BD Digests #17
#17 on the Seventeenth!
With your friends Stewart Lundy and Lloyd Nelson
Liturgy of the Seasons by Max Leyf
THIRTY-SECOND WEEK OF THE YEAR
Ich fühle fruchtend eigne Kraft
Sich stärkend mich der Welt verleihn;
Mein Eigenwesen fühl ich kraftend
Zur Klarheit sich zu wenden
Im Lebensschicksalsweben.
∇∆
I feel a power now my own,
ripe and ready to give back
my Self, I feel and comprehend
my way in clarity I’ll wend
to weave life’s latticework of destiny.
A great weaving of destinies has guided us towards the exploration of the extraordinary world of Bio-Dynamics. We can lift our thoughts to the mighty workings of the cosmos and universe, while tending the soils, plants and animals here and now. The Earth and her Moon, the planets and stars, are weaving through time and space in the cosmic dance of life, death and rebirth.
Astronomically, the November series of remarkable planetary trines continues with a few more particularly interesting planetary configurations. On November 26th, Venus trines Jupiter, followed by Venus trines Saturn. A simple application of Dandelion BD #506 and Valerian BD #507 biodynamic preparations would be an excellent addition to spray your gardens with at this time. Dandelion, with its relation to Jupiter, can be used to help produce abundance on a farm. Valerian’s affinity with Saturn boosts phosphorus and will help increase earthworm populations. Venus is connected to the yarrow, and can help potassium strengthen plants. Using these preparations during a favorable planetary trine is a simple way to fast-track the Biodynamic process.
I love visiting biodynamic farms. There’s usually a rare tangible magic in the air. When you eat food from a farm and work on that same farm, you are consuming plants imbued with the very forces that correspond to how that land relates to the cosmos – which is to say, you need less of it when it resonates with your own experiences and Mother Earth’s experiences. Vegetables imported from all around the world arrive at grocery stores at least a week after they were harvested – by the time we eat them they are exhausted, so it’s little wonder so many of us feel depleted living off such food. What is common to living off the land in any regenerative sense, eating seasonally, and developing that care for the Earth is that all of this works inasmuch as it is already biodynamic to one degree or another. Biodynamic means nurturing the forces of life. If anything grows, to the degree to which it thrives, it is obeying the laws of life.
There is something special about eating food grown on the same land that preparation herbs are grown and the animals are raised. This is a rare and integrated experience, where the people are not severed from their relationship with the land. The experience of good food grown consciously according to the laws of life speaks for itself. It isn’t just that the food is sweeter, but that it evokes an inner experience. It is not shallow food that is mere fat, salt, or sugar. In good food there are subtle aromas that speak to the deep recesses of our humanity. What is evoked is not a titillated tongue or even a full stomach but a thrumming inner warmth within the soul. Do you feel joy after eating a simple meal? You should – if the plants themselves lived joyful lives! This is what biodynamics is about.
But it’s not just about the taste of food, there’s an entire atmosphere that a biodynamic operation generates. We sometimes call this a “farm organism” or “farm individuality” – in a beehive, one might speak of the inner “scent” and warmth it’s able to maintain. On a biodynamic farm, this is the same thing: the aromas of the farm shouldn’t stink but should be sweet like a meadow. The mood evoked by entering such a space is like an old growth forest or a beautiful cathedral. There is a sense of grandeur, yes, but also groundedness. You know the scent of the Earth after a good rain? A biodynamic farm evokes the feeling you usually get only after a perfect meal. The atmosphere itself permeates you without even taking a bite!
Stewart recounts how someone showed up to his farm in a suit and tie – uh oh – and a bowtie – UH OH. The man handed him a business card: Virginia Department of Health! It turns out everything was fine, the man just really liked small farms and asked if he could bring his wife. He returned with her a few weeks later. His wife was wearing some kind of digital wristband that monitors free levels of omega-3 fatty acids in the blood – the higher the level, the higher one’s stress level. As soon as she got out of the car, it flatlined to zero. She exclaimed, before even seeing anything of the farm beyond some sheds in need of repair and house in need of a paint job, that she didn’t know what they were doing there, but they were doing it right! This is a bit more dramatic than some encounters, but it gets towards what biodynamics is about: the web of dynamics just below the surface that, yes, produces delicious food. But they only produce things we can eat out of something invisible.
One of Stewart’s stories involves his neighbor. When they first moved to their farm, the neighbors (perhaps with some justification) were skeptical. But eventually, Stewart was able to make a gift of pork grown on their farm to his neighbor. The next day his neighbor returned and declared, “Stewart, that’s the best damn bacon I’ve ever had in my life and I should know because I raised hogs!” After this moment the relationship changed and Stewart was allowed to borrow equipment from his neighbor. And all this without ever uttering the word “biodynamic!” The real proof is in the pudding, particularly in the USA. Here, people care first whether something works and only then do people tend to care about why it works. This is a pragmatic culture to the core – a “bark culture” according to Steiner. We tend to work from the outside inward, rather than from the inside outward. So the answer here is not through high philosophy but through “hard proof” in terms of sensory experience. If someone can’t see, taste, touch, or smell the difference in biodynamic food, it can’t make headway in the USA. But as soon as you can demonstrate that this is more delicious than anything else they’ve tasted, they barely even need to know why it works, they’re hooked.
Savor the Flavor!
Brook Levan likes to say that his life is predominantly motivated by flavor. The notion for progression of the agrarian arts, to grow real food with real nutrition. Steiner himself suggests that all organisms, especially plants, are designed to absorb scents – which is most of what makes anything taste good. In fact, he goes so far as to suggest that nutrition is really a form of breathing. It is our organs that “smell” the scents radiating from the food we’re digesting. Our intestines savor the aromas emitted by our food, our liver absorbs others, our kidneys yet another. As Paracelsus says, “the power of manure is in its stink!” Which is to say, it is the aromas of everything that give life its zest.
Scientifically, what we think of as vivid colors, flavors, and aromas are “secondary metabolites” that aren’t the plant’s primary concern. A plant doesn’t care whether it tastes good to us. It grows, matures, and reproduces and if and only if it has more than it needs for these functions then it becomes delicious.
These days, it’s easy to disregard the human being as a cog in some machine, while forgetting that the human organism is the most advanced “technology” we have for assessing quality. Nothing we know about the molecules in a wine will tell us how to make good wine. The human being is superbly attuned to quality, when processed foods haven’t completely ruined our instincts.
Improvements in quantity and quality of produce are a direct result of using Biodynamic preparations regularly. Full spectrum flavors and aromas can be especially boosted with use of Horn Silica, Valerian and Dandelion Biodynamic preparations.
During this Thanksgiving season we can give all our gratitude for our Mother Earth, for sustaining life, for her bountiful produce, and unending opportunities for abundance. A simple way to give thanks back to Mother Earth is by stirring and applying Biodynamic preparations. A good time to apply a Biodynmic prep, if even only on a small garden, a tree, or houseplant will be the day before Thanksgiving, when Venus, Saturn and Jupiter and in harmonious triangulation in the heavens. Try it, you might like it, and Mother Earth will too!
The beauty of biodynamics is in the creation of healthy soils, delicious food, and happy animals. In Biodynamics we may glimpse the ancient Garden of Eden that has been transformed into the modern Garden of Eating.
GO BIODYNAMIC!
FOR LIFE!
 | A guest post by
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 | A guest post by
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It was indeed a delicious journey
Thank you
This was wonderful! When is the best time to spray horn manure preps?