What we do

The Archway on a summers day

Lying in the hills behind Dolphinton, Garvald Home Farm sits astride the boundary between Peeblesshire and South Lanarkshire and comprises nearly 200 acres of land owned and leased by the Garvald Trust.

Established in 1987, this true Social Enterprise is today home to a small community of adults, some with learning disabilities, living and working together to run the farm according to biodynamic principles.

The farm from the hill behind

Our aims are to:

  • aspire to the highest ideals of Bio-Dynamic food production – creating a healthy soil, growing healthy crops, rearing healthy animals and providing a healthy environment for people to live and work.
  • provide a warm, caring environment where people with learning disabilities can live and work in a situation where they feel valued and feel able to achieve their full potential as human beings.
  • ‘grow’ the community, incorporating secondary and tertiary activities of food production and processing, allowing the farm to support people.
  • make the farm more accessible to the general public – particularly those disadvantaged by living in the city.
  • develop on the farm an educational centre, giving children and young people from the city access to direct experience of working with farm animals and crop growing.
  • develop projects where teenagers can work together with people with learning disabilities to their mutual advantage.
  • uphold the ideals proclaimed in the following verses by Rudolf Steiner with which we begin our meetings:

The healthy social life is found when
In the mirror of each human soul
The whole community finds its reflection
And when in the community
The virtue of each one is living

  • work with National Regulation Bodies such as the Care Commission in such a way that we take full cognizance of what is asked of us and implement recommendations so that they enhance the ideals we strive to live by.