Reimagining What’s Possible Beneath Our Feet!

Published 16th March 2026. Written by Maddison O’Brien

Just over three years ago, a quiet but powerful seed was planted at the Watershed Landcare stall during the Mudgee Small Farm Field Days. Kesh Mudaly, Biodynamics Specialist at LOWE Wines, stopped by to talk soil. What began as a casual conversation quickly grew into something larger: a shared curiosity about how we might farm and garden in ways that genuinely regenerate land, climate and community.

Biodynamics had already taken root at LOWE Wines in Mudgee, one of Australia’s fully certified biodynamic vineyards. Over the years, the vineyard has refined practices centred on soil life, compost preparations and close observation of natural cycles, treating the farm as a living system where each element influences the whole.

Through Watershed Landcare’s Conversations for Change program in 2025, members were invited to visit the vineyard for a workshop exploring the foundations of biodynamics. The session quickly filled. Participants walked through soil fertility principles, preparations and seasonal timing before sharing lunch grown on the same land where those ideas were being applied.

The response made something clear: there is a strong appetite in the community for practical knowledge about how to build healthier soils and more resilient landscapes.

Kesh demonstrating the Cow Pat Pit preparation, a biodynamic soil amendment used to enliven soil biology.

Kesh says biodynamics is often misunderstood.

“Biodynamics isn’t about dancing under the moonlight, cow horns in hand, chanting witchy incantations – this is not airy-fairy agriculture,” she says. “It’s about whole-systems thinking, utilising the tools and resources available to regenerate the land and bring balance to the farm system in a holistic way.”

At its heart, she explains, biodynamics is about nurturing relationships between soil life, plants, animals and people.

“The biodynamic model in its simplest form is a farming philosophy that combines the building and maintenance of healthy living soil, and the recognition of the link between plant growth and the rhythms of the cosmos.”

Kesh later returned to the Mudgee Small Farm Field Days in 2025 to speak about the scalability of biodynamic and Korean Natural Farming principles, sharing examples from both the vineyard and her own backyard food forest.

With interest continuing to grow, many participants began asking where they could learn more.

Kesh pointed them to her long-time teacher, biodynamics educator Hamish Mackay, who has spent more than forty years helping farmers understand soil vitality and farm ecology.

This April, that learning journey comes full circle. Hamish Mackay will visit Mudgee to teach a two-day introductory biodynamics course at LOWE Wines on April 9 and 10, giving local farmers, gardeners and landcarers the chance to explore these ideas more deeply and see them in action.

Sometimes it begins simply with a conversation about soil and the possibility of what might grow from it.