Branches & Initiatives
Branches
Today, Hawthorne Valley Association includes seven distinct branches:
Hawthorne Valley Farm
A 400-acre Biodynamic farm with a 300-member CSA, on-farm bakery, sauerkraut cellar, and dairy, a full-line natural foods store, and a wide array of on-farm education programs for children and adults, summer camps, and vocational training courses for practicing and aspiring farmers. Since 1972, Hawthorne Valley Farm has hosted over 20,000 children through various on-farm education programs and continues to balance production of nutritious food, sensitive land stewardship, and on-farm education.
Hawthorne Valley Waldorf School
A Nursery through Grade 12 accredited, independent day school.
Hawthorne Valley Farmscape Ecology Program
A landscape learning initiative facilitating the ecological, historical, and socio-cultural exploration of Columbia County through research and outreach. The program encourages the compassionate, holistic understanding of our landscape and the active consideration of how human and non-human ecology can best be configured to provide healthy, economically viable human sustenance while supporting the other species that share this land with us.
Hawthorne Valley Center for Social Research
An independent "think and do" tank that combines research and prototyping as a means to identify and implement solutions to modern days social problems. The constellation of projects reflect a mission to promote social health: supporting freedom and choice in cultural life, equality and democracy in political life, and associative cooperation in economic life.
Hawthorne Valley Alkion Center
Offering Foundation Studies in Anthroposophy, Waldorf Teacher Training for Early Childhood through Grade 8, and visual arts courses and various workshops through the year. Grounded in the path of inner development outlined by Rudolf Steiner, these offerings strive to awaken the individual to the working of the spirit in the human being, nature, and society.
Hawthorne Valley Adonis Press
A publisher and distributor of books on phenomena-centered science, poetry, and essays.
Free Columbia
Offers a free, full time, nine month art course based on the fundamentals of the art of painting as they come to life through anthroposophy. Participants seek out the colors and their relationships, the living laws of composition, light and darkness and the spring of imagination where all pictures have their source. In addition to painting and drawing the course will also include study of the basic elements of anthroposophy, history of art as an image of evolution, philosophy of aesthetics, social questions in relation to art and economics, as well as other themes using a wide variety of media including watercolor, oil, egg tempera, charcoal, surface collage, block printing and pastel. Free Columbia also hosts lectures, workshops, and conferences throughout the year.