and ancient celebration of land and re-growth, May Day, Jane and Harry join us this week on Cultivating Place. Original images by Tessa Traeger, the book "Fern Verrow" is published Quadrille Press.

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Jennifer Jewell is the creator and host of the national award-winning, weekly public radio program and podcast, Cultivating Place: Conversations on Natural History & the Human Impulse to Garden, Jennifer Jewell is a gardener, garden writer, and gardening educator and advocate. Particularly interested in the intersections between gardens, the native plant environments around them, and human culture, she is the daughter of garden and floral designing mother and a wildlife biologist father.