Biodynamic Farming and Compost Preparation

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http://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/biodynamic.html

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Hey good timing, It's time to turn the piles!!!! I'll be using islandbilly dynamics. Each layer will be sprayed with various over the counter benificial microbes stirred into a nice molasses tea.

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sounds tasty

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from http://web.archive.org/web/20070302015823/http://www.epicurious.com/features/news/dailydish/022207

February 22, 2007

To keep vines healthy, pioneering winemakers in the Italian Alps apply all kinds of tricks: horsetail tea, valerian juice, even the power of a full moon.

These seemingly forward-thinking viticulturists are actually looking back in time — to the early 20th century treatises of German scientist Rudolf Steiner, the grandfather of biodynamic farming. Grape growers who embrace biodynamics work with solar and lunar energy, treat the soil and vines with various preparations ("preps") made with herbs and flowers, and fertilize with manure packed into cow horns.

"It's not voodoo," says Urs Vetter, the general manager and commercial director for Alois Lageder in Magrè, one of Northern Italy's most progressive wineries. "Through biodynamics, we have actually rediscovered farming by the forces of nature." After 150 years of winemaking, the Lageder family began to experiment with biodynamic growing in the 1990s. "My mother always grew her kitchen garden biodynamically, so I have that sensibility in my blood," says Alois Lageder, who notes that his winery is moving toward completely biodynamic production. Lageder sprays his vines with a mixture of water and concentrated compost — there's that manure — and is also keen on using solar power. To Lageder, biodynamic winemaking is a dialogue among nature, the human mind, and technology. "I want to produce grapes that are harmonious and authentic...wines that express their place of origin," he says. "Our goal is to make wines that are both complex and elegant." (www.lageder.com)

Austrian-born Count Michel Goëss-Enzenberg, owner of the winery Manincor, is fairly new to biodynamic grape growing, but he's thoroughly convinced that it's the way of the future. "My wife has kept our family healthy for the past 15 years with homeopathic medicine," Goëss-Enzenberg says, recognizing a similarity between homeopathy and biodynamics. Whether it's a child with a cough or watery grapes, the theory behind both practices is that you must strengthen the system as a whole to bring it into balance and health. The day I visited Manincor, I noticed a heap of spent horsetail tea in the vineyards. Recent rains had left the grapes a bit swollen, so the vineyards were sprayed with a brew made from horsetail, a mildly diuretic plant. But unlike at conventional vineyards, you won't find workers at Manincor wearing masks to protect themselves from harmful pesticides and fungicides when they're spraying the vines. "Our workers can sip the spray," says Goëss-Enzenberg. Now that's a forward-thinking beverage. (www.manincor.com)

WINES TO TRY
The following wines are made in the spirit of biodynamic farming but are not yet officially certified as such.

2005 Alois Lageder Benefizium Porer Pinot Grigio
A light, fresh white with mouthwatering hints of vanilla and freshly cut herbs.
Serve with: shellfish, sole, cod, and other delicate fish.


2003 Alois Lageder Lindenburg Lagrein
This massive, beautifully balanced red has haunting aromas of leather and spice and is full and rich on the palate.
Serve with: grilled steak, roast leg of lamb, or venison tenderloin.

2005 Alois Lageder Portico dei Leoni Bianco
A blend of Pinot Grigio and Pinot Bianco with a bit of Müller Thurgau, this rich, medium-bodied white is terrific to have on hand for everyday sipping.
Serve with: grilled chicken, creamy pastas, gnocchi with mushrooms.

2005 Manincor Moscato Giallo
This lush white has a provocative, aromatic nose with classic Muscat character with hints of nutmeg and grapefruit. And it's surprisingly dry.
Serve with: roasted almonds, sushi, Thai, and Vietnamese fare.

2004 Manincor Mason
This is Pinot Noir perfection: lush, juicy, and elegant with a cherry nose and long finish.
Serve with: ripe, soft cheeses, roast quail, or grilled wild salmon.

2005 Manincor Réserve della Contessa
A blend of Pinot Blanc, Chardonnay, and Sauvignon Blanc, this crisp, clean white has a lilting aroma of freshly mowed hay.
Serve with: light hors d'oeuvres, grilled fish, or pork tenderloin.

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from http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1592845,00.html

Thursday, Feb. 22, 2007 By LISA MCLAUGHLIN

You've mastered the which-are-the-good-and-bad vintages, learned the difference between a Cabernet and a Merlot and can finally pronounce Gewürztraminer. But now the casual wine drinker has a new label to grapple with: biodynamic.

Think of biodynamic as überorganic. The farming method is based on principles put forth in the 1920s by Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner. Although Steiner is best known in the U.S. as the inspiration behind the Waldorf school movement, his unique blend of spiritual science touches on every aspect of humanity and its relation to the universe, especially agriculture and diet. Biodynamic farming thus combines organic practices--like the banning of pesticides and chemicals--with somewhat mystical ideas such as basing planting and harvesting schedules on the position of the moon, sun and stars. It's full of colorful details like burying a cow horn filled with manure at the autumnal equinox. One Italian biodynamic vintner has even placed loudspeakers around his vineyards. Although he claims that playing Mozart makes his vines grow quicker and healthier, the more perceptible result of blaring Symphony No. 40 in G Minor is that it scares the bejesus out of grape-stealing deer, boars and birds.

Within the past decade, biodynamic farming has gone from a fringe movement to a fairly mainstream one, with products from milk to cosmetics now being produced via Steiner-inspired methods. But winemaking is where the practice has truly blossomed. Several high-end stores like New York City's Appellation Wine & Spirits have started devoting themselves solely to organic and biodynamic offerings, and sommeliers at restaurants across the country are creating wine lists that exclusively feature these ecologically sustainable wines. More important, some of the world's greatest vintners have signed on to the biodynamic craze, including Domaine Marcel Deiss of Alsace and Italy's Emidio Pepe. Alain Dugas, winemaker at France's Château La Nerthe--where wine has been produced almost continuously since 1560--began experimenting with biodynamics on 20 of its Châteauneuf-du-Pape acres 10 years ago. Why the sudden urge to tinker with centuries-old practices? "To maintain pH balances," Dugas explains. "There is less acidity in biodynamic wines."

Meanwhile, Jim Fetzer's Ceago Vinegarden, a biodynamic vineyard in Northern California, raises chickens as part of its viticulture system, with the birds playing a key role in keeping the vines healthy and pest-free. And Fetzer has a nice side business selling certified humane eggs.

But while organic wine might be good for the earth, is it any better for your palate than regular wine? Some biodynamic wines are definitely worth the slight bump up in price, like the citrusy Patianna Sauvignon Blanc or the Domaine de la Renjarde Côtes du Rhône Villages, with its earthy berry notes. "What you are tasting is that specific soil, that sun, those grapes," says acclaimed sommelier Sterling Roig. "These wines have an incredible purity about them." Which means that after swirling your glass, you should feel free to look down your nose while sniffing.

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They are recommending the application of 20 cubic yards of finished biodynamic compost be added to 1 acre each year in the initial years to really get things moving.. 20 cubic yards per acre makes a 1 inch layer. That works out to about $600 approx an acre per year, sounds like a lot but it is like putting money in the bank. There is a biodynamic vineyard in california that put 50 cubic yards per acre on a 100 year vineyard and totally brought it back to life, and they got something like 500% increase in yield over the previous year, they did some other stuff too but for sure the compost helped. Even 1 cubic yard per acre would be beneficial, it is all about establishing the microlife in the field.

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from http://gwagriculture.com/Making_Medicinal_Compost.html

Medicinal Compost™ Making Instructions

The single most important improvement you can make to every vineyard, farm field, lawn and garden is to make and apply compost. We’re often asked what is the ideal formula for general
use. Here it is!

1. Make two piles of ingredients of equal volume. One pile will have brown vegetable matter in it, preferably straw (not rice straw - too much silica), or spoiled hay. The second pile will be your manure pile.

2. Mix:

6 parts fresh cow (not steer) manure (if you can get it, older if you can’t),
2 parts horse manure with straw, not wood chips (which deplete the nitrogen in your pile),
1 part bird manure, either chicken or turkey, with feathers and bedding if wood chips are not used, and
1 part the cullings from your garden, farm field or vineyard.

This last item in vineyards would best be grape pumice, what is leftover after the grapes are crushed. The reason you use what came from your garden, lawn (grass clippings), field or vineyard is simple. Plants absorb nutrients that come from the breakdown of their own bodies, i.e. leaves, branches, fruit and flowers. Plants have evolved over the millennia by recognizing that which comes from themselves, in part, as their natural food. By adding this ingredient to the compost pile, you are providing your crop with the food it knows best. This makes your plants healthier and less stressed.

Why manure and not mineral or chemical fertilizers?

Dr. Rudolf Steiner pointed out 1924 that plants that have been treated with any kind of mineral fertilizer will show by their growth that they have been sustained only by stimulated water and not by enlivened earthiness, i.e. manure broken down into compost-humus. Plants thrive best on humus. In Nature, animals provide manure of all kinds from tiny insects through large animals like cows and horses. It is their natural state.

3. Take both piles, being sure that they are moist, not wet evenly throughout, and mix them either in bulk or by layering 3 inch alternating layers on a pile intermixed with a small amount of garden soil. Always build you pile in an area where tree roots will not grow up into it.

Always make an effort to get the highest quality ingredients for the best plant food. Before covering your compost-to-be with dirt and straw, apply the Compost Invigorator™. Four ounces of this remedy will treat up 20 cubic yards and will not only help the compost retain nitrogen and other elements, it will help guide the breakdown so that you end up with the highest quality Medicinal Compost™. Texas "T" Machines Compost Tea maker Mark Chapin uses Compost Invigorator in his compost tea.

In making Medicinal Compost™, your goal is to make humus, a brown, oily feeling kind of soil. Humus is highly complex, colloidal and round in shape, which makes it feel oily but it is not. Humus can be stable for up to 200 years. It is Nature’s perfect food. Cover the pile with a thin layer of soil (1/4”), then cover that with 1 foot of straw from broken flakes of a straw bale, not thick “biscuits” that won’t let the pile breathe. In this way, you keep the outer surface from drying out and losing that compost to the sun, wind and rain. If it rains frequently or heavily, cover it with a tarp on occasion. Rainwater is good for compost. Excessive rainwater washes out the nutrients. Wait 6 to 12 months and it’s done. Inspect it from time to time to be sure it doesn’t overheat from too little moisture or excessive heat. This pile should heat up to about 135º F., enough to kill pathogens and small seeds. If the pile overheats, or goes sour from too much water, simply break it down, dry it out or wet it, rebuild it, spray with Compost Invigorator™, cover it with straw and try again.

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from http://www.rotheraine.com/golden_garbage.html

Trained bacteria, turned loose on the refuse of Oakland, Cal., produce a rich, sweet-smelling fertilizer that’s guaranteed to perform near miracles for farm land. It’s like backyard compost, and it could save the nation billions of dollars.

By A. W. MARTINEZ

One morning in October, 1950, two strangers walked into the office of Tony Dalcino, president of the Oakland Scavenger Company, with a proposition that turned Dalcino’s casual smile into a look of utter disbelief.

His callers wanted to know whether the company would let them have part of the daily haul of garbage it collects from the city of Oakland, California. They hoped, they said, to put the garbage on an assembly line and sell it!

Garbage was one thing Dalcino had plenty of. His company picks up about 400 tons a day from Oakland, and he was sitting right in the middle of it, so to speak, for his plant is built on a peninsula of garbage fill that yearly bites deeper into San Francisco Bay, eight miles from the city.
That his lowly stock in trade could achieve any more useful end than in the shallow waters of the bay was a thought which fascihated Dalcino but left him understandably skeptical. With notable restraint, he asked to hear more.

The two visitors were a combination nearly as strange as the idea they were proposing. One of them was Richard Stovroff, young owner of a wastepaper business in Buffalo, New York. The other was Dr. Ehrenfried E. Pfeiffer, German-born biochemist, holder of an honorary U.S. medical degree, and lifelong experimenter with new ways to grow better food.

Pfeiffer, a tall, robust, pink-cheeked man with an infectious twinkle, explained. In the course of his researches he had discovered a new ‘race” of bacteria which could convert garbage into fertilizer, a sweet-smelling black earth which could perform virtual miracles for the land. A tablespoon of the bacteria, grown in test tubes, could turn a ton of garbage into rich humus in three weeks.

Pfeiffer told Dalcino: “It costs Americans, as taxpayers, a few billion dollars a year when we throw away as garbage the precious minerals and organic material which we take out of the soil in the form of food: On the other hand, it costs farmers nearly $7,000,000,000 a year to put some of these minerals back in the ground in the form of chemical fertilizers. That doesn’t make sense.” He had, he added, decided to do something about it ever since his arrival in the U.S. in 1940 as a refugee from war-ravaged Europe.

Today, as a result of Pfeiffer’s exposition nearly two years ago, nobody in Oakland, least of all the Oakland Scavengers, finds anything odd in the business of converting garbage. On the edge of San Francisco Bay, in a small, slate-gray building which serves as pilot plant for the Pfeiffer project, as many as 100 tons of wilted refuse a day are fed into one end of a system of conveyer belts. It comes out the other end as compost, ready, after a brief layover, to be shipped to farms and nurseries all over the nation.

Already, this spring, home gardeners in the West have had a chance to conduct their own tests on it; the Ferry-Morse Seed Company has distributed it and is using it to cultivate its own prize grass and flower seeds in Salinas, California.

In addition, many of the fresh vegetables now on your dinner table from the Salinas Valley “Salad Bowl” owe an extra charge of vitamins and minerals to this onetime Oakland garbage. A doubting foreman of one of the big Salinas farms which use the compost took a bag of it home recently, dumped it on his lawn and forgot about it. Weeks after the summer drought began, his neighbors became curious; his was the only lawn in town whose grass was still lush and green.

In control tests at Pfeiffer’s Biochemical Research Laboratory at Spring Valley, New York, vegetables grown in this converted garbage have weighed 25 per cent more than those grown in conventional fertilizers, with from one to three times more vitamin A. The garbage-compost-treated soil has shown from one to four times as much life-giving nitrogen, and grain grown in it has shown a consistently higher protein content.

Laboratory experiments have proved that the mixture can restore even sterile sand to vigorous fertility and could make rich farm land out of desert if adequate water were available.
What the converted garbage does to the soil is to restore its organic matter, mineral balance and structure; it gives the soil body, and permits it to absorb and hold water. In the soil, this organic
matter releases a powerful concentration of bacteria whose digestive activities and decay create plant foods and soil-binding humus, release nitrogen and make more efficient use of chemical fertilizers.


Chemical Fertilizers Less Efficient

Chemical fertilizers return plant food directly to the soil but do not provide this vital organic soil structure (although the new chemical, Krilium, by making the soil more porous, will increase the efficiency of organic fertilizers). All farmers try to restore it in part by growing cover crops and plowing them under, or by turning under plant stubble.

The converted-garbage fertilizer is actually a scientifically produced supercompost, a little like the material conscientious gardeners make by piling up leaves, vegetable matter and manure and allowing them to age. Such composting takes six to nine months and a great deal of care, but farmers regard the resulting product as “black gold.” It is the stuff that gives virgin soil its loamy, crumbly appearance.

However, compost is a luxury fertilizer. You can’t buy it in commercial quantities or at prices practical for mass-production farming. Neither can the mass-production farmer make it. At today’s pace, he has neither the time nor man power. He also lacks the materials, the ready supply of manure and vegetable matter which diversified farms once had.

The Oakland plant hopes to provide the answer to this nation-wide need for a cheap supply of natural organic matter. The gradual depletion of our soil’s organic reserves, and the attempt to make up for it solely by increasing the use of chemicals, has long worried agriculturists. Without any organic matter to anchor the topsoil, farm lands can become dust bowls.

“No one plant can do this job,” Pfeiffer points out, “but if all U.S. garbage were processed each year, we would have about 30,000,000 tons of compost, enough to fertilize 10,000,000 acres of land. And garbage dumps would just about disappear.”

He sees the Oakland project as a showcase, not only for farmers, but also for cities seeking a solution for the problem of garbage disposal. The Oakland compost now costs $34 a ton, but Pfeiffer expects even this price, comparable to conventional fertilizer costs, to go down as production expands. Since January the plant has been converting 100 to 125 tons of garbage a day, and expects to produce a minimum of 60,000 tons of compost during the corming year.

Oakland, meanwhile, likes the showcase idea and is intrigued by its curious distinction as the first city in the world to turn garbage into a useful commercial product.


Tribune “Points with Pride”

“Oakland, let us announce with pride, is the Compost City of America,” the Oakland Tribune recently boasted. The paper went on to chide San Francisco for not getting a compost plant, too.

“California does have its backward cities,” it commented. Walter F. Gibson, head of Oakland’s sanitation department, has called the plant “a boon to any municipality, as it disposes of the garbage problem. It is economically sound and can be operated in any area.”

No such rosy optimism existed in the fall of 1950, when the plant began operations under the resounding name of Compost Corporation of America. Seven stockholders - mainly paper processors who saw a promise of a new pulp supply from the garbage - were persuaded to spend a total of $150,000 to start the company, which is known in Oakland as Comco. Richard Stovroff, the Buffalo businessman, was named president. Stock on hand included an unlimited supply of garbage and several test tubes filled with hungry bacteria.

For 30 years, Oakland’s garbage has been collected under contract with the city by the Scavengers, 250 Italian-Americans who function as a co-operative, sharing titles, profits and labor equally. The friendly if skeptical Scavengers turned over to Comco some of their 30 garbage-built acres for a plant; they offered the garbage for nothing.

Young Dick Stovroff was skeptical himself, but the prospect of getting a profitable supply of wastepaper from the conveyer- belt handling of rubbish convinced him. As it turned out, that paper amounted to only about one per cent of the plant’s $50,000 income last year.

Pfeiffer’s arrival at Oakland’s garbage dumps came about by way of the widest possible detour - one which included several European countries and a period on what seemed at the time to be his deathbed.

Born in Munich fifty-three years ago, Pfeiffer as a boy emigrated with his parents to Switzerland, where he became a naturalized citizen. He graduated with honors from the University of Basel and was on his way to a doctorate when a significant event occurred. Strolling on the streets of Basel one winter day, he noticed that the frost patterns on windowpanes differed from shop to shop.
What eventually developed out of his walk that day was a revolutionary method of diagnosing human disease by means of the crystal or frost patterns made from a drop of the patient’s blood crystallized, together with chloride of copper, on a glass plate. These crystal patterns distinguish a healthy person from a sick one and they have proved 82 per cent reliable in the diagnosis of cancer. In 1939 the crystallization theory was to bring Pfeiffer an honorary doctorate from Hahnemann Hospital and Medical College in Philadelphia.

While pursuing his crystallization studies, he was appointed director of the Biochemical Research Laboratory at Dornach, Switzerland, and manager and director of an 800-acre experimental farm at Loverendale, Holland. The farm, set up to carry out some of the agricultural studies of the laboratory, fed 700 families. For years, Pfeiffer commuted monthly between Holland and Switzerland. Then, in 1940, the Nazis smashed through Holland, and Pfeiffer, his wife, son and daughter took to the road as refugees.

They traveled across southern France and crossed into Spain by way of the Pyrenees, and flew from there into Portugal. On an October day in 1940, they arrived in New York with a few bags and $50 in cash.

For the next few years, the scientist managed and helped develop a model experimental farm at Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, on a former private estate where prize tomatoes were grown in winter in what had once been a palatial solarium. Then he bought his own farm near Chester, New York. What he got for the modest amount of cash he could raise was a primitive farmhouse, 260 stony acres and a herd of 40 cattle, which, it soon developed, were riddled with the dread Bang’s disease.

This was the kind of challenge Pfeiffer liked. It gave him a chance to test his soil theories at the “dirt farmer” level. “You can’t prove anything with a farm that’s subsidized and loaded with gadgets that the average farmer can’t afford,” he says.

Within two years he had restored his land with scientific composts, fed the grain grown on it to his cattle and completely cured them without medication. “They cured themselves,” he recalls. “We just provided the proper nutrition and care.”

The astonishing little bacteria which are now the secret of converting garbage to a humus concentrate at Oakland indirectly saved Pfeiffer’s life. In 1944 the strain of 16-hour days divided between science and farming proved too great. Pfeiffer collapsed one night over his worktable, At New York State’s Summit Park Sanatorium he got the grim word that he was in an advanced stage of tuberculosis. The chances of recovery, even with surgery, were slim.

Pfeiffer spent more than a year in bed at the sanatorium, reading and staring at the ceiling, and doing more thinking than he had ever before had time for. “I figured out that in order to stay alive in such a crisis a man has to find himself a tough job that is just too important to be left unfinished, and then plunge into it and let the doctors do the rest.” For Pfeiffer, the job was the search for his bacteria formula.

He knew by the statistics that the organic humus content of U.S. soil is decreasing to the danger level. Yet there was a treasure of organic matter in many waste products like garbage—if a swift method of converting them could be found. There was one important clue. In Europe, farmers for centuries have used various wild plants like nettle, dandelion and valerian to produce a quicker breakdown and stabilizing of manures and composts. Did the secret lie in some bacteria which such plants breed?

When Pfeiffer was able to get out of his bed, he headed straight for the sanatorium’s bacteriological laboratory. There, watching the action of tubercular bacteria under a microscope, he forgot his illness. He studied bacterial specimens from digestive tracts and noted how these germs actually broke down and digested waste material.

The clue he found in digestive tracts was that 25 to 30 per cent of the mass was bacteria. The bacteria digest and break down food, and would go on breaking it down until nothing was left, except that other bacteria take over and convert what remains into minerals and proteins needed by the body. Wild nettle and such plants contain hormones which cause a similar action to take place in the soil.

What Pfeiffer was looking for was a breed of bacteria he could isolate and control, to perform this kind of job on waste materials at the greatest possible speed.

A year after he began his research, he walked out of the sanatorium completely recovered; his case was regarded as something of a miracle. When he left, be had with him the formula he sought. To put it to work, he opened his own laboratory over a rented garage. That laboratory has now grown into a spacious building set in the peaceful woodlands of Spring Valley.

Today one section of the laboratory exhibits the results of this work. The walls are lined with shelves of test tubes and beakers filled with black earth made from nearly every kind of waste product imaginable - nutshells, human feces, cotton waste, sugarcane stalks, even sheep’s wool and human hair - and of course garbage.

It takes more than 50 different carefully bred strains of bacteria, each with its own digestive job, to transform any one of these materials. Each strain is kept isolated because it is cultured only on that material which encourages its greatest growth in nature. Materials which might stimulate the growth of foreign bacteria are kept out of its food. Then the different bacterial strains are painstakingly blended together.

Each composted material must have its own special blend. Summer garbage, for example, wouldn’t tempt a bacteria family that lives off winter garbage. Given the right food and temperatures, the bacteria will ‘live indefinitely in their test tubes.

The bacteria are temperamental, and harder to manage than a trained flea circus. “You can see the fleas, but can you imagine telling one microbe from another?” smiles Pfeiffer. “Sometimes one of them will go on a hunger strike and die, and when one gets lost there’s the devil to pay. One species got away from us recently; we thought we had lost it for good, but we found it later in a compost pile in Oakland.”

The bacteria are harmless to humans and animals, but will decompose just about anything else. Not long ago, an improperly packed test tube broke inside of a bag on its way to Oakland. The busy bacteria had digested most of the bag and were sampling the wrappings before the accident was discovered.

Sally Burns, a pretty, twenty-five year-old ex-Wave, deserves a share of the credit for getting the Oakland experiment under way. Sally, now Comco’s lab technician, was a research assistant at the Pfeiffer laboratory when the bacteria starter was developed. Sally was fired by Pfeiffer’s enthusiasm. When she returned to her home in suburban Buffalo, she went to local newspaper editors and got them to print the story of the bacteria discovery. She floored friends with long monologues on garbage.

But her campaign got results. One day Pfeiffer was asked to go to Buffalo to deliver a radio talk. While there, he met Richard Stovroff, who proposed that they go into business. The scientist refused any financial interest in the new company, but agreed to supply the bacteria starter and donate his time in getting production under way. Oakland was selected as the site because of its proximity to the big California truck farms, and also because of its warm climate, which makes bacteria act faster.


Pfeiffer’s Thrilling Moment

Recently Pfeiffer flew to Oakland to have a look at his brain child. Although he derives no personal profit from Comco (his laboratory in New York gets a small royally for the use of the bacteria), the scientist behaved like a man just awarded an extra bonus. For on that day, he was informed, Comco was handling a quarter of Oakland’s daily garbage - about 100 tons.

As Pfeiffer watched, lines of heavily laden garbage trucks rumbled down to the foot of Davis Street, which stops almost at the edge of San Francisco Bay. Jouncing across the refuse-strewn yard, the trucks dumped their aromatic loads. Tractor plows nosed it into the piles and pushed them into a long trough leading into the Comco plant.

In the trough was a three-foot-wide conveyer belt. As it hit the belt, the garbage began to move into the world’s only garbage assembly plant - or, to be absolutely correct, disassembly plant, because the garbage is taken apart rather than put together, as Pfeiffer will remind you.

The first thing the garbage encountered in the operation inside the plant was a pair of giant suction fans which hang over the belt. Acting like outsize vacuum cleaners, the fans picked off most of the wastepaper as the garbage sailed by. Later this paper would go to pulp companies.

Pfeiffer followed the mixture as it ascended on the belt to the second floor. Occasionally he ran an experienced hand through it. “You can read the seasons by what people put in their trash pails,” he told a visitor. “in summer, you get a lot of green vegetables and fewer meat scraps. Just after Christmas, the supply of broken toys and empty paper boxes is heavy. Even an occasional gift tie goes by. Then in spring come the half-used bottles of vitamin tablets and tonics. We are grateful for the vitamin pills,” he smiled. “What we are trying to do is get them back into the food.”

Except for the gamy scent, the atmosphere on the second floor of the building was like any small manufacturing plant. A crew of 10 workers bent over the belt. As the garbage marched past, they rummaged around in it with gloved hands, pulling out glass or wooden objects, plus whatever metal had been missed by the huge magnet that scans the refuse. These items were dropped into appropriate chutes.

When Comco began operations, the sorting problem seemed a big hurdle to overcome. Pfeiffer recalled: “We wondered whether we would be able to find people willing to keep their hands in garbage all day long. But we found all the help we needed. Garbage can become as inoffensive as any other product in time.”

Properly picked over, the garbage next dropped through a chute and was carted by waiting trucks to a second conveyer some distance from the plant. This conveyer sent it riding up to the top of a roofed platform, 10 feet off the ground, for the most critical part of the operation.

Two things happen to the mixture when it reaches the platform. First it is chewed up, somewhat the way meat is in a meat grinder. Then it is soaked under a shower.

When Pfeiffer clambered up to the top of the platform on this particular morning, he peered anxiously into a big iron hopper four feet across. Steel blades, each a foot long, were churning around against stationary knives in the hopper. As the garbage rode in, it was pulverized.

This part of the operation nearly put Comco out of business at the start because of trouble with the big grinding blades. Steel is tough, but “soft” garbage can be even tougher. The garbage would chew foot-long blades down to a nub in three days. After weeks of desperate experimenting, Comco abandoned commercial grinders and designed one of its own. A tougher steel was found and the blade pitch was changed. That did the trick.

A steady stream of water poured down on the mixture as it churned through the hopper. It was water spiked with bacteria about a tablespoon for every ton of garbage. The action of the bacteria is immediate. An hour after the moistened garbage is spewed off the rear of the platform and stacked in heaps, a change begins to take place. Within two to four days the bacteria will multiply themselves 300,000,000 times. The action is so intense that the mixture heats up to more than 150 degrees and becomes almost too hot to handle.


How the Bacteria Go to Work

The mountainous piles present a weird spectacle on the San Francisco Bay landscape. For days, these heaps actually cook, throwing off dense clouds of steam. The furiously multiplying bacteria decompose and digest the garbage, creating enzymes which speed up the digestive process and make possible chemical changes; they act like the starter in your car, getting the engine going. In this case, the engine is the breakdown of elements and subsequent build-up of chemicals in the garbage.

In less than a week, as the decomposition is completed, the piles shrink in size and cool off. But during the digestive period, new, food-building bacteria have begun to grow. Their function, as in the life process itself, is to use the decomposed matter to build living organic matter, store up nutrients in their mass to be used by growing plants, and change basic elements so they can be absorbed into plant roots.

Such bacteria life is present in virgin soil, but in the garbage compost the concentration is several hundred times greater. After the first week of violent decomposition, the garbage has ceased to be rotting material and has become a stabilized plant food. it has no odor; actually, it repels vermin and carrion birds, which hover around the piles but will not venture on them.

Thus, less than three weeks after an Oakland housewife scrapes clean her dinner plates, her garbage is ready to go back into the land as fertilizer.

Despite its pungent atmosphere, the Comco plant has become the showcase Pfeiffer dreamed of. Visitors include officials of cities with a sanitation problem (60 visited the plant in one day recently), university groups, and just plain farmers. One recent visitor was Lady Eve Balfour, organizing secretary of Soil Association, Ltd., a British agricultural group. Lady Eve climbed gingerly around the hillocks of garbage, and later, in an interview, singled out the Comco plant as the high spot of her U.S. tour.

“Love that gal,” bubbled the Oakland Tribune, editorially.

Since the bacteria starter will make compost of just about anything from peanut shells to sawdust, there appears no limit to its possibilities. One new application for it was suggested by a Comco visitor, a farmer, who saw in the bacteria a new way of speeding the decomposition of cover crops and crop stubble which farmers plow under to return organic matter to the soil.

Today, in Salinas, the Atwood Crop Dusting Service, which specializes in spraying insecticides by plane, buzzes with curious coded telephone messages. “Okay. Fly on the bacs in number 75,” says a voice at the other end of the line. Within an hour a little hedgehopping plane zooms in over a farmer’s field, leaving a spray of hungry bacteria on the crops. “Bacs” is what Salinas farmers have dubbed Pfeiffer’s bacteria. More than 2,000 acres of their land are now being treated this way, and orders are in for spraying another 5,000 acres.

Two ounces of “bacs” in five gallons of water will treat a whole acre and the total cost is $5.50. Result: the cover crop or the stubble turns to fertilizer so fast the farmer saves a month in starting a new crop.

If this new use for Pfeiffer’a bacteria seems to steal a little of the show from the plant-made compost, the scientist is not the least bit disappointed. His hope is to get more natural fertilization into the land by any means possible, and his trained bacteria are not particular where they live, so long as the food is good.

In Florida and Texas, water hyacinths have begun to choke the pond and lake waters, making them unnavigable. A Texas farmer, Alexander Debruille, now harvests the hyacinths, composts them with "bacs" and gets five to 10 tons of rich plant food a day. A national dairy is studying plans for using the "bacs" on cow manure and putting itself into the fertilizer business.

In coming months, Pfeiffer will go to Cuba to set up an experimental plant to convert tons of waste sugar-cane fiber into much needed organic fertilizer in that largely one-crop country.

Another Pfeiffer project now under way is the pilot plant he and his research associate, Peter Escher, have set up deep in the ill-smelling New Jersey meadows’ across from New York City. A company there makes tallow from beef offal, and the idea was to make compost of the contents of cows’ paunches. When the scientist arrived home after a day of skidding about on tallow-coated floors, he carried with him an aroma that sent the dogs scattering in the farmyard. Mrs. Pfeiffer made him change his clothes in the barn before he could get into, the house. On the Pfeiffer farm, grain fields and a ‘lush truck garden are fertilized entirely from former garbage. Curiously, there is almost no sign of insects, although no insecticides are used.

Pfeiffer does not find this remarkable. The 800-acre farm which he managed in Holland required neither chemical fertilizers nor insecticides, yet had one of the best dairy herds in Europe. Wheat yields reached 100 bushels an acre, among the highest recorded anywhere in the world. The farm’s produce was so nutritious that in a survey the 700 families who lived off it reported they needed only two thirds of what they once ate to satisfy their needs.


Crops That Resist Insects

Pfeiffer credits this to the scientific composts used, which in turn produced healthier, more nutritious crops. Crops grown in a robust soil, are better able to resist insect attacks; an example is the 1,000-acre Malabar Farm of author-farmer Louis Bromfield, which depends largely on composted organic matter and requires no insecticides.

Dr. Firman Bear of Rutgers University, described by the National Fertilizer Association as one of America’s outstanding scientists, said recently: “. . . (chemical) fertilizers alone, no matter how heavy the rate of application, will not meet the requirements for soils that are producing cultivated. crops. Soil must be fed organic matter in larger amounts than the roots and residues can provide. There is need for study of the possibilities for recovery of city wastes.”

Pfeiffer declares that plants which get no organic matter and are fed exclusively on chemicals are somewhat like unhealthy people who grow fat on sugars and sweets. According to research done at the Missouri Agricultural Experimental station, the plants produce an unbalanced amount of carbohydrates (sugar) at the expense of protein and trace minerals. Insects, he says, prefer these “sweet” plants and are able to attack them more easily. The plants, in turn, provide less nourishment to humans.

Along with all leading agricultural authorities, Pfeiffer emphasizes that insecticides are indispensable to general farming in America: Without insecticides and fertilizers, our farm economy would collapse and our current food production would be impossible. However, the phenomenally increasing need for insecticides is a warning sign of the dangerous deficiencies developing in our croplands, which must in turn affect national health.”

To overcome these deficiencies, Pfeiffer wants to see a partnership of chemical fertilizing and organic composts. ‘Both are needed,” he says. ‘Both work together.”

No man to rest on his laurels, Pfeiffer zestfully welcomes the stream of inquiries which arrive in the mail each day from an increasing number of U.S. cities, and from farther afield as well. A Mexican firm wants to set up a nation-wide composting plant, and farm organizations in Australia and New Zealand have invited him for a demonstration tour there next year.

The busy scientist has accepted the latter invitation, as well as requests from the Indian and Nationalist Chinese governments to visit India and Formosa for what may well be the crowning achievement of an already notable career: to demonstrate how his bacteria can make human fertilizer safe for composting. Such waste matter is now a main source of fertilizer in both countries, but it is also a main source of epidemic infections, because it carries typhus and other germs.

Sanitary human fertilizer, produced by trained bacteria, has already been developed by Pfeiffer in his laboratory. It is exactly like the Oakland compost. Used on a wide scale, it may well save millions of lives in undeveloped countries and change the economic course of history.

[c-ray]

from http://web.archive.org/web/20080512145852/http://www.michaelfieldsaginst.org/news/newsletter_04_24_2007.html

By Walter Goldstein, Research Program Director

The success of organic and biodynamic agriculture relies, in part, on research that answers important production questions for farmers. MFAI is committed to agricultural research that serves the needs of sustainable agriculture. This past growing season, we conducted field trials of organic corn seed varieties that we developed to be less susceptible to weed infestations. With fewer weeds, farmers can reduce their mechanical tillage and improve soil quality. Here's what we found:

* In 2006, the ability of the corn populations that we bred under organic/biodynamic conditions to compete with weeds appeared to be superior to commercial organic corn hybrids. Weed foliage density scores were 2-3 times higher for commercial organic hybrids than for hybrids selected under organic conditions and sunflowers grew twice as heavy in mixture with the commercial hybrids than with the MFAI hybrids. The ability of the MFAI varieties and varietal hybrids to compete with weeds has improved over time as the populations were selected multiple years under organic conditions.

* Crosses between Michael Fields corn populations and commercial inbreds (topcrosses) yielded very similar to commercial organic hybrids from Blue River Hybrids/NC+. Crosses between corn populations (varietal hybrids) generally averaged somewhat lower yields than the topcrosses or the commercial corn hybrids. However, some varietal hybrids produced similar yields to the highest yielding commercial hybrids. Furthermore, many of the varietal hybrids were nutrient dense.

* The ranking of yield performance for different hybrids appeared to differ strongly according to whether the corn was grown under conventional conditions, organic conditions without weeds, or organic with weeds. Therefore, it is probably best to test varieties for organic production in organic fields where there are moderate populations of weeds, because those are conditions that are most realistic.

For more information about our corn research projects, please contact Walter Goldstein at wgoldstein@michaelfieldsaginst.org

[c-ray]

Rick Knoll on Biodynamics

UxQZz3-mGVA

[c-ray]

http://www.rotheraine.com/animation.html

and

http://www.rotheraine.com/video/default.php

[c-ray]

Treehugger TV: Biodynamic Wines

wY9YyLbqvQU

[c-ray]

dhlovelife: Biodynamic Wines

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uktgJcZor5w

[c-ray]

more Biodynamic Wines...dude has some hilarious descriptions

BpXD-OUyGfU

[c-ray]

from http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/05/30/FDG8OQ12761.DTL

Digging biodynamic
Restaurateurs look beyond organic in quest to cultivate pristine produce

Olivia Wu, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 30, 2007

David Kinch is known to drive at almost 90 miles per hour. When asked why, Kinch says, with a shrug, "I have to get somewhere."

Yet when this has-to-get-somewhere chef and owner of the four-star Manresa in Los Gatos arrives at Love Apple Farm in the Santa Cruz Mountains, he slows to an almost unrecognizable pace. Shortly after 7 one morning this spring, as two Australian shepherds dance around his heels, he ambles up to the back porch of the farmhouse. Wordlessly, he sits down on a bench next to farm owner Cynthia Sandberg, grabs a worn garden stake and vigorously stirs a nearby bucket of rainwater.

At this time of year, Sandberg provides nearly all the vegetables that appear on the restaurant's summer menu. On this May morning, the chef and farmer are making Preparation 501, one of nine formulas used in biodynamic farming. Ground quartz, or silica, is whipped into water for exactly one hour. The solution is then sprayed over the crops.

Biodynamically grown vegetables are the cornerstone of Kinch's cuisine because they are superior to organic, he says. Like chefs nationally who are strengthening the ties to the source of their food, he wants the farm nearby, and he wants to be hands-on.

Sandberg tells him she got going without him because, "you're supposed to start at dawn.'' Kinch protests he only got to bed at 2 a.m. the night before.

Yet, thanks to Kinch's relentless drive, Manresa garnered four stars from The Chronicle, and also received two stars from the 2006 Michelin Guide, and a spot on Restaurant Magazine's 2005 World's 50 Best Restaurants list. In Europe, where the quest for ultra-fine vegetables in haute cuisine is a full-blown movement, Kinch is recognized as a leader.

Earlier this month he was a featured presenter at "Vive las Verduras," a produce-focused gastronomy/science/architectural conference in Spain, where chefs Alain Passard (restaurant L'Arpège in Paris) and Ferran Adrià (El Bulli, Spain) were the marquee names.

Two months ago, Passard cooked three dinners at Manresa, using the vegetables from Love Apple Farm. Passard, who gets his produce exclusively from a farm outside of Paris, said Kinch's garden shows "a genuine craft, and a search for the definition of flavors."

Responding to that inner drive to "get somewhere," although perhaps not at 90 mph, Kinch started searching for a farm that would supply him with vegetables grown biodynamically about two years ago.

Biodynamic farming is the brainchild of the late Austrian philosopher/naturalist Rudolf Steiner, who came up with the method in the 1920s as farming was turning to chemicals, depleting the soil as well as the plant. Steiner felt that as a result, human nutrition was suffering. His philosophy is called anthroposophy; longtime adherents of biodynamics also study anthroposophy.

At the heart of Steiner's biodynamics are nine preparations. Most, like the springtime silica solution, involve highly diluted mixtures applied to compost, to the crop or to the land itself at specific times of the year.

"It's the next level,'' Kinch says. While he gratefully acknowledges Alice Waters' legacy, the farm-restaurant connection and the organic revolution, it's nonetheless time to go deeper. "You go to the farmers' market and all the chefs are there. We're buying the same organic leeks and lettuces. We're all doing the same thing. I wanted to do better.''

He looked at various properties as he contemplated acquiring his own farm. Then he tasted some tomatoes grown organically by Sandberg, and asked her if she would start growing other vegetables and to supply Manresa exclusively. On the day that he and Sandberg sat down to negotiate a contract, the talks went smoothly. Then, Kinch said he hesitated. He had hoped for something else besides exclusivity and organics. Simultaneously, she piped up that she had a condition, too. That something edged on the "voodoo side," he said, but he wanted to try biodynamics. As it happened, she did, too.

Kinch is not the only American chef to look toward biodynamics and to create a more intimate, exclusive relationship with a farm. On the East Coast, chef Daniel Barber has Blue Hills restaurant on the site of Stone Barns farm in Pocantico Hills, N.Y., focusing on the farm-raised produce. A Rockefeller Foundation -funded living museum is also part of the complex.

Other Northern California chefs are following close behind. Preston Dishman, the new chef of the General's Daughter in Sonoma, has similarly tapped Andrea Davis, a graduate with a degree in sustainable agriculture, to grow the restaurant's vegetables, in part at nearby Benziger Family Winery in Glen Ellen.

Benziger has been biodynamic since 1997 and is certified by Demeter, an independent certifying organization. By adding a food production garden to the biodynamic grape growing, Benziger can increase the diversity of its acreage -- including pasture land, insectory, woodland and wetlands -- and complete the balanced system integral to biodynamic farming.

The restaurant Ubuntu, slated to open this summer in Napa, will be directly supplied by a biodynamic garden at Lion's Run Winery. Restaurant and winery owner Sandy Lawrence has dedicated acreage at her winery to biodynamic vegetable production for the restaurant.

"My aim is to live by not having a large footprint on the landscape,'' she says. Like others who had been growing crops organically, she was seeking "the most sustainable way to farm and produce food." To do so, she hired Jeff Dawson, uber gardener to Wine Country.

Dawson headed the Fetzer Valley Oaks gardens in Hopland (Mendocino County) in the '90s, then worked for Kendall Jackson, helping persuade the vintner to go organic. At the same time, he was schooling himself in biodynamics. By the early 2000s, when Copia, the American Center for Wine, Food & the Arts was created, he had the tools and techniques to build a biodynamic garden.

He took a piece of land razed by construction, and through use of biodynamic preparations, converted it into "a garden that people were amazed by, not only in its beauty but by the quality of produce. Chefs tasted the produce, hand to mouth, and couldn't believe the flavors and intensity of what they tasted," he said.

Dawson sounds remarkably like Kinch. "It's another level of quality," Dawson says. "The biodynamic process connects the plant to the earth and to the cosmos." Steiner's various preparations are part and parcel of "an incredibly balanced system that takes the whole of nature into consideration. We sensitize the plant and soil to those forces."

Although Kinch couches biodynamics in "voodoo" terms, he insists on participating in all of the preparations, such as filling cow's horns with cow manure and burying them, then retrieving them six months later, making a watery preparation with the aged manure and flicking that solution over the crops with a paintbrush.

On the day that he sprayed the silica solution with purchased biodynamically prepared silica, he and Sandberg followed it by making their own biodynamic silica: Grinding quartz by hand into silica, pouring it into cows horns, and burying it in readiness for the following year. Love Apple Farm is gradually making its own preparations from scratch as it converts to biodynamic.

Dawson currently consults at several biodynamic gardens, including those at Round Pond Estate in Rutherford, which grows Cabernet Sauvignon and Nebbiolo grapes, olives for oil and garden produce. At the height of summer, Dawson says, the overflow produce is sold to Thomas Keller, who uses it at the French Laundry, Bouchon and Ad Hoc.

Besides the biodynamic philosophy and techniques, the movement's chefs and growers are aiming for near-complete independence, creating what Kinch calls "a closed loop," consisting of the garden, his menu and his signature cuisine.

Dishman, from Florida, wanted a supply of fresh produce from three sites to provide him with as much as 90 percent of the restaurant's produce.

Dawson says that in three years' time, Lion's Run, just a 12-minute drive from the 120-seat Ubuntu, will be able to provide 80 percent of the restaurant's produce in summer, and 50 percent in winter. Kinch says that he models his garden after Passard's, whose garden is just a few hours north of Paris. The beautifully crafted vegetables capture an inimitable quality of soil, sun and spirit of place.

Almost two years into the partnership with Sandberg, 80 to 90 percent of Manresa's vegetable menu is sourced from her garden. "We've written it into our business plan," Kinch says.

The savings in his produce bill is already apparent (about 60 percent), he says. As at L'Arpège, Passard's restaurant in Paris, Kinch often serves produce that is so freshly picked it hasn't yet been refrigerated. The flavors, he says, are incomparable.

Manresa's staff must continually adapt to the garden's harvest. On the day he worked on Preparation 501 at the farm, he stayed to harvest spinach, radishes, fennel, carrots and purple potatoes, among other produce. A plethora of chard, kale and other leaves becomes a veloute, a vividly emerald saturated creamed soup that is served over tea-smoked purple potatoes from the garden.

"It's not like opening a box of inanimate stuff," he says. "You're being thrown a curve ball every day. You've got once chance to cook it right.

"Boiling them and frying them in hot fat -- we don't do that," he says, referring to the traditional techniques of parboiling and sauteing. Such treatments destroy the fragile yet full flavors of the vegetables, he says. Instead, he semi-cooks them over low heat with a tiny amount of oil or vegetable stock and saves the cooking juices to make a sauce.

A medley of raw and barely cooked vegetables becomes the evening's "vegetables with potato dumplings and burrata," where more than a dozen assorted vegetables sporting a carefully orchestrated, tousled look, cover three tiny dumplings. Other vegetables are cooked slowly and then pureed into a sauce.

The garden regimen also means Manresa's sommelier, Jeff Bareilles, has to look for an array of lighter wines. "I have three wine lists -- one by-the-glass, one by-the-bottle, and a third that I use to pair with the spontaneous dishes from the garden," he says.

Kinch's mellow moments at the farm are when his culinary ideas spring to life -- "90 percent of them," he says.

Being intimately connected to a farm, and especially one that is tuned to the forces recognized in biodynamic farming, may be the new-old road that chefs are rediscovering.
What is biodynamic farming?

A biodynamic farm by its nature is organic, although it might not necessarily be certified as organic.

Farms can be certified biodynamic by Demeter International, the European biodynamic certification organization.

Biodynamics follows precise methods and techniques enunciated by Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner in a series of speeches he gave in 1924.

Biodynamic farming involves the rituals, practices and formulas based on his study of nature and the cosmos -- for example, the making and applying of certain preparations by the lunar, solar and astrological calendars.

Two of the preparations, 501 and 500, involve stirring quartz and manure respectively into water in a way that creates a vortex in the water, reversing direction intermittently throughout one hour. The mixture is highly dilute, and often described as "homeopathic" in dosage.

Some other formulas include those injected into compost. One consists of dried chamomile flowers stuffed into intestines (natural sausage casings) and buried underground for six months. A yarrow compost preparation consists of dried yarrow blossoms stuffed into the bladder of a deer, hung from a tree for six months then buried underground for another six months. Oak bark preparation, also used in compost, must be placed in the skull of a domesticated horned animal and buried for six months before it is used.

[c-ray]

from http://www.bradfordera.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=18361762&BRD=52&PAG=461&dept_id=569780&rfi=6

Rotheraine discusses biodynamic gardening at Evergreen Elm
By: TAMMARRAH MILES, Era Reporter
05/18/2007

Due to the unseasonably long, warm fall last year, master gardener L.A. Rotheraine and the gardeners at Evergreen Elm had to change their approach slightly this year when starting their plants.

The group, however, is expecting the same phenomenal results they have always had with their biodynamic gardens.

"The reason no agricultural university in the Western hemisphere can compete against Evergreen Elm's biodynamic gardeners within the confines of McKean County," Rotheraine said, is the spray they use. While other gardeners use field spray only as a field spray, Evergreen Elm uses it as a foliar spray as well. This, in addition to the unorthodox way they use the biodynamic compost preparations produces superior vegetation, Rotheraine said.

He went on to compare biodynamic gardening to modern agriculture, emphasizing their incorporation of cosmic energy.

"The connection to the heavens is in the central stem of all plants," Rotheraine went on to say, referring to the stem as a "cosmic pipeline," or a "heavenly circuit."

"The biodynamic preparations intensify this pipeline, thus uniting the heavens with Earth in a very beneficial way," he said. "Agricultural science has forgotten that all plants are materialized energy from stars and planets. It is common sense to see that the sun, moon and all the stars have an effect on plant life on Earth. As a photographer knows every light affects a picture, every light in the sky would have to affect plant growth to a greater or lesser degree."

Referring specifically to the affect the strange weather last fall had on gardening this spring, Rotheraine said the soil is much dryer than it would normally be at this time of year.

"Therefore, we are using the unorthodox technique of using the field spray as a leaf spray," he said. By spraying the soil and plants as they do, however, they are "actually changing the climate conditions in the garden."

Normally, they would use a combination of horn silica and valeria flower concentrate for spray. Instead, they are using the field spray - comprised of seven preparation components, what Rotheraine refers to as "BD prep 500, 502, 503, 504, 505, 506 and 507" - exclusively this spring. Respectively, the substances are horn manure, yarrow flowers, chamomile, stinging nettle, oak bark, dandelion and valeria flowers.

It is not only the spray, however, that makes the garden so successful, Rotheraine said.

"The enthusiasm of Evergreen Elm's biodynamic gardeners becomes an actual force just like our preparations do and has a tremendous positive effect on the plants," he said.

While some may debate the theory behind Rotheraine's methods, what cannot be refuted are his results. For years, the group has taken dozens of blue ribbons at the McKean County Fair for their fruits and vegetables. Rotheraine, Evergreen Elm and the biodynamic gardens have also been featured on local television news and in newspapers as far away as Michigan because of the unusually high quality of their seed strains, plants and harvests.

"Until other gardeners and farmers use Evergreen Elm's biodynamic system, they will never achieve the results our gardeners have accomplished," Rotheraine said.

He seemed particularly pleased that master gardeners at two Midwestern colleges, the University of Michigan and the University of Wisconsin, are both currently experimenting with Evergreen Elm's methods. He is also hopeful that biodynamic gardening is becoming popular worldwide, as they group has seen a large number of hits on their Web site from Communist China.

"So, we're putting some of our key articles in Chinese hoping they will (use) the Evergreen Elm method of making seeds instead of being swayed into genetically-engineered and terminator seeds that the large corporations are trying to propagate throughout the world," Rotheraine said.

"If a seed strain is a replica of a particular cosmic constellation, then genetically altering a seed makes it inferior," he said, compared to what it could be - "a heavenly image in the form of a plant here on Earth."

Evergreen Elm supervisor Brandi Buck said that not only do the gardeners produce a spectacular garden, but the garden gives back to its creators and keepers.

"There is a therapeutic aspect of gardening for the individuals at Evergreen Elm," Buck said. "It helps with aggression and obsessive compulsive disorder," adding the repetitious nature of the tasks calms the clients at Evergreen Elm - an agency that specializes in the care and therapy of those diagnosed with mental health illness or mental retardation.

Some clients, due to their diagnoses, tend to binge eat, for example. Tending the garden allows them to better understand the nutritional value of what they are growing. It also helps with finger dexterity, she said, as well as giving them a reason to be outside getting exercise in the sunlight, which naturally combats depression.

Harvesting the gardens and taking home all those blue ribbons also fills them with a sense of pride and accomplishment, she said.

"Each individual here can tell you what they do in the garden and why," Buck said. Some of the clients at Evergreen Elm have been working with Rotheraine in the garden for decades, she added. "It's a huge benefit for them."

More detailed information on biodynamic gardening can be found at www.rotheraine.com.

[plantbuilder]

thank you sir!
good reading and visuals.
i can see myself collecting peoples garbage and calling it plant food!
peace
plantbuilder

[dpn]

NEVER WATER LEAVES OF A TOMATO PLANT!.... why did mr rotheraine make this statement? when the wine people where big on the foliar sprayed teas? (thanks for the info mr c-ray)

[c-ray]

tomatoes are unique plants, for instance they like unrotted or partially rotted compost preferably made from tomato plants, and they also like to grow in the same plot year after year

[dpn]

i never knew they would grow on unrotted waste, has anyone tried growing cannabis using this method?

[dpn]

sorry if this is daft question but what is horn manure?

[c-ray]

fresh manure from a cow (must be a cow not a bull), packed into horns in the fall and placed underground in the most fertile piece of land until spring, when it is unearthed it yields the finest form of humus...aka horn manure

[dpn]

Horn Manure (500)

Upon arrival the Horn Manure preparation should be removed from its polythene packaging and used as soon as possible.

Storage
If it needs to be kept longer than one week it should be carefully stored in a container with a loose fitting lid. Unglazed earthenware pots are best but glass jars or ceramic containers will also do. The pots should then be placed in an untreated wooden box and surrounded on all sides with peat. The box should be stored under cover in a cool, dark and frost-free place away from the injurious influences of microwave radiation (phone masts etc.) and other potentially toxic influences.
When stored in this way horn manure will maintain its vitality for up to a year.

Uses
Horn manure is used to stimulate soil vitality and encourage plants to connect with the specific conditions of their growing site. It also encourages deeper rooting systems, increased earthworm activity and a better retention of soil moisture. It is an ingredient in root dips (used in transplanting), in tree paste (to feed fruit trees) and can be used as a seed bath treatment.

One unit of horn manure is sufficient to treat approximately one acre. It needs to be dissolved in about 2-3 gallons (10-15 litres) of water, stirred vigorously for one hour and sprayed out in droplets on to the garden or field. The exact proportion of preparation to water is not crucial and smaller amounts can be used. On larger areas the amount of preparation in relation to the amount of water used can be reduced by up to a third.

When to use
Horn manure is always applied in the late afternoon or early evening to coincide with the in-breathing cycle of the day. Mild overcast days should be chosen where possible. Heavy rain, high winds and frosty weather should be avoided and during dry sunny spells spraying should be delayed until close to sunset.

It can be used several times during the year. It can be applied to all areas in February and March and also in October or November. It is recommended wherever crops have been sown or transplanted and can be used on grassland after cutting or grazing. Spraying an area three times in succession, with the same stirring, has proved beneficial as have repeated applications during times of drought.

Stirring Vessel
The vessel for stirring must be clean and free from all forms of contamination. A bucket may be used or for larger quantities a barrel or other suitable container. The container needs to be cylindrical in shape and have straight sides. It can be made from a variety of materials. Earthenware or wooden containers are best but copper, stainless steel or enamelled buckets may also be used. Galvanised buckets are not recommended. If plastic has to be used it needs to be of the hard dense type.

Water
Only the best available water should be used. Tap and well water need to stand for a few days before being used. Occasional vigorous stirrings during this time will rid mains water of its chlorine content. Rain water can also be used but if collected from roofs care should be taken to avoid the first (usually polluted) storm waters. Water from tiled roofs is preferable.

The water should be heated until it is hand warm (35-38 degrees centigrade) over a wood fire or using a boiler. Where this is impractical, boiling water may be added. Warmed water is important since warmth brings more activity to living processes.

Stirring
When the vessel is ready, the preparation can be taken and gently rubbed between thumb and finger in the water to help it dissolve. If a bucket is chosen, stirring may be done with the bare hand or with a stout stick. Where stirring is done in a barrel an oar may be used or a pole with a bundle of sticks attached to it in the manner of a birch broom. A further refinement is to attach the pole to an overhead beam.
The method of stirring is important. Stir the water vigorously until a deep crater is formed in the rotating liquid. Then reverse the direction of stirring to create a seething chaotic turbulence before gradually forming a crater in the other direction. Once this is achieved the direction of stirring should again be reversed. This rhythmic process should be continued for an hour. After one full hour the liquid is allowed to settle before being poured through a sieve into a backpack or machine sprayer.

Spraying out
On a garden scale the stirred preparation can be applied with a simple bucket and brush. A hand brush made from natural fibres is best. This allows droplets of water to be sprayed out over the ground. The technique is to walk briskly over the garden or field while rhythmically spraying once to the right and once to the left so as to lightly cover the ground with water droplets. Where knapsack or tractor sprayers are used it is important that nozzles are set to allow course droplets to be formed. There is no need for blanket coverage sine each water droplet radiates its effect over a wider area.

Horn Silica (501)

On arrival the bag containing Horn Silica should be opened and kept on a light and sunny window sill until it is used. A small glass jar with a screw top lid is a suitable storage vessel.

Horn Silica is used during the growing season to enhance the qualities of growth and maturation. It helps to stabilise and balance plant metabolism and also increases nutritive value. The keeping quality of vegetables is improved as is sugar and dry matter content. In contrast to Horn Manure which is applied generally to the soil, Horn Silica is used in a much more specific way to enhance the quality of crops at particular moments in their growth cycle. It is first applied when plants are growing strongly in their vegetative phase and then later when the crop begins to ripen. Its capacity for improving such qualities as dry matter content, sugar and ripeness means that it as applied mainly to the upper part of the plant. It enhances light qualities. The general rule is to spray when that part of the plant begins to form which will later be harvested - the swelling roots, fruits or cabbage heads etc.

When to Use
Horn Silica is usually applied in the early morning as close to sunrise as possible when the dew still lies on the ground. Where possible a day should be chosen for the morning application which is set to being sunny. This will help the light influence to take full effect. If however it is sprayed too late in the day when the sun is already high in the sky, there is a danger of the plants being burned. It can be applied all round the year according to particular plant requirements although the main and more general application would take place in late spring. Where it is used to enhance the final stage of ripening it can also be applied in the afternoon especially on root crops.

Stirring and Spraying
Only very small quantities of Horn Silica are used. One unit is dissolved in 2-3 gallons (10-15 litres) of water and sprayed across one acre. Stirring proceeds as with Horn manure. To spray out a knapsack sprayer is needed with very fine nozzles. It is sprayed as a fine mist over the plants. Its effect is more on the plants and the atmosphere around them than on the soil.

Care Needed!
Horn Silica has an upward-drawing effect which if not properly balanced could be harmful. For this reason it is important that Horn Silica is only applied where Horn Manure has been previously applied. Plants could be harmed if it is applied on its own.

Only use Horn Silica where Horn Manure has been previously applied!

[dpn]

(should of just used google lol ^) found this too http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZyiNnaJEPA&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Ehowtosavetheworld%2Eco%2En z%2Findex%2Ehtml

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from http://www.americanbluegreen.com/html/thalassa_mix.html
Thalassa-Mix was born from the life work of Dr. Maynard Murray, medical doctor, researcher and author of the book Sea Energy Agriculture. The gift of the seas, (Thalassa – the Greek name for the sea), both primal and present day, are combined with the ground-breaking and forward-looking work of Rudolph Steiner and Viktor Schauberger. Steiner’s gift of the biodynamic Earth healing remedies, and Schauberger’s insightful understanding of the energetic flow patterns of water, have been combined to enhance a blend of pure, deep sea water and the Original Himalayan Crystal Salt™. The result is a synergistic, biodynamically charged and enhanced sea mineral concentrate that supplies all naturally occurring elements (up to 92 of them) in a buffered ionic solution ready for plant uptake. Use Thalassa-mix to enhance soil biology, to balance mineral nutrients and to stimulate the soil’s energetic processes.

Thalassa Mix is formulated with ingredients that come directly from nature… sea minerals, herbs and humus. Nothing has been chemically altered or synthesized. The solution is concentrated, charged and enhanced by our proprietary mixing processes. All you need to do is dilute it and apply.

Experience has shown that a final dilution of 2000 parts per million total dissolved solids is the perfect concentration to feed most plants in most applications. To achieve this concentration, simply mix ¾ ounce (one and one-half tablespoons) in one gallon of water. Leafy greens and flowers prefer slightly less concentrations – approximately 1200 to 1500 ppm.

Fruiting crops and grasses can be fed multiple times at the 2000 ppm dilution and can actually take up to 3500 ppm in certain applications.

Thalassa Mix may be used in all types of agricultural and horticultural applications. It is being successfully used as the sole nutrient mix in hydroponic growing systems and in sprouting as well. In conventional soil growing systems, Thalassa Mix may be used directly on the seed at planting as a soak, pop-up or lay-by. Thalassa Mix may be used as a root drench, foliar spray, sidedress and through irrigation systems.

Soil characteristics are an important consideration when applying Thalassa Mix. Heavy, clay based soils will hold the minerals contained in the mix. Therefore, when applying directly to the soil, only one or two applications per season are recommended. Loamy or coarse soils subject to leaching can be fed multiple times throughout the season, up to weekly applications on heavy – feeding crops.

Field crops typically exhibit tremendous results from one to two applications per season. Fruits and vegetables can be fed multiple times taking into consideration soil characteristics and type of crop. Thalassa Mix performs superbly as the sole nutrient in hydroponic systems with multiple daily feedings.

Thalassa-Mix ingredients and what they do:

Pure sea water – perfectly balanced natural mineral solution containing up to 92 minerals, plus thousands of enzymes and aerobic bacteria. The minerals in sea water are in liquid crystalloid state, which pass easily through plant membranes.

Original Himalayan Crystal Salt™ – 250 million year old sea mineral deposit from an ancient sea – now buried in a mountain range in the Himalayas. This salt contains 84 minerals which are in balanced proportion and are complementary with pure sea water. This salt has been extensively studied for its therapeutic qualities and the findings have been described in detail in the book Water&Salt: The Essence Of Life.

Humus – from biodynamic preparation # 500 and barrel compost. The functions of humus are well understood – the biodynamic versions are very powerful and aid in stimulating biological processes and healing the soil.

[B]Silica – from biodynamic preparation # 501. Silica helps enhance the light metabolism of plants, aiding in the resistance to fungal dis-ease and chewing insects. The bd 501 also helps to encourage the growth of mycorrhizal fungus within the soil.

Yarrow – from biodynamic preparation # 502. Yarrow is a powerful healing herb and will help to restore damaged and exploited soil by enabling a deeper connection to the cosmic environment. It acts as a biocatalyst with a stimulating effect on plants’ use of sulfur and potassium.

Chamomile – from biodynamic preparation # 503. Chamomile helps stabilize nitrogen and aids in balancing silica and potassium in the soil. As in humans, chamomile is ‘soothing’ and aids in the digestive properties of soil and compost.

Stinging Nettle – from biodynamic preparation #504. Nettles prevent nitrogen from evaporating and enhance vegetative growth of all plants, especially during dry weather. The nettles preparation brings “intelligence” to the soil or compost, enabling plants to get what they need from their surrounding environment. Nettles tea is used as a flavor enhancer for crops.

White Oak Bark – from biodynamic preparation # 505. Extremely rich in calcium – approximately 78%. This preparation aids in the prevention and healing of plant dis-ease via the watery element.

Dandelion – from biodynamic preparation #506. Dandelion regulates the relationship between silica and potassium in the plant. Dandelion preparation brings awareness to the plants environment and helps it’s dis-ease immunity.

Valerian – from biodynamic preparation # 507. Valerian assists plants in finding their right relation to phosphorus. Biodynamic valerian also brings in the catalyzing effects of warmth to the soil and plants.

Equisetum arvense (Meadow Horsetail) – from biodynamic preparation # 508. This tea is used to prevent fungal diseases through the mechanism of promoting the mycorrhizal fungus in the soil. This helps control the watery forces to prevent fungus.

Clay mediates the cosmic influences from the soil [roots] upwards to the leaf, stem and fruit [the siliceous parts of the plant according to Steiner. Clay is the mediator between the Earthly lime [bd500] and the cosmic silica [bd501].

All of these ingredients come from nature and have not been synthesized or chemically altered, only energetically enhanced. Composts and herbal preparations are made according to Rudolph Steiner’s original discourses and enhanced through the wisdom of Schauberger. Pure sea water and The Original Himalayan Crystal Salt are blended together in a patented mixing device to form a super-saturate, which is seven times more concentrated than sea water. All the ingredients are then mixed in the patent-pending Vortex Brewer ™, to enliven, imprint and potentize the solution.

Thalassa-mix is dedicated to the lives and work of Dr. Maynard Murray, Rudolph Steiner, and Viktor Schauberger. Special thanks and gratitude goes to Donald Jansen, who for over 20 years has kept Dr. Murray’s work on Sea Energy Agriculture alive. Thalassa-Mix has been formulated by Stephen Storch of Natural Science Organics and Kevin Keune of Makes Scents, LLC. Both have been using the product since the spring of 2006 on their respective biodynamic farms with tremendous results.

A portion of the proceeds from each sale of Thalassa Mix are being donated to the Sea Energy Agriculture Foundation. This 501©3 research organization is committed to furthering the research and knowledge of producing highly mineralized, nutrient dense food, using only resources that occur in nature. This research-based, educational organization will also be studying and publishing data of the effects on animal and human from eating this type of food.

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Dr. Rudolf Steiner's Agriculture Course:
http://www.garudabd.org/Agriccourse/contents.html

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Another version of the Dr. Steiner Agriculture course:
http://www.considera.org/help/lect1.htm

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some issues of the 'Biodynamics Journal' are now available online at the Soil and Health Library -> http://www.soilandhealth.org/01aglibrary/BD.Journal.TOC.html

[guest]

Here something good I found:

This is a nice guilde in slide-show format which has lots of pics and explains things well...they are very heavily into BD preps, the old skool wayz ;)
"Compost Teas: A tool for rhizosphere + phyloosphere agriculture" (http://www.attra.org/attra-pub/compostteashow/compost-tea-slides/sld001.htm)

Ok, that's all for now

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Dr. Bob interviews Greg Willis of GW Agriculture:
http://drbobthehealthbuilder.podomatic.com/entry/eg/2007-02-22T14_45_23-08_00

[yesIah garvey]

hey great thread!

i've recently inaugurated a blog-site for anyone interested in bd cannabis to interface/congregate/share or ? knows what...

http://bdcga.wordpress.com
the biodynamic cannabis growers' association

please all feel welcome to help create this resource :)

my wife and i are bd farm workers in california. in 8 years we've had some exposure to a wide variety of food making, first in washington state and now a couple years down here. we live in a very active mj area and are as stoked as possible (cali-talkin') to have a chance to study ganja with some amount of legal protection...

one aspect of announcing an interest in bd cannabis, is that most bd farmers are *not* interested in cannabis or in anyone who has such an interest. we've encountered some disdain, some wild vituperation, and some whispered agreement that there is much of value to the plant -but that its not to be discusssed openly... :) :(

i do understand all my bd brethrens...
-for one thing "steiner did not 'get high'"- cannabis is just not part of their materia medica
-for another, it is frustrating for "straight" farmers barely scraping by, to see lazy f-d-up neighbors buying new rigs or whatever

there's more shades and nuances of why it's a tough sell... the elders def don't want you taking the youngers down to the river and getting em all high...

i think these difficulties are temporary tho, and that eventually our beloved flowers will be accepted and loved in all reasonable purity. wine is a good example. wine is obviously an asset to a farm district, nobody worries you'll be slipping jugs to their kids or whatever. or, you can let a child have a bit of wine at a family meal, as they do in "normal" countries, without having your kids taken away from you and getting sent to penitentiary... coming out of prohibition, as we are now, its natural that people's minds are all confused..

i also admit i don't mind disturbing dirt sometimes... :) i am so clear in myself that there is ample, ample room to work all one's life with ganja and have it just get more and more positive, more Ital.
i'm not ashamed, i'm not ashamed, i'm not ashamed, to shake out my nats...

wine-making is a good analogy for lots of our considerations, including for why biodynamics will ultimately bring a lot to the world of cannabis!

best wishes and look forward to chatting with you soon

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welcome bredren!!

I hear what you are saying..the bd wine I got to sample was real real nice so why not bd cannabis?

some of the theosophs were supposedly into hashish and they are not so different from the bd crowd

the folks at the the bdnow yahoogroup http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bdnow are most open-minded bd farmers I would say...that link is a super resource, one of the best

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found an interesting podcast this morning about a restaurant in california that works closely with a small biodynamic farm, they are one of the top 50 restaurants in the world according to restaurant magazine so I guess the biuodynamics is working eh

http://www.metrofarm.com/assets/podcasts/2007-09-22_558dmanresa.mp3

here is a link to the bd farm from the podcast:
http://loveapplefarm.typepad.com


also as a bonus here is a link to a good introduction on BD
http://oregonbd.org/Class/class.htm

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the alan chadwick archive:
http://web.mac.com/logosophia/Alan_Chadwick_Archive/Welcome.html

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coupla interesting articles on biodynamic viticulture
http://www.wineanorak.com/biodynamic1.htm
http://www.vinterviews.com/reviews/303-the-magic-of-montemaggiore

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great talk by biodynamic egg farmer Karl Hann, starts at 26 minutes in
http://media.globalpublicmedia.com/RM/DeconDinner/DD041708.mp3
required listening :tup:

[QUOTE]The beer industry is always a fascinating one to take a look at, as beer was one of the first industrialized food and beverage products. The focus for the first segment of this episode will be on the recent global shortage of hops - the key flavouring component of most beers. At the March 2008 Certified Organic Associations of BC conference, Host Jon Steinman sat down with brewer and farmer Rebecca Kneen of Sorrento, BC's, Crann

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from http://www.d1096223.mydomainwebhost.com/faq.html
ps. this^ is the canadian supplier for bd preps, for those who aren't making their own

Why is biodynamics necessary to world forestry?

Presently, most trees that are planted (or replanted on clear cut sites) come from commercial tree nurseries. Some of them produce as many as 20 million seedlings a year. These seedlings are mainly grown in an artificial substrate which is alien to the tree. Of course, it is almost impossible to copy the soil type into which a seedling will be planted after a two year growing season at a tree nursery.
The problem, however, is the following: not only is the soil environment an artificial one but the fertilizers and weed killers etc. are alien to the tree seedlings, too.

Thus, when the seedling gets planted into its new environment somewhere out in the forest, it will have to overcome a large number of serious obstacles for which it was never prepared. It is like sending a child into the big, wide world after it was raised in an artificial environment. The result is clear. Trees seedlings get stunted, shocked and have a tendency to rotate their roots (spiral root growth) for many years, so much so that many foresters have become seriously concerned with this 'shock growth' since the tree often develops an illness within 10 to 15 years.

It is known that nitrogen fertilizers and other growth enhancers attract a lot of fungi that may lie dormant for years within the tree seedling or its immediate environment. Fungi, i.e. spores that eventually produce the fungi, can survive for decades underneath the cambium. Once the tree has grown to a certain size, the fungi may suddenly grow (due to favourable weather conditions) and destroy the wood inside the tree (it becomes mushy, soft, waterlogged). This, then makes the tree very weak so that it may break off even during a mild storm.

The forest industry is becoming increasingly aware of the problems which are the result of artificial seedling environments.

The Bio-Dynamic Method does away with artificial ingredients. For example, Preparation 500 (derived from certain enzymes in the cow manure, exposed to a six-month maturing process and stirred for 60 minutes to enhance its quality) strengthens the roots and the root-micro organisms, enabling the seedling to prepare itself for the upcoming transplantation process. The BD Method does not make a seedling dependent on chemical fertilizers but enables it to send out a million times more hair roots in order to tap its soil environment and find all the ingredients it needs according to the motto: Give a man a fish and he will be able to eat for a day. Teach him how to fish and he will be able to feed himself for a life time.

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[dpn]

I was sceptical of dowsing, until me and a friend met a dowser, who we tested by throwing a set of keys into a overgrown mass of plants.... first we tried looking for them for ages nearly 10 minutes, and thought they were lost lol but the dowser found them straight away, he had his back turned when the keys were thrown too.

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most folks are skeptical about dowsing, but many will end up using a dowser and paying big bucks for the service when it comes time to drill a well

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from http://www.amazon.com/Biological-Transmutations-C-L-Kervran/dp/0846401959/
[QUOTE]WHAT ARE BIOLOGICAL TRANSMUTATIONS?

Classical science is confronted in agriculture with many enigmas which it believes can be explained by physico chemistry; but this is presumptuous, and the great physicists are coming to realise that it involves over hasty generalisations. Louis de Broglie, the father of wave mechanics, wrote recently: "It is premature to suppose that we can reduce vital processes to the inadequate conceptions of physico chemistry of the 19th and even the 20th century".

One could fill pages with quotations of this kind (and even with works on this theme) emanating from scientists from all over the world and showing that nature does not obey our physico chemical laws; for nature does not work according to the simplified conditions that prevail in laboratories where the evidence is discovered from which we deduce the laws.

In chemistry we are always referred to a law of Lavoisier's formulated at the end of the 18th century. "Nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed". This is the credo of all the chemists. They are right: for in chemistry this is true. Where they go wrong is when they claim that nature follows their laws: that Life is nothing more than chemistry.


THE 19th CENTURY

As little as 30 years after the death of Lavoisier his law was challenged by the French chemist, Vauquelin. Sometime before 1822 when he retired, Vauquelin had shown that chicken which are only fed on grain, excrete more calcium than there is in the grain that they have ingested. This is impossible to explain by chemistry since the calcium appears to have created itself.

Soon after this, the Englishman, Prout, in 1822, made a systematic study of the variations in calcium in the egg of incubating chicken. He stated that the chick when it broke out of the egg contained four times more lime than there was in the egg: the weight in lime of the shell had not changed. Prout concluded that there had been endogenous formation of lime in the egg, a transmutation of an element which could become calcium (see the work Transmutations

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http://blip.tv/file/1273528/

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http://www.maximumyield.com/article_sh_db.php?articleID=402&yearVar=2009&issueVar=January
http://www.maximumyield.com/article_sh_db.php?articleID=411&yearVar=2009&issueVar=February

[Sicarii]

very interesting. Thank you

peace
sicarii

[dpn]

i wonder if there are any powerful botrytis fighting bio-dynamic preps?
i see the horsetail is anti-fungal...

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the secret to fighting botrytis is to grow healthy plants
it has been said that it is good to spray the plants often and early with diluted fermented nettle teas, an herb that helps to strengthen their immune systems

[dpn]

thanks for the heads up! :)
ive often wondered why the roots of the plants aren't added to the fermentation, to add some phosphorus to mix... most of teas are high in N & K but lack P.

[dpn]

http://www.moodie.biz/thinking/CATALOGO09.pdf

a good pdf book, with some interesting recipes... enjoy

[DOZEE]

starting compost for next year

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEQB1Q5MIQI

http://malibucompost.com/

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from http://www.andrewlorand.com/biodynamicconcepts.html

Practical Biodynamics: A Head-Heart-Hand Practical Philosophy

All things practical, have, if they are to be fruitful, a solid foundation in thought. Some might simply say that we need common sense. Good farming, good gardening - has always had a strong mental component. Farmers and gardeners need to think through what they are doing, as things take time to ripen, things take good timing to turn out well. Biodynamics has a strong mental, philosophical framework. It is flexible, adaptable, but certainly, the principles are what make it distinct and successful.

Introduction - Concepts

Since 1924 and the founding of biodynamics, approaches to explaining biodynamics have varied. In the context of trying to define biodynamics (as a system of agriculture) - at least initially - we might use the following, developing levels of potential understanding as a starting point of discussion. They may seem too theoretical at first, but, dear Reader, venture into them - and you will find an excellent basis for your practical work.

Biodynamics can be understood conceptually as:

1. an agro-ecological renewal of agriculture, using various natural methods, stemming from Rudolf Steiner and his anthroposophical spiritual science;

2. a holisitc, ecological philosophy of farming and gardening, of nutrition, of land-stewardship and of living and working successfully with nature;

3. an awakening of one's consciousness as a farmer and gardener to the many levels of life in nature, including a new, conceptually expanded understanding of physical phenomena, energies and beings at work in nature;

4. a recognition of biodynamics as a kind of complementary medicine (anthroposophical medicine) for agriculture, for farms, for the earth - with a specific, learnable, systematic approach;

5. the realization - at the heart of biodynamics - of the sacredness of all things and beings and the necessity for increasingly selfless participation (to the degree on can) in the search for health, healing and harmony, in other words biodynamics not only in the sense of 1-4 but also in the sense of a path of service;

6. experiencing biodynamics as a school for training one's mind, one's heart and one's sensibilities towards spiritual awakening to improve one's capacities as a farmer and to improve one's abilities to serve and to see nature as she is;

7. becoming acquainted with the earth as a physical, living, sentient and conscious being.


Biodynamic Principles

There are many, significant biodynamic principles, both philosophical and conceptual (as above) as well as very practical. Biodynamics is not meant to just be a new way of thinking, but it is meant to be a new way of thinking!!! It is also meant to touch the heart of each practitioner, but in such a way that it really inspires to work ethically, with a healing (diagnostic-therapeutic), helping approach for ultimate health and productivity in practice. It is a head-heart-hand practical philosophy of farming and gardening.

Some of the most basic principles of biodynamics can be summarized as follows:

1. The Earth is physically complex, physiologically alive, sentient and conscious (self-aware) organism embedded in a living, sentient, conscious universe;

2. Each and every unique farm and garden is an integrated part of this physically complex, physiologically alive, sentient and conscious Earth organism and is of course smaller and differentiated, but equally physically complex, physiologically alive, sentient and conscious.

3. Developing and managing healthy, productive and successful farms and gardens (however large or small) is primarily (primarily, means "at first" and in terms of priorities!) a medical question, like taking care of a patient. What is healthy? What is not healthy? and What can be done to return health and productivity where it is no longer? are the three key questions to a medical approach to agricultural management. We can call this a diagnostic-therapeutic approach.

4. Biodynamics as a philosophy and as a practice stem from Rudolf Steiner and his anthroposophical spiritual science. Understanding biodynamics as anthroposophical medicine for the earth, for farms allows the practitioner to become increasingly independent in his/her diagnosis of health and illness on farm and to become equally increasingly capable of proscribing and applying effective measures (medicine, therapies) to the farm towards health and productivity.

5. In oder to come to terms with how to diagnose health and illness on farm in the context of anthroposophical medicine, one must learn step by step how anthroposophical science views the whole individual (and the individual farm) and how health and illness is understood and how medicines and therapies are used to rebalance imbalances, to invigorate organs, organ systems and indeed the whole immunological system of an individual - including in our case the individual farm.


Bringing such thoughts & concerns into our daily, manual labor

Such lofty thoughts - such concerns about health and illness and finding optimum productivity naturally - are something that we think about, that shows itself in how, what, when we do things in our gardens and farms. Our daily work is informed consciously or less so, with the management system we choose. If we choose a management system focused on primarily health building measures - as the basis of true, sustainable productivity - then it is something quite different, than if we are only concerned with maximum production for the moment we are in - regardless of what negative side effects or long term effects such a total focus just on the moment might bring with it.

What we do, day for day, both outwardly and in terms of our thoughts and feelings (which are just as real as what we do with out hands) is of consequence. One thing builds on another. We are constantly building our gardens and farms in a certain direction. Hopefully not in a chaotic, short-term, abusive manner, but in a harmonious, long-term, healthy fashion. Our daily work matters. Recognizing that our philosophy determines our management system and our management system our daily work - we realize the significance of thinking, philosophizing, conceptualizing, meditating over our work, what it is about, what meaning it should have and how to develop methods that match our values.

Biodynamics offers practical methods, but not methods for methods-sake or to be somehow cool, spiritual, ecological - but because it is deeply, genuinely concerned about the health and productivity of our gardens and farms - for the sake of our soils, animals and people - and the long term well-being of humanity and the earth. Spirituality in this context is not just a fashionable word to throw around, but signifies a real effort to connect one's authentic self with the authentic substances, forces and beings in nature and in the cosmos. It is the disconnect that is part of our modern world, is part of so many of our lives, that leads to the abuses that we all seek to remediate. Our daily practice, however modest, can help us reconnect ourselves and our soils, plants and animals with the living, sentient and conscious earth / universe. This in the end in the source of vitality and quality - our essential goals.

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recent interview with Steve Storch

part 1
http://www.oneradionetwork2.com/mp3/environment/gardening/01.25.11_storch_steve_bio_dynamic_one.mp3

part 2
http://www.oneradionetwork2.com/mp3/environment/gardening/01.25.11_storch_steve_bio_dynamic_one.mp3

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swACpqtjJIU

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=en1IMTBgb_k

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMWSvECLs_U

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here's the spoken audio version of the biodynamic agriculture lectures from 1924:

http://rudolfsteineraudio.com/agriculture/agriculture.html

[dpn]

the perception of rudolf steiner is intense, i love the language and descriptions of the elements, its like poetry.

thanks for sharing, i enjoy mp3's more.... staring at the monitor bakes my swede lol

[dpn]

have you found anymore mp3's by rudolf steiner?...

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^ their all here mate: http://rudolfsteineraudio.com/lecturesimagebased.html

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biodynamic wine, it's all about saving the earth

http://vimeo.com/23917904

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Alex Podolinsky, he comes from the land down under, where women glow and men plunder

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8n5cnoWx0Y


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcoFGAnVgRg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUi-awJMemE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lB70_bsG4UU

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something for our Italian friends

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9o0si5nf-k

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_ATksDY2Ac

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The Agroinnovations Podcast ( http://agroinnovations.com/podcast )

Episode #128: Biodynamic Agriculture
June 28th, 2011
We are joined by Hugh Courtney of the Josephine Porter Institute for Applied Biodynamics. We discuss the life and ideas of Rudolph Steiner, the life and practice of Josephine Porter, biodynamic preparations and how they are made, the application of these preparations on the land, results one can expect to see, and ways to preserve biodynamic techniques.

http://www.archive.org/download/AgroinnovationsPodcast128BiodynamicAgriculture/agroinnovations_128_biodynamic_agriculture.mp3

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from http://www.antikaofficinabotanika.com/macerato-vegetale-ortica-equiseto.php
(translated from Italian)

Biodynamic Plant Macerations (olde school)

Nettle Maceration

Nettles in the soil stimulate the formation of mycorrhizae and symbiotic rhizomes, thus allowing plants better assimilation of the minerals in the soil. Sprayed on the leaves, it stops mildew and allows, in combination with the soft sulfur soap, good management of mite infestations. As a tea (K-nettle), it also has a stimulating action on vegetative growth.

Preparation of maceration (basic recipe): In a container placed in the shade add 150 grams fine Micronized powder into 10 liters of water. Stir 2 times a day until the end of the fermentation, you'll know because it will stop making small bubbles. The time required varies depending on the atmospheric temperature, which generally takes 5-10 days.

The product thus obtained is filtered and applied: 5% in the foliar application and 20% for soil applications.

Boosted recipe: the first phase is equal to the basic recipe to which we will add 500 g of Lithotamnium calcareum. The resulting liquid will be diluted to 20% for the soil and 5% for foliar application.

Root applications: To 10 liters of macerate obtained, add 40 liters of water for the treatment of about 1000 sqm. The interventions will be carried out by the end of February, to stimulate soil microbial activity.


Horsetail Maceration

Horsetail, in combination with nettles and garlic is an excellent stimulant of the natural defenses of plants and in favourable seasons for the development of fungi (mildew), can also be used 2 times a week. Excellent results in combination with copper sulfate and sulfur.

Preparation of maceration (basic recipe): In a container placed in the shade we add 150 grams fine Micronized powder into 10 liters of water. Stir 2 times a day until the end of fermentation, you'll know because it will no longer make small bubbles. The time required varies depending on the atmospheric temperature, which generally takes 4-8 days.

The product thus obtained is filtered and used: 4% in the foliar application and 20% for soil applications.

Boosted Recipe: the first phase is equal to the basic recipe to which will be added to 500g Lithotamnium calcareum and 100 g of garlic. The resulting liquid is diluted to 20% for soil treatment and 5% for foliar treatments.

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from http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/dec/06/biodynamic-coffee-in-brazil

Wake up and smell the biodynamic coffee

There's an awful lot of coffee in Brazil, but how much of it is grown according to the principles of spiritual guru Rudolf Steiner? Andrew Purvis talks to the farmers dedicated to helping the poor, respecting the workers – and producing some of the happiest skinny lattes on the planet

Andrew Purvis
The Observer, Sunday 6 December 2009

They call this place Terramater – "Earth Mother" – and the coffee bushes on Adeodato Menezes's small farm seem imbued with that spirit. "It's like a woman breastfeeding," the 63-year-old says, bending down to caress the ripe Catuai cherries low down on the bush. "These are her new babies," he adds, straightening up to touch the tightly furled leaves, green and tender, that will fruit the following year.

It's not the kind of language I am used to on coffee farms – but Terramater, in the Chapada Diamantina region of Bahia state, in north-east Brazil, is far more than that. Set up as a Findhorn-style alternative community in the 1980s, it partly serves as a residential centre for disadvantaged teenagers from the favelas (slums) who are students of sistema agroflorestal – a farming system that combines the cultivation of commercial crops with the planting of native trees. It's a way of preserving the forest environment and rekindling skills used by indigenous people. On this subject Menezes is a world expert.

He is also an ardent follower of Rudolf Steiner and his biodynamic methods, which, like organic farming, eschew the use of agrochemicals. These methods involve not just planting at night, and at times being governed by the phases of the moon, but the application of preparados – solutions made from plants, minerals and other natural materials (such as cow manure) which "inoculate" the soil, passing on "information" about how it can maintain a healthy balance.

The big surprise is that Menezes is a scientist with a degree in agricultural engineering. Educated in the era of "the generals", the military elite that ruled Brazil from 1964-85 and banned all political parties, he at first accepted the prevailing orthodoxy about agriculture – that land should be concentrated in the hands of a few, its productivity maximised by the use of pesticides and fertilisers. "I followed the rules, I played the system," he says, "but I didn't believe in it. I knew I couldn't work that way any more."

In 1978 he began to experience "other influences" and decided to set up an alternative community near Brasilia, the country's administrative capital. One of those influences was The Secret Life of Plants by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird, published in 1973. At its core was the idea that plants are sentient, despite having no brain or nervous system. A few years later he moved to Terramater and realised his dream.

Though partly a lifestyle decision, the main thrust was political. Resistance to intensive, large-scale agriculture was effectively subversion against the fascist regime, and Menezes knew where his allegiances lay. A member of the Communist party, he named his last dog Che Guevara – and the black labrador scampering into the kitchen at Terramater now is Hugo Chávez, after the Marxist president of Venezuela. Framed in the kitchen window, I notice, is a poster supporting "Lula" – the nickname fondly used for Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil's ever-popular socialist president.

Menezes shows me the preparados he is using – small plastic sachets marked urtiga (nettle), dente de leão (dandelion), camomila (camomile) and casca de carvalho (oak bark), added to compost to give the soil a boost. It's obvious that these are European plants, the ones used by Steiner in the 1920s.

"What we need is a biodynamic system tailored to the tropics," Menezes reckons – and the same lateral thinking is evident in his plantation. Strolling around it, it feels like a mad, random experiment in sistema agroflorestal rather than a systematic approach to producing the world's finest biodynamic coffee.

At Fazenda Floresta, a 20-minute drive away, that is what they are hell-bent on doing. Under a vivid blue sky, workers rake the pale golden coffee beans spread out on the terreiros (concrete patios) to dry against a backdrop of the striated bluff that marks the beginning of the Chapada Diamantina National Park.

Chapada Diamantina means "Diamond Plateau" in Portuguese – and for 100 years this area was plundered for the gemstones embedded in its cliffs. Now it is gourmet coffee that is tempting prospectors of a different kind. Among them are Nelson Ribeiro, the farmer here at Fazenda Floresta; Luca Allegro, a Brazilian of Italian descent who owns Fazenda Aranquan, the biodynamic coffee farm next door; and Menezes, who is regarded as their moral and political compass.

Together they and six other farmers make up the Asociación Biodinámica d'Ibicoara (ABI), which produces a new single-origin coffee called Floresta, grown according to the principles of Rudolf Steiner. This year the association produced its first containerload of coffee for the UK. Instead of the usual "rich dark roast" popular in Britain, the beans are a paler matt brown.

At Fazenda Floresta, I am shown a size grader that separates out the larger beans for export, the smaller ones for the less lucrative Brazilian market; a hi-tech roaster, and a colour grader that uses an optical eye to spot colour differences in beans that have passed the quality test so far.

"Those that don't match the colour profile are blown away by an air jet and rejected," says Allegro. "By doing all this and trading the way we do, we are taking three or four middlemen out of the chain – and for speciality coffee, the supply chain is shorter anyway. Compared to conventional production, we are taking six links out of the chain." In 2001, when he and Nelson Ribeiro bought the wet-processing plant that grades and sorts the coffee cherries and removes their skin and pulp, the savings made by cutting out the middleman enabled them to pay back the money they owed within a year.

Crucially, the farmers also own the distribution of their coffee, loading it into shipping containers at Fazenda Floresta and sending it to the UK. By the time it has been roasted, packaged and sold as a finished product, moving it higher up the value chain, it realises 43% more income and three times the profit that the farmers would make if they sold their "green" (unroasted) coffee on the open market. This model – which they are calling Direct Trade – also generates twice as much income for the finished product as they would get under the organic Fairtrade label.

It's a bonanza for the Ibicoara farmers but a sad indictment of the way in which speciality coffee is traded. In this rarefied world, the margins are among the highest of any industry. An importer might typically pay the farmer £2.25 per kg for an entry-level speciality coffee. It is then sold on to a roaster, such as the Monmouth Coffee Company or Union Hand-Roasted, for £3 per kg – a 33% increase. The roaster then sells it to a coffee shop for £10 per kg, or it goes on sale at a retailers for £14-£16 per kg – nearly seven times what the farmer was paid for it. By the time you drink it, you will be paying the equivalent of £200-£250 per kg – a 10,000% mark-up and, in Allegro's words, "a very nice business".

Normally, that vast profit would be creamed off by the participants at every stage. Under Direct Trade, a significant amount still goes to the speciality roaster – a company called Has Bean Coffee, based in Seighford, Staffordshire – and to Armando Canales, the man who is singlehandedly promoting Floresta in Britain because he believes passionately in the Direct Trade model. However, the rewards are significant. If these farmers merely sell their green coffee on the open market (at a price that is already 40% higher than the organic Fairtrade price), they struggle to make a 20% profit on their activities. Under the organic Fairtrade model, they make no profit at all – and go bust. In either case, that is the end of the story as far as added value is concerned.

If they have part ownership of distribution, the farmers continue to make money. By Canales's calculation, the profit on every tonne of roasted coffee is £2,800, of which 40% (£1,120) goes to them. Add this to the £2,612 per tonne they receive for their quality crop, and they earn £3,732 per tonne – £1,856 more than under Fairtrade, or a 101% increase.

In the Cup of Excellence grading system – the yardstick for top-end gourmet coffees – blended batches of Floresta achieve scores of 89 or 90. The very best beans from Allegro and Ribeiro's farms score 92, the mark of an exceptional coffee. That is why the association is investing in "micro-lotting" – separating out very small quantities of beans by quality, size, price point, varietal, the type of fertiliser used and who grew them. It's a way of helping Steven Leighton, the artisan roaster at Has Bean Coffee, "tell the story of every batch," says Allegro, and sell it into a suitable niche market. This maximises the price the farmers get for every single bean they produce.

It's a sophisticated, 21st-century approach to marketing, but the scene I am about to witness at Fazenda Floresta could be from the Middle Ages. At the end of a row of coffee shrubs, Ribeiro and two of his workers are digging a hole. Ribeiro scrapes away the soil to reveal a cluster of cattle horns. "This is chiffre-esterco," Allegro explains, "one of the preparados we use to boost the soil's fertility. It's not the physical material in the horn that does it, but the information – a bit like homeopathy. Cattle horn is something that grows but it doesn't have a practical function for the animal any more; it's an excess of energy, a plus that we can utilise. You send the living soil a message to activate the energy."

This horn is filled with fresh manure, which also has to be from a cow, not a bull. "You bury it under the soil for six months to cure, like a cheese," Allegro says. "On 21 September – the beginning of our spring – you take it out and make a solution, a 'dynamisation' that you to apply to the plant. You add water and mix it for 20 minutes. We each take a turn for three minutes, so everyone is a part of it, which is important."

At this point, Menezes chips in to explain the social benefits of biodynamic agriculture. "It was Steiner's view that it should also help human consciousness to blossom," he says. "At my farm I try to make my relationship with the people who work there as healthy as possible. On a daily basis we respect each other and we respect nature. It's something spiritual, to do with the soul."

Ribeiro, who hires the workers at Fazenda Floresta, agrees that treating people fairly is part of the ethos here. "Some families have been coming back for eight harvests in a row. Here, we have no foreman because there is trust. They have enough water, they have enough to eat and somewhere decent to sleep. They're very happy."

Later I speak to Jucelino Carvalho, a migrant worker who is picking coffee with his wife Jucinete and his children Tatiane, 17, and Mateus, 14. Two more of his children, one of them married, are working elsewhere on the farm – and all have been coming back every year for the past five.

Migrant workers are paid on productivity, earning R$3-R$5 (£1-£1.70) for every 20-litre bucket of cherries they pick. A strong, energetic male might manage 12-15 buckets a day, earning R$1,000-R$1,200 (£340-£408) a month – more than twice the legal minimum wage of R$465 a month – plus free basic accommodation and training. Wages here are geared, too, so a woman or a teenager can easily earn the minimum wage – and a family of six, such as Carvalho's, together earn six to 12 times the living wage. "It's a reserva, a big saving for us," Carvalho says, "so we're pleased to be here. We're all here together, and because the farm is small, we know everyone." The other big advantage of working here is that there is shade. On 99% of Brazil's coffee farms, the bushes are grown in rows with nothing to protect workers from the searing 40° heat. Here, where Menezes's sistema agroflorestal is helping to recreate the landscape that existed before intensive agriculture, thousands of trees have been planted between the rows of coffee bushes – saplings that will, over time, make this and Allegro's farm resemble mature orchards with coffee growing in the shade of mighty trees.

"We have four varietals of coffee," says Allegro, "to boost biodiversity. We mainly grow red and yellow Catuai, but also Bourbon, Acauãn and a new experimental crop called Obotãn." In the roots of the coffee bushes, I spot fragments of animal bone, sprinklings of silica (another preparado) and a carpet of animal manure and other fecund organic matter – sweetcorn husks, avocado shells, mango pips and citrus peel – that makes it appear as if the earth is literally being fed. The lustrous, unblemished nature of the coffee plants suggests that it is a healthy diet.

At Fazenda Progresso, a 600-hectare coffee farm at the other end of the scale, there is none of this. Some of the coffee shrubs – laid out in serried ranks with no shade trees at all – appear ragged and dehydrated, while the paths between the rows look like sterile dust rather than soil, because artificial fertilisers have replaced organic matter.

It's puzzling, since each 100-hectare plot (meaning two would swallow up Allegro's entire farm) is irrigated by a "pivot" – a vast length of galvanised pipe mounted on wheeled towers with sprinklers positioned along its length. The shocking amounts of water it uses are pumped from a nearby lake. So enormous are these pivots, you can see the circular patterns they create on Google Earth, butted up against those of other Progresso farms growing mainly potatoes (for McDonald's), the crop that has provided the revenue to build the next Brazilian coffee empire. In three years' time, this property will comprise 1,000 hectares (six of Allegro's farms) and Progresso hopes to be producing 50,000 sacks of high-quality coffee for export (Allegro produces 600 in a good year). This represents 1.5% of Brazil's entire green coffee production – and Brazil is the biggest producer of green coffee in the world.

One reason why some of the coffee plants look battered, and why the soil between them appears dry, is that Progresso has been experimenting with mechanical harvesting. One of the new vehicles is parked close to where we are standing, designed to straddle each row of bushes, knock the cherries off the plant with paddles and suck them up like a giant Hoover. It's as far from Menezes's breastfed "babies" as it is possible to get.

The disturbing thing is, the green beans produced are of a very high quality, considering the volumes involved. Somehow Progresso is extracting the modern-day equivalent of diamonds from the impoverished earth, creating a challenge for the Ibicoara farmers. If coffee good enough for export and commanding decent prices can be produced in this way, why do it their way?

The answer lies in the Bahia landscape, where anyone can see what is happening on the mossy plateau, not far from Ibicoara, where intensive agriculture takes place. With their pivots, pesticides and McFries factories, the big hitters are acquiring land from small farmers who have failed to make ends meet – mainly because they cannot access lucrative markets. The result? More pivots, pesticides and McFries factories.

It's exactly what Adeodato Menezes was opposing more than 20 years ago, and coffee – grown sustainably, and with due respect for plants, animals and humans – is one of the few crops that can preserve the natural landscape rather than destroy it. That, plus a duty to help poor farmers, is why President Lula has committed R$15bn (£5bn) this year to the type of small-scale, sustainable farming known as familial, promoted through his innovative Ministry of Agrarian Development. One initiative has been the publishing of a simple pictorial booklet outlining the basics of biodynamic agriculture. What the booklet doesn't explain is how to convert mysticism into money, but the Ibicoara farmers are working on that. If their Direct Trade model takes off, it could provide a blueprint to be followed throughout the developing world. OFM

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nice.. listening to some of the audio and some of the stuff sounds like spells and such..

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kJ2C9WFiwU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9K4LeBOMrcA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTguVyDu18Q

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7f2sVdbUwX4

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this guy is hardcore

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpSrhHilH48

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPmSLMieX00

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pdf's from The Biodynamic Agricultural College (http://bdacollege.org.uk)

Biodynamics in a Nutshell - Introduction
http://www.bdacollege.org.uk/images/biodynamics/In_a_nutshell-_Intro.pdf

Biodynamics in a Nutshell - Spray Preparation
http://www.bdacollege.org.uk/images/biodynamics/In_a_nutshell-_Spray_preparations.pdf

Biodynamics in a Nutshell - Compost Preparations
http://www.bdacollege.org.uk/images/biodynamics/In_a_nutshell-_compost_preparations.pdf

Biodynamics in a Nutshell - The Sowing
http://www.bdacollege.org.uk/images/biodynamics/In_a_nutshell-_The_Sowing_Calendar.pdf

Biodynamics in a Nutshell - Formative Forces
http://www.bdacollege.org.uk/images/agriculture/In_a_nutshell_-_Formative_forces.pdf

Biodynamics in a Nutshell - Research
http://www.bdacollege.org.uk/images/agriculture/In_a_nutshell_-_Biodynamic_Research.pdf

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArHzNgi_mpc

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Denis Klocek lectures:

http://www.philosophyoffreedom.com/node/3885

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Dennis Klocek - just started listening his talks, hes seems like he has alot to share.

cheers dpn

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ar4H-mcqwDw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRBaegShYZ4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rA1pN_MjQoM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHp29f8VmlA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ozmny4R4eiA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srlwTAdICtU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgRNfxsfErY

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from http://www.drvino.com/2012/02/28/nicolas-joly-appellations-life-forces-electromagnetic-fields/

Nicolas Joly on appellations, life forces and electromagnetic fields

“The concept of taste linked to a certain place has been totally destroyed by technology,” Nicolas Joly told a standing-room-only audience yesterday. Joly, author of two books on Biodynamic winegrape cultivation, owns the Coulée de Serrant in the Loire where he is “nature’s assistant” (according to his business card.)

Back in New York for another edition of Return to Terroir, a roving show of Biodynamic wine producers, Joly leveled criticism at the appellation system (as he did three years ago at the event). He decried the system that has a tasting by committee, which tolerates wines with “technological” intervention, such as herbicides, pesticides and commercial yeasts and enzymes, which can boost over 350 aromas in wine when they are young. “The concept of appellation has lost its meaning,” he said.

He also fired a salvo at the wine media for not drawing any attention to these issues. “I regret that there is not one wine guide in the world that does not tell which wines have been made with commercial yeast,” he said. (It’s worth noting that, in fact, blogs and a growing number of wine books have discussed the subject.)

Next in his sights were herbicide producers and sales people whose products, he said, cause the plants to get sick but do not let the disease actually run its course, since they have another product to sell you for that ailment. He also pointed the finger at them for trying to demonize copper, allowed in Biodynamics to treat some vine maladies, saying copper at a low level (“one or two kilograms per hectare”) is safe. “Yes, in excess, it’s bad, just as too much oxygen in the air would be!”

As he talked about life energies, he got more positive. “Earth doesn’t produce growth; earth receives growth” from the sun and the moon, he said. He elaborated, saying that if he covered the earth in black plastic, there would be no life. “Earth receives life.” And it costs nothing: “Life comes free, if you catch the forces.”

He decried “technological” wines that are made in the winery saying that 98% of wine comes from photosynthesis. “If the work in the vineyard is well done, you have nothing to do in the cellar.”

He suggested that when deciding if a wine is good, there are several moving parts, akin to a music: playing a stratavarius in the subway would not be an ideal performance. So consider the musician, the instrument, and the acoustics, he advised. Biodynamics can turn a vineyard into a beautiful instrument, but not always if the soil and varieties are not matched right, he said.

In closing, Joly expressed concern about the prevalence of electromagnetic fields, particularly cell phones. “We are enormously changing the forces of life with satellites! Gigahertz are everywhere!” He fears they disturb cosmic energy and could reverse the earth’s polarity. “That is climate change.” He added that stainless steel vats capture and conduct too much of “electromagnetic pollution” and thus he does not use them.

He then dismissed us saying that we haddn’t come to listen to him and that we should all go taste some wine.

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from http://www.drvino.com/2009/02/24/nicolas-joly-on-biodynamics-truth-song-and-mr-big-muscle/

Nicolas Joly on biodynamics, truth, song, and Mr. Big Muscle

While gesticulating fervently, Nicolas Joly addressed a packed room yesterday at the Return to Terroir event in New York City today. Although the tasting was going on in the next room, separated only by a thin curtain, the standing-room, rapt audience listened to Joly, a sort of evangelist for Biodynamics who makes wine at the Coulée de Serrant in the Loire (search for Coulée wines).

What follows are some excerpts from his talk. It’s not a verbatim transcript insofar as every word he said is included (I got lost about the relative benefits of having manure from horses, cows, AND pigs, for example). But while he was talking, I was typing his words as he said them. So without further ado, take it away Monsieur Joly:

What is an appellation controllée? Ideally, it is a type of soil and a match of vines. If you have been putting these vines in the right spot, you have an originality.

How much of the concept of the appellation controllée is left? Unfortunately, very little. The so-called modern farming with weed killers destroys the microorganisms of the soil.

The sun is the way for the vine to catch the climate! If you disturb the sun, the possibility to catch the originality of the vine is disturbed… We don’t really understand photosynthesis.

There’s a list of 300 aromas that we can put in the wine – pineapple, cassis and so on—done at the expense of the truth. The wines then taste the same.

This explains why there is so much interest in organic and Biodynamics. One thing that is never explained; earth is belonging to a solar system. How is it that they stay around the sun? Through gravity, matter can only come because of the laws of gravity. How does the earth receive the light it needs to it can grow? Through a very complex process. Wavelengths and frequencies. Astrophysicists know that we are surrounded by many wavelengths. But we don’t know how to read the wavelengths. Pick up a cell phone and call 5000 miles—but how does it work?

We have been filling the atmosphere with all sorts of artificial frequencies. People always talk about CO2 as pollution but they never talk about energy. At a certain level, it is not a problem. But the density of the wavelengths is weakening the system that brings life to earth. That’s a huge problem and explains why biodynamie is coming.

Why is Biodynamics expanding? Modern farming is weakening the system…

Biodynamics restores a situation that was there a century ago—it would have had no meaning a century ago. Why do people practice Biodynamics? They are really farmers…The idea is to rediscover what nature can do, the subtleties of what nature can achieve. Does it mean that Biodynamics is the best of the best? No, it is not a goal, it is a tool! If I plant vines where it is better to plant cabbage, I’ll never have good wine!

It is absurd to sell a wine as Biodynamic [on the label]; you sell a wine because it fully reflects the terroir and Biodynamics helps express that terroir at its best!

If you don’t use systemics, you will still have a certain originality. If in the cellar, you don’t use heavy technology, you will have products of nature. Technology in the cellar tries to replace what was destroyed by modern farming.

If your farming has not destroyed this beauty by stupid actions then in your cellar you have almost nothing to do!

Life on earth is just made of music! Sounds! Some wineries today are playing music in their cellars. I have someone coming to play get rid of one main disease. The music shouldn’t play the same song repetitively from the same spot…

Why would you want to do anything in your cellar? There are two families of wine: made by nature, and the other where nature was not considered or respected.

The big muscle wine like the man of the soap [he flexes; Mr. Clean?] but there is no soul! No subtlety! For the others, there is the face of someone the soul of someone, a song.

Biodynamics is no mystery; it is just a better way of putting things together. The spirit of a vine can come down better at physical level if you understand the laws that permit energy to become matter. Some people say it is not for me, I say fine. Today everyone pretends to be organic or Biodynamic. We want a certification to show that they have to be biodynamic for three years, to show that in the bottle you have a song!

We want bottles with originality. Sometimes we find them at a flea market from a guy with a terrible French accent, but the wines sing.

[On vine clones] Some people took one single vine and made one million copies! Absurd! Flowering on the same day! A loss of complexity…
What can I do to increase the complexity of my wine? I cannot do it with technology of cassis flavor—this is childish! But with the vines! You don’t want monoculture!
The market of Mr. Big Muscle wine is gone! The page has turned! Big is beautiful is behind! Small is beautiful! The market is truth! A true product is a market! It is a fabulous change!

[Question about irrigation] When you bring water on the surface of the soil, you keep the roots upward. If you bring an incentive for the root to go down, it will go down. I think irrigation is one factor, which is slowing down what a vine can achieve. It’s a weakness. There are weaknesses everywhere!

[Afterward, I asked him what would be a catalyst against Mr. Big Muscle.] The Internet! Truth now has a new forum! People have been fooled too much and can now talk about it. There will be a movement.

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Voodoo Vintners: Oregon's Astonishing Biodynamic Winegrowers

http://katherinecole.com/i/voodoo-vintners.jpg

http://katherinecole.com/voodoo-vintners.html

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An Ancient Call to the Future: Biodynamics & 'Homeopathic Compost' Revitalize Family Farm [pdf]:

http://www.acresusa.com/toolbox/reprints/Sept2006_AncientCall.pdf

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The Biodynamic Research Working Group:

https://www.biodynamics.com/biodynamic-research

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipR0Hd4zVoA

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1V5ce5ApcVc

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from http://www.montrealgazette.com/life/natural+winemaking/6273607/story.html

The art of natural winemaking

Organic and biodynamic grape growing is no longer on the fringes. But is it better?

By Bill Zacharkiw, Gazette Wine Critic March 8, 2012

I attended a different kind of tasting recently. It was hosted by an organization called The Renaissance des Appellations, whose members – more than 200 wineries from around the world – believe not only in organic and biodynamic grape growing, but eschew many of the winemaking techniques and interventions that have become so commonplace today. This group is self-policing, where member wineries are expected to follow certain guidelines, with the knowledge that they may be inspected by another member winery without notice.

While more than 60 wineries were represented at this tasting, what I found most impressive was who came to taste. It was a youthful crowd, sommeliers and waiters representing many of Montreal’s best restaurants and wine bars. And as opposed to the rather staid atmosphere that one usually finds at these types of events, the energy in the room was upbeat and friendly. The room was abuzz with discussions about soil types, winemaking techniques and strange-sounding grapes. While I wouldn’t go so far as to characterize it as a Woodstock of Wine, I got the sense that for many in attendance, they were drinking “their” wines.

So what are these wines and how are they different? The wine industry has gone through significant changes during the last 40 years, and not always for the better. In the 1960s and ’70s, grape growing joined the rest of modern agriculture as farmers were sold on the benefits of chemical fertilizers, fungicides, herbicides and pesticides. Yields increased and grapes were “cleaner” at harvest, but this chemical onslaught left soils throughout the wine world essentially dead.

During the last decade or so, we have seen an about-face in the industry. Organic and biodynamic grape growing is no longer on the fringes, and even some large-scale operations have embraced the notion that a vibrant soil is necessary to grow better grapes or, at a minimum, that dumping chemicals in the ground is irresponsible.

More recently, another part of the wine industry has gone through a “modernization” of sorts. This time it has been in the chais, where the wines are made rather than out in the fields.

It used to be that winemaking interventions were limited to raising alcohol levels by adding sugar (chapitalization) or raising a wine’s acidity by additions of tartaric acid. Sulphur dioxide, another additive that has been used for more than 1,000 years, is used to stabilize the wine and protect it from oxidation and bacterial infections. In places such as California, water has often been used to dilute over-concentrated juice.

But these interventions are the equivalent to bows and arrows compared with the arsenal in the modern chais. More and more wineries are using selected yeasts to handle their fermentations, as opposed to the indigenous, local yeasts. These yeasts do everything from boost aromatics to aid in the quick onset of a secondary malolactic fermentation. Artificial tannins are used to give grit to overripe grapes and help stabilize colour. Enzymes are added to do everything from help clarify the wine to boosting aromatics to extracting colour.

Gum arabic is added to stabilize colour and add texture. Wood chips and staves (planks of wood) are employed to flavour the wine. There are colourants to darken the wine, and though illegal, essential oils can boost flavours and aromas. There exist more mechanical interventions as well, such as reverse osmosis (used to concentrate wines), de-alcoholizing machines and micro-oxidation (adding oxygen during fermentation).

The fine line yet to be defined

In short, these modern winemaking tools give more control to winemakers to steer the wine in whatever direction they choose. And this process has never been more controllable.

The evils of chemical use in agriculture have been well publicized. But how these new winemaking interventions will change the future of wine has yet to be discussed openly. I am fascinated with this debate, as the answers are not obvious.

The wood-alternative debate is a perfect example. The Renaissance des Appellations charter says that only wood barrels, not wood chips or other wood derivatives, are to be used. While barrel aging also offers a gentle oxidation of the wine, not just flavouring, whether you are using new oak barrels or a cheaper alternative, they all do the same thing – adding wood-derived flavours to the wine.

The yeast debate is even more complex. While there do exist genetically modified yeasts, cultured yeasts are generally sourced and isolated from vineyard sites. So they are in essence natural. Using indigenous yeasts can be tricky and not always reliable to finish the fermentation, especially for higher-alcohol wines. Certain indigenous yeasts can also produce “off-odours.” I tasted a few wines at the Renaissance tasting that simply stank – literally.

On the other hand, fermentation is one of the most important steps in defining the ultimate character of a wine. If, for example, a certain yeast strain is used because it will enhance the grapefruit character of a sauvignon blanc, is the winemaker altering the unique expression of the grape? Most people might ask: Who cares?

The problem is that if wineries the world over start using the same yeast strains, what we have is a convergence of taste. Keeping with the sauvignon blanc example, I can name a few examples of wineries in France’s Loire Valley whose Sancerre tastes more like it came from New Zealand than France. While there are a number of factors including winemaking techniques that are responsible for this, yeast selection is the most probable culprit.

And here is the crux of the debate: What should wine be?

Perhaps the best defence of the interventionist argument was uttered to me by an Australian winemaker during a pretty heated discussion over drinks one evening. He said something to the effect of “Look, my job is to make the best wine possible. If I can add a touch of acid or use certain enzymes and yeasts to make my wine better, then why not?”

I responded by saying that he should spend more time growing his grapes properly, and less time adulterating them afterward. The more a wine is manipulated, the more its essential character, that which makes it unique, is removed.

Ultimately it comes down to how you define “better.” While the majority of the wines that I tasted at the Renaissance tasting were less “polished” than many of the wines found at the SAQ today, I admit that I am willing to allow for a certain rustic element in exchange for a “better” expression of place and vintage.

If you are interested in learning more about these issues, I strongly recommend my current read – Authentic Wine: Toward Natural and Sustainable Winemaking, by Jamie Goode, Sam Harrop, University of California Press. It’s listed at $32.50 but I found it for $19.75 on Amazon.ca. While biased toward less manipulation, it does offer a good overview of the debate.

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from http://bdnow.org/?page_id=19

What is Biodynamic Agriculture?

The following definition of biodynamic agriculture was written by Hugh Lovel, author of A Biodynamic Farm, in December 2012

BIODYNAMIC AGRICULTURE: Bio (life) dynamic (processes); Biodynamic agriculture involves working with life processes. This does not mean physical substance or chemistry are ignored. The biodynamic approach to
agriculture emphasizes life processes which have potent organisational (syntropic) effects to engage minerals and chemical reactions. The use of what are called ‘biodynamic preparations’ establishes, increases and
enhances life processes. The question is, what is a LIFE process and what are the life processes we are talking about?

Nineteenth and twentieth century physics focused on life-LESS processes. With these energy flowed from higher concentration to lower concentration, as without life all energy flows from order toward chaos in a process called entropy. However, it became recognised in the mid twentieth century that order also arises out of chaos. It does this cyclically at boundaries or urfaces, which means energy flows from lower to higher concentration over time periods that begin and end in a process called syntropy. Life processes are syntropic, and a variety of these can be distinguished in regard to plants, so let’s look at what these are.

In the soil, the processes involved in life are mineral release, nitrogen fixation, digestion and nutrient uptake. These are related to the lime complex commonly referred to as the CEC or as cations. Because biodynamics comes from an awareness of the influences of the context on life processes, these processes are correlated with the planets between the sun and the earth, namely mercury, venus and the moon.

However, plants live both in the soil AND the atmosphere, and in the atmosphere the processes are quite different and complimentary to the soil processes. What goes on in the atmosphere is photosynthesis, blossoming, fruiting and ripening. These processes are related to silica and to the planets beyond the sun and the earth, namely mars, Jupiter and Saturn.

In large part, biodynamics involves getting a dynamic interplay going between what goes on above ground and what goes on below.

Plants draw in energy and carbon-the basis of life-via photosynthesis. By doing so, they build up sugars and carbohydrates in their sap during the day and a portion of this drains down to plants’ root tips and are exuded into the soil around the tender young root growth of the plant. This feeds a honey-like syrup to the soil foodweb which uses the energy to release minerals such as silica, lime and phosphorous along with various trace mineral co-factors that provide for nitrogen fixation.

Nitrogen fixation is VERY energy intensive as it takes roughly 10 units of sugar to fix one unit of amino acid. Moreover, nitrogen fixing microbes don’t just gift the nitrogen they fix to plants. However, protozoa and other soil animal life eat mineral releasing and nitrogen fixing microbes, thus excreting a steady stream of freshly digested milk-like nourishment rich in amino acids and minerals chelates, which the plant takes up from the soil. This milk-like nourishment is the basis for chlorophyll assembly in the leaf and for the duplication of the DNA and the protein chemistry basic to plant growth.

From the biodynamic point of view it is enormously important that the soluble salt levels in the soil are as low as possible while the insoluble but available nutrients stored in humus are abundant. Partly this is because when the plant takes up amino acids instead of nitrogen salts the efficiency of the plant chemistry is dramatically increased and photosynthetic efficiency is multiplied. Also, soluble salts in the soil are toxic to the nitrogen fixing and mineral releasing micro-life in the soil as soluble salts amount to their waste, in which case they shut down and fail to function as might be expected of any organism which had to live in its own waste.

The bottom line is the more dynamic the interplay between what goes on above ground and what goes on below, the more robustly plants grow, the more efficiently they utilize the resources at their disposal, the more fully
they achieve their genetic potential and the more strongly they express syntropic (life) processes.

Basically the aim of biodynamic farming is to achieve self-sufficiency where the farm no longer requires outside inputs to be fertile and productive. This means that any inputs a farm requires along the way of becoming
self-sufficient should be considered as remedies for a farm that has fallen ill. This method has proven itself over the past 85 plus years as many ‘biodynamic’ farms have come close enough to this ideal as to be virtually
self-sufficient while producing high yielding crops of the highest quality and exporting somewhere in the range of 8 per cent or less of their total biomass production annually.

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Benziger's Pyramid (from http://info.mannapro.com/mannaproanimalcareblog/bid/120147/Biodynamic-Farming-Or-Learning-Something-New-in-Wine-Country)

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The Agriculture Course online - George Adams translation:

http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/Agri1958/Ag1958_index.html

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from http://www.specialtyfood.com/news-trends/featured-articles/retail-operations/biodynamics-101/

Biodynamics 101

A growing number of wines, specialty foods and even cosmetics are showing up on store shelves with the label ‘biodynamic’ or touting biodynamic ingredients. But what does this mean exactly?

Biodynamic® farming is sometimes referred to as being “super” organic and sustainable. Its approach is to treat each farm as its own ecosystem, using holistic remedies for soil, integrating livestock and creating a biologically diverse habitat. The core beliefs of the method also depend upon seasonal cycles and cosmic rhythms. Its practices, however—which range from planting according to lunar cycles to incorporating alternative methods into the farming—have been considered by some to be too eccentric for the serious business of agriculture. (The one standard practice that gets the most attention involves filling the horn from a cow with fresh dung, burying it in the fall and digging it up in the spring. The organic material that remains in the horn is used as a soil treatment.)

Biodynamic farming is growing as this type of production finds traction in the U.S. and abroad and garners more attention from manufacturers for the rich flavors many believe the method of agriculture produces. It was the flavor profile of the biodynamic Ceylon cinnamon from Rainforest Spices in Costa Rica that convinced Ben and Pete Van Leeuwen to buy it to use as the key ingredient in their new Ceylon Cinnamon ice cream. Their two-year-old company, Van Leeuwen Artisan Ice Cream, in Brooklyn, N.Y., has five ice cream trucks and one shop. “It truly was different from the seven or eight other cinnamons we tried,” says Pete. “The flavor jumps out at you, like natural FireBalls or Red Hots.”

Consumers are also beginning to embrace biodynamic agriculture because they care about food quality and the environment and believe its standards to be beyond traditional organic and sustainability farming. Gena Nonini, owner of the biodynamic 100-acre Marian Farms in Fresno, Calif., chair of the Demeter Biodynamic Trade Association (DBTA) and an early biodynamic pioneer, thinks more consumers are also crossing over to the biodynamic category because of health concerns, including parents who are worried about what their children are eating. “And if things didn’t taste good, people wouldn’t pay the money,” she notes.

According to the U.S. Demeter Association (the biodynamic certifying body), there are 100 certified biodynamic farms and 48 more in transition in the U.S. with the highest percentage being California wineries. “Our membership has quadrupled these past four or five years,” says Elizabeth Candelario, Demeter’s marketing director. Beyond wine, biodynamic meats, eggs, produce, cheese, pasta, dairy, nuts and even distilled spirits and beer are being made everywhere, from California to Tennessee to New York.

Here we take a look at the principles and history of this method, as well as its growth in the U.S.

The Basics of Biodynamic Farming

According to the Demeter Association, the Demeter Biodynamic Trade Association and Demeter International, biodynamic farming is similar to certified-organic farming as it is free of synthetic pesticides and fertilizers. In order to qualify for Demeter Biodynamic® status (the words Demeter and biodynamic are registered) a farm must first meet the same three-year transition requirement that the National Organic Program (NOP) certified-organic farming requires. Here are other key points:

1. Each farm is its own ecosystem. The farm depends on a minimum of nutrients imported from outside the farm and, ideally, generates its own fertility through cover-cropping and the use of manure from animals that live on the farm. Nonini adds that integrating animals into the farm is also important to create a diversified horticultural environment. In addition to livestock—cows, horses or pigs—earthworms working underground play an important part in the life of the soil as do bees above ground with pollination.

“I say that the farm is a symphony, the farmer is the conductor and the universe provides the sheet music. It’s up to the farmer to get that music to play harmoniously.”

2. Farmers must be attuned to seasonal and cosmic rhythms and cycles. For farmers to pursue biodynamic certification, Demeter International explains, “[You must have an] active interest in the laws of nature and the will to work with them creatively in your daily activities. It is also important that you are open to a holistic view of the natural world, which goes beyond the knowledge gained purely from natural science.”

The DBTA notes that organic farming focuses in terms of substances that are or are not added to the crops, but biodynamic farmers think beyond that in terms of forces and processes. This belief can manifest itself on the farm, for example, by noting the effects of the new and full moons on planting seeds and plant growth. As Nonini explains, “Think about the high and low tides. What causes that? The moon has a big impact on weather activities here on earth. You can’t see the forces coming from the moon but you can see the results. You can’t see gravity, but you can see the effects. Biodynamics takes into consideration natural forces and processes that we can’t see and don’t have the instruments to measure today, but are there.”

3. Farmers must use all nine of the specially created biodynamic preparations to help keep the farm in balance. While other types of farming may include a whole-farm approach or have a strong commitment to sustainability, a key distinction for being biodynamic is that farmers must use a series of preparations to homeopathically treat compost, soil and plants. These include Horn Manure (this is where they bury a cow horn filled with fresh dung in the fall and dig it up in the spring), Horn Silica (same thing as horn manure but it is buried in the spring and dug up in the fall to take advantage of the seasonal solar influences), Yarrow, Chamomile, Stinging Nettles, Oak Bark, Dandelion Flowers, Valerian and Horsetail. These formulations are used in very small amounts. The horn manure, for example, is mixed with water and a quarter cup of it is sprayed over an acre of soil.

The History of Biodynamics

In the early 20th century European farmers, concerned about the deterioration of their crops and livestock health caused by factory farming, sought help from the famous Austrian cultural philosopher Rudolf Steiner. In 1924 he held a series of lectures on the farm as a living organism, questioning the long-term benefits of chemical pesticides and synthetic fertilizers. To reduce dependence on outside materials, he encouraged incorporating livestock, composting, perennial plants, flowers and trees for fertility and pest control. His adherents coined the term “biodynamic.”

To renew the soil, Steiner devised the nine alchemical preparations (mentioned on p. 39), which were made from herbs, mineral substances and animal manures and guided by cyclical rhythms of nature and the phases of the moon. The biodynamic association Demeter (named for the Greek god of agriculture) was formed in 1928 to focus on this work with proponents noting that the practices were rooted in the Old Farmer’s Almanac, Native American land management and even at Stonehenge, which some historians believe was an agricultural yardstick for planting and harvesting.

Since Demeter International was founded, it has grown to represent around 4,200 Demeter producers in 43 countries.

Wine Opens the Door

The wine industry is where many of us first experienced biodynamics. Jeff Cox, the “wine guy” at PCC Natural Market in Seattle, Wash., carries 15-20 biodynamic wines and is seeing more enter the market. “A lot of people pooh-pooh it because it sounds metaphysical, talking about the phases of the moon,” he says, “but there are a lot of things in this world you can’t quantify. The depth of flavor and character in the bottle—you can’t attain that through conventional agriculture.” For customers who can afford wines in the $15 to $20 range, he believes, “It’s a no-brainer once they taste it.”

Alsace, France, is a region that has been at the forefront of the movement. Emmanuelle Kreydenweiss, the winemaker for Domaine Marc Kreydenweiss in Andlau, France, has farmed biodynamically since 1989. “We noticed there was more acidity, complexity and finesse, freshness and purity in the wines,” she says. “The wines have something more, which you cannot precisely tell but you can feel, something like energy, authenticity.”

At first Kreydenweiss’ customers were a bit suspicious of biodynamics, she explains. “But really our customers did not react badly. They appreciated the fact we could offer them healthy wines and they could taste the quality.”

Alain Moueix is the estate manager at Château Fonroque, a Saint-Emilion winery that’s leading the way in Bordeaux. “When I started in 2004 nobody cared, but today more people are showing interest, everybody is talking about the environment. You don’t have to be extreme to be biodynamic,” he states, downplaying the eccentric aspects of Steiner’s theories. “It is pragmatic to learn to live with nature. We won’t control it, ever.”

Fresh and Packaged Foods

In the late 1980s, when Steffen Schneider, the general manager of the 400-acre Hawthorne Valley Farm in Ghent, N.Y., told customers the farm was biodynamic he was met with blank stares. “Biodynamic is the frontier, the new niche for people who want to be able to distinguish from organic, which is becoming more industrial and less meaningful,” says Schneider. Today, Hawthorne Valley sells dairy products up and down the East Coast, as well as sauerkraut, ginger, carrots, cheese, baked goods, pork and beef. “There’s more demand than supply,” he adds.

Demand started to take off three years ago for the biodynamic berries, vegetables, mushrooms, eggs and cheese produced at Bill Keener’s 300-acre Sequatchie Cove Farm, 35 miles outside of Chattanooga, Tenn. “The locals thought we were nuts,” says Keener, of making the transition to biodynamic. “Slowly but surely, the ones with open minds are coming by to help us and see what we’re doing.” Keener says his soil has steadily improved and a handful of Southeast restaurants now carry his rare-breed beef and pork. And, in 2007, Chattanooga’s 27,000-square-foot, independently owned Greenlife Grocery opened, making Sequatchie Cove’s meat widely available to the public.

Nationwide, Marian Farms sells dried fruit, nuts, oak-aged brandy, lemons, oranges and grapes. Estate-made vodka and rum are in the works. Nonini is also working directly with Mark Ellenbogen, a partner in Bar Agricole, a restaurant opening in San Francisco in late spring focused on local and biodynamic products. “We’re supporting farmers up front,” says Ellenbogen, “giving them money for what we need. It’s just the quality of the products coming from these farms, whether you subscribe to the philosophy or not.”

Other packaged foods where biodynamics are playing a growing role include tea. Zhena Muzyka, CEO of Zhena’s Gypsy Tea, based in Ojai, Calif., is passionate when talking about the tea leaves, flowers and spices she’s sourcing from biodynamic farms around the world. When blending the leaves with essential oils, she noticed, “the flavor came to life far more than with organic.” She holds blind tastings to prove it to customers, who also like hearing “it’s the least carbon footprint of any method in the world.”

In just four years, another biodynamic tea producer, Ineeka Tea, has gone from selling in zero stores to being sold in 3,000 retail locations nationwide. The Chicago-based company recently launched Himalayan Green Tea Bier made with biodynamic green tea. Sarah Trench, a spokesperson for Ineeka, said about biodynamics, “It’s a near and dear philosophy, not something we broadcast as a marketing tool. We only recently started putting the Demeter logo on our tea tins because there was more recognition.”

The Challenges

In the expansion of biodynamics, the economics of farming plays a big role, says Nonini. There are still only a relatively small number of producers who are doing it and to convert to biodynamics takes a commitment of time and money. “In the organic realm, there is a huge spectrum of practices,” she notes. In biodynamics, “you either are or you are not biodynamic.” Because of the small numbers of growers, there is potential for a supply bottleneck and, Nonini adds, because of their small numbers, “we don’t have a lot of variety yet. We are doing our due diligence to encourage people, but biodynamics is a paradigm shift. It isn’t something you can just pick up.”

Across the board, other producers agree, saying biodynamic farming is more labor intensive, yields are generally smaller, and they were not doing it for attention or the money. And there is still a lot of consumer education needed. “Unfortunately, it’s often considered some weird sect dancing in the nude at full moon,” says Lee Greene, who imports biodynamic Volterra pasta and extra virgin olive oil from Tuscany for her Chicago-based company, The Scrumptious Pantry. “In reality all it is about is empowering nature to make its own choices, for the sake of more authentic taste.” |SFM|

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSpYAb9j1c4

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWLFLdhhNks

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Healthy Lifestyle: BioDynamic Winery :

http://vimeo.com/38413917

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_blFW5BKfDc

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcFQE4hvEVc