About Us

A gardener from a young age, Barbara was brought up on a homestead in the country outside of Victoria, British Columbia. Food was not called organic back then and the everyday diet consisted of wild fish and game, fruits and vegetables from the one acre garden and raw unadulterated dairy products.

During the summer of 1972, while in Zimbabwe, Barbara had the good fortune of studying under the mentorship of Swami Nisreyasananda before the great wave of Gurus swept across America. This was her first contact with the immense body of Ayurvedic knowledge passed down from the Rishis of India. This study was furthered in the l990s with an Ayurvedic course under the tutelage of Dr. Robert Svoboda.

Barbara obtained a Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Wildlife Biology from the University of British Columbia where she did research on The Vancouver Island Wolf and received a National Research Council Grant to enter a Doctoral Program at the University of Victoria. After teaching introductory Biology courses and doing personal research on “the holes in Science” she left school to nurse her dying father then moved to Esalen Institute and became immersed in the Human Potential Movement. She became a Mother to two sons, moved to and then left an 80 acre homestead in the wilds of northern British Columbia, eventually settling with her family in the Kootenay River Valley where Aurora Farm was conceived as an agricultural individuality.

Barbara brought her study of Rudolf Steiner’s work to fruition when she established the first Biodynamic Seed Company in North America in 1991. Medicinal tea and herbal remedies rounded out the Aurora Farm catalog. It was here at Aurora where many apprentices were taught the Art and Craft of BD agriculture and Nathan and William were brought up with nature at their back door and in their bellies. Barbara is a Reiki Master/Teacher of the Usui Tradition. Her Reiki teacher is Steven McFadden and she offers Reiki I, II, and III teachings. Barbara has traveled extensively in Southern Africa and the U.K.