An unconventional Austrian philosopher's influence has stretched across a century to specialty vineyards and inventive classrooms in Sonoma County that share his vision for bringing a "life force" to the tilling of soil and cultivating of young minds.
With its trademark affection for liberal politics and alternative practices, this suburban-to-rural county has become fertile ground for the ideas hatched in the early 20th century by quirky, controversial Rudolf Steiner.
Nowhere else in the nation are so many Waldorf-inspired public charter schools close together, six within a 35-mile radius, including four in Sonoma County and two more in Napa and Marin counties.
And nowhere else is there such a concentration of wineries and vineyards that are certified practitioners of biodynamic farming, a blend of botanical common sense with pagan-like animism that began taking hold in North Coast vineyards in the mid-1990s.
Both Waldorf education and biodynamics are rooted in anthroposophy, Steiner's overarching philosophy in his compendium of 40 books and more than 6,000 lectures that imputes a spiritual-material harmony to the universe.
"The life forces here are tremendous," said Roland Baril, lower school director at the 389-student Summerfield Waldorf School in Santa Rosa.
"We look at the farm as a living organism," said Mike Benziger, head of the Benziger Family Winery in Glen Ellen that began converting to biodynamic practices in 1995. "When you look at something that's alive you manage it differently."
It's unconventional, and to some, outlandish thinking.
Despite the involvement of figures like Benziger, Paul Dolan in Mendocino County and Jim Fetzer in Lake County, biodynamic wine remains "an obscure part of the business," wine industry analyst Jon Fredrikson said.
Somewhat like a religion, he said, "it requires a good deal of faith."
Dan Dugan, a San Francisco sound engineer who is part of a group that filed a lawsuit challenging the non-sectarian status of Waldorf charter schools, contends that anthroposophy is thinly veiled religion that has no place in public schools. "It's deceptive," he said.
To devotees, it's a fit for Sonoma County's close-to-the-earth inclinations as Steiner-informed schools and vineyards carve growing footholds in their respective fields.
"Sonoma County is a bit of a bubble in relation to the outside world," Benziger said.
"We're at the epicenter of the public Waldorf movement," said Sheila Riley, administrator at Woodland Star Charter School in Sonoma, one of the four local charter schools offering an "arts-infused" Waldorf-style curriculum.
Summerfield Waldorf School, founded in Santa Rosa during the 1970s revival of Waldorf education, occupies a bucolic, 38-campus with an enrollment that is rising while many expensive, private academies lose students.
Enrollment at the four Waldorf charter schools - two in Sebastopol, and one each in Petaluma and Sonoma - is 886 this year, up 41 percent from five years ago. With more than 1,000 schools worldwide, Waldorf is said to be the largest non-parochial private school system in the world.
Benziger, who grows 250acres of grapes at six sites, is one of a dozen certified biodynamic wineries or vineyards in Sonoma County. Mendocino County has nine and Lake County has three biodynamic wine operations, according to Demeter, the international organization that certifies biodynamic products.
Of the 51 Demeter-certified wine operations in the United States, all but two are on the West Coast and 38 are in California.
The parents who can spend up to $170,000 to send their kids through Summerfield Waldorf's kindergarten-through-12th grade and winemakers who spend millions converting their operations to biodynamics are true believers.
And they say it's a perfect fit in Sonoma County, a land of ideas for saving open space, buying hybrid cars and organic foods, embracing sustainable technology and choosing alternative medicine.
The word anthroposophy means "wisdom of man." Steiner, who believed in clairvoyance and close observation of the natural world, defined it as "a path of knowledge aiming to guide the spiritual element in the human being to the spiritual in the universe."
Savant or svengali, depending on one's point of view, Steiner designed an educational system - at the Waldorf Astoria cigarette factory in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1919 - attuned to his theories of child development.
The progression of lessons and methods is precise, even rigid, starting with two years of play-oriented kindergarten using beeswax block crayons, with which kids draw in colorful swaths.
Stick crayons and pencils are introduced in grades one to three, with fountain pens in fourth grade. "It's an education which appreciates how a person grows and develops," said Maria Onorato, a high school junior who's been in Waldorf since fourth grade.
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