Neal has been the organic and biodynamic gardening teacher here at Golden Hill Steiner School for 15 years. Before that he also taught the certificate courses in organic horticulture at Denmark TAFE. As most of you know, Neal is a dedicated foodie who loves to cook, and loves to teach gardening through cooking as well. Neal browses his veggie garden before grocery shopping or deciding what to cook for dinner. “We tend to talk of veggies as the bit on the side of a fancy dinner, but I like to champion a vegetable as the star of a meal. Like a beautiful homegrown cauliflower – make that the centre, the highlight of what you cook and serve", says Neal with a sparkle in his eye.

Neal remembers being switched on to the magic of growing and eating your veggies fresh out of the garden when he was a small kid shadowing his grandad in his Busselton garden. Grandad gave Neal a freshly pulled carrot to eat and Neal remembers the rich, sweet flavour even now. Neal’s grandad was also an inspiration as he baked his own bread and was a famous local herring fisherman. Neal attributes his love and appreciation for fishing, baking, and growing and eating homegrown veggies to this Busselton grandad, where Neal, who grew up in Perth, spent every school holidays. Surfing and fishing have been big passions of Neal’s ever since his childhood.

It’s a bit hard to believe, but as a young man Neal spent some years in Sydney treading the corporate path, being a city slicker. Then he went traveling with his then partner and ended up in southern Spain, where he immersed himself in rural, peasant life and lived in a literal cave in Andalucia, a province of Spain. The peasants grew their own veggies down in the valley and grew everything organically. Inspired by this experience, Neal looked up organic growers and market gardeners in Perth on his return to WA. Neal helped create ‘Organic Foods Australia’ and ran the home delivery part of the business for many years, delivering boxes of delicious organic veggies to households all over Perth.

Then, about 25 years ago, Neal sold the business and started a big travel adventure right around Australia. He came through Denmark when a big clowning festival was on in the town. Neal credits the clown festival with drawing him to Denmark – “I was, of course, also attracted by the surfing and the remote, wild, and free coast here, as well as the bush…but it was the clowns on the bridge as I pulled into town, who really signalled to me that Denmark was different to your run-of-the-mill country WA town. I have loved living and working here ever since.”

Neal came to the Steiner school through his interest in biodynamic horticulture and agriculture – the fundamental philosophy underpinning Steiner gardening teaching, and a method of growing food invented by Rudolf Steiner. Neal describes biodynamics as working energetically with the land – listening to the interconnected complexity of living systems and being guided by the energy that underlies what is visible. Both of Neal’s kids attended Golden Hill Steiner School, as Neal loves the way children are taught in the Steiner philosophy. He feels it is akin to working with children’s needs on an energetic level, rather than teaching subjects ‘head-on’. His daughter Olive began attending Class One the same year that Neal started teaching gardening at the school. “Back then, I taught all the classes in one day,” Neal recalls, ‘Now I teach 4 days a week, and can teach with much more detail and hone students’ skills.”

Neal loves teaching the students at Golden Hill as he absolutely believes in the philosophy that healthy food = healthy minds. He feels he is making a change in the world through the life principles he can instil in the students by teaching them something so practical as conscientious gardening and cooking delicious food together.  “In a world where we are so disassociated from everything, it’s just so awesome to see kids getting their hands dirty. They’re off their screens and they’re connecting right in – what they grow, they eat. Just gardening as an activity is so fabulous for kids to do, that being able to teach them about biodynamics and the deeper nature of how things grow and flourish is the bonus for me”.