Introduction to Restoring Our Farms

Silica, Lime and Getting Nitrogen Right

Intended for serious farmers or consultants who are working with serious farmers.

Advance Registration $200 (for both days)

Over the years I have tried various approaches to introducing the holistic (big picture) approach to agriculture that we call biodynamics. Here are a couple classics.

BD Farms are Self-Sufficient

Starting off with the idea that biodynamic agriculture is self-sufficient and that a farm must be conceived as though it was a living being that draws organisation (life energy) into itself and grows to be more and more robust, more and more alive, more and more productive over time. As with any living organism it cannot export its life blood, in this case its biological product. But it can export a small percentage, perhaps 8%, of its total annual protoplasmic increase and still enjoy a reasonable gain in order and complexity—but more than that, perhaps more than 10%, and it will falter and end up running down and becoming a basket case. This means you can grow a patch of sweet corn and sell the ears while recycling the stalks and roots, and this may be sustainable. If you intersow it with rows of soybeans between the rows of corn, you will have more total protoplasmic production and still ship out only the ears. You can let a few weeds occupy an assortment of other ecological niches and even tweak the equation a bit more toward producing a greater sum of biomass for the little bit that is exported, and you can then hope to take a farm that is essentially on a hallway cot with an IV drip in its arm and nurse it back into standing on its own two feet.

Well, scratch that approach—almost nobody believes it. We live in a world where the idea of entropy (everything inevitably, inexorably is running down) is so deeply embedded in the social paradigm that the idea of a farm growing into greater health and robustness as a result of being farmed seems an impossible pipe-dream.

BD Preparations Give BD Farms a Leg Up

I’ve tried telling people that using the biodynamic preparations—in whatever form or forms—sows the seeds of renewal so that gradually a transformation occurs and plants and animals respond better and better to the natural conditions around them. Well, if the previous, self-sufficient, approach was like rolling boulders up-hill, this one is like selling ice to Eskimos—do able on a very limited basis, as the old time Eskimos built their winter houses out of blocks of ice. Maybe if you have the right blocks at the right time it’s a sale, but what’s so special about your blocks of ice (snicker, snicker)?

99% or more of the potential audience is immediately convinced you must be selling some kind of patent medicine made from snake oil. I don’t care how true this message really is and how cutting edge science confirms that patterns of energy, such as those of BD 500, 501 etc. can provide focus and order to the chaotic energies pervading our farms and thus make the farm energies coalesce and come good. I’ve tried this approach for 30 some odd years and gotten next to nowhere with it. Occasionally a person here or there gets some portion of this message and goes somewhere with it, but as for transforming the modern farming mindset, I have more hope for the survival of snowflakes in the fires of Hell. This approach has so poisoned the potential listening pool that about all you have to do is mention the term ‘biodynamic’ and the better part of the audience heads the other way.

‘Yeah, I heard about that, and maybe it works, mate, but you got to be out of your mind if you think I’m going to do all that stirring and spraying shit.’

I’d rather be driving a snow plough up the steep inclines of Loveland Pass, Colorado, negotiating the hair-pin turns and exposed cliff edges in the midst of a blinding blizzard at midnight than to start out trying to sell biodynamics this way. Maybe if the BD preps come into the discussion down the track after the audience is already engaged it maybe might work a bit better. But isn’t there something we con do that more people can relate to?

Defining the Playing Field and the Nature of the Game

The Australian psyche, and maybe the American as well, probably can relate fairly well to sports and games. How do you define the playing field? What is the nature of the game? Give me some examples of various BD strategies and tactics. Describe a BD play or two. How do you know when biodynamics is working and you are winning?

Of course, I’ve had any number of people tell me, “You’ve got to get away from calling this ’biodynamics’ because it is such an immediate turn-off for so many people. Mention biodynamics and folks immediately think you’re daft. Call it something else or just don’t call it anything—and make it bigger than ‘biodynamics’ so that down the track you can introduce things like the BD preps as tools that don’t require a frontal lobotomy and pledging your everlasting soul to some freak cult—Anthropogeny, or whatever in the hell they call it—buncha wierdos.”

Whew! How DO I present the concepts central to a holistic view of agriculture that, even at this late date, holds prospect of getting us out of the woods and restoring vitality to our fields, ecosystems and dinner tables? I don’t have any pact with the Devil stating that I must use the word ‘biodynamic’ every time I turn around whilst genuflecting to Rudolf Steiner’s picture on my alter. Even as open-minded as I am I’d be switched off by such an approach. I also do not plan on rubbing people’s noses in the spiritual dimensions of this work—they will encounter these quite soon enough, and if I have my way they will encounter them as science rather than some sort of mystical cult built around the worship of Rudolf Steiner. Steiner had a phobia of such things, and the Ahrimanic forces seem to have overtaken Anthroposophy for any of its adherents to even consider such paralytic nonsense.

No doubt I will have the obligatory tonnes of burning coals poured on my unguarded pate about how there’s nothing wrong with the term ‘biodynamic’ and how I MUST distinguish myself from the blundering tragicomic clown act going on out there in the name of mainstream agriculture. No doubt the most inflexible of these critics will be the ones who stoutly maintain that we can save the planet if everyone just gets involved with stirring by hand in 20 litre buckets and flicking 500 out with brushes once a month. I don’t know what these folks are smoking, but it must be some pretty potent shit--talk about a pipe-dream! It ain’t likely to happen world-wide any time soon.

How Agriculture Actually Works

Everything in agriculture occurs between the polarities of silica and lime. Unlike the chemists who talk about pure substances, we need to think in terms of the oxides of silicon and calcium—silica and lime—because in nature we NEVER encounter silicon and calcium in their pure states. We always encounter them as oxides or further derivatives. When we see these two polar opposites with clarity and an open mind we can then define the playing field in agriculture. If one studies agriculture in a university and is fed all sorts of bits and pieces without defining the goal posts and the game, now is the moment to put it all together and look at the big picture. What does silica look like in Chemistry? In geology? In microbes? In plants? In weeds? In animals? In the overall way it acts (its dynamics)? What it is good for? How can one tell when there is too much, too little or if it is just right? How does one correct imbalances and what herbs (weeds) does nature provide that we can use to help get things in balance and keep them that way? What about crop rotations? What sorts of patterns and catalysts are available? What do various weeds, diseases and insects tell us? How do we know when we are on the right track, and how can we restore our farms to the sort of robust health where we have very modest inputs while harvesting abundantly?

Insofar as the message of the chemical agriculture focused on nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium with little reference to lime and virtually no mention of silica, it has been myopic in the extreme. It has led us down the garden path of quick fixes with no accounting for the collateral damage we have wreaked upon the ecosystems that support us. Now we must learn to see with new eyes what the signatures of silica and lime are in our soils, in our microbes, in the plants and animals around us and the sky and the landscape so that we know where we stand on the playing field and can better see the overall game we play in agriculture.

Basically my upcoming workshop is about nitrogen and how to get it right. Get it right and you’ll be in the groove with things increasingly going your way.

Here’s the text of my flyer:

Quantum Agriculture Presents:

Introduction to Restoring Our Farms

Silica, Lime and Getting Nitrogen Right

When Nitrogen is right everything else follows

The polarities of silica and lime are the goal posts between which everything in nature takes place.

In the sequence of biochemical events, silica precedes lime, which precedes nitrogen.

When we use nitrogen inputs we cannot get nitrogen right. It must be biologically fixed to get it right.

When plants take up most of their nitrogen as soluble salts they cannot be healthy, and diseases, pests and weeds will be the norm.

If nitrogen is taken up as amino acid nitrogen from constant microbial activity around the roots or in the plant tissues our plants will be highly vital and robust.

Getting nitrogen right is a matter of working with the balance between lime and silica where clay/humus is the mediator. Knowing the signs of getting this balance right is the key.

Reagent Update Special   Now until January 28th, 2010

In an effort to service our field broadcaster customers and make sure they are benefitting from fresh reagents, my partner, Shabari Bird, and I are offering a reagent update special for all broadcaster customers at the unprecedented low cost of $50 postage paid. In this package we include the latest ORMUS gold, kelp, molybdenum and clay reagents. We are sending this notice out by e-mail as the cheapest and most efficient method, but unfortunately we do not have e-mail addresses for everyone, just as we do not have maps on file for a few customers. So some of you may receive this by postal mail. When you respond be sure to give us your e-mail address and a copy of your map if we don’t have these.

Workshop Schedules through July, 2010

Silica, Lime and Nitrogen, A Foundation Course for Trainer Certification: Coff’s Harbour, NSW February 6th and 7th, 2010.

Intensive in Quantum Agriculture, Nine Days, Blairsville GA, March 19th through 27th.

Educate/Vacate, A Nine Day Intensive for Trainer Certification, Port Douglas, QLD July 10th through 18th, 2010. A one day break on Wednesday for vacation time in the winter tropics.

Paper Disc Chromatography

On another front, because we wanted an inexpensive test that would reveal quality of soils and farm products, as well as detect GM (genetically modified) products, we have set up a laboratory capable of doing paper disc chromatograms. This is a method originally suggested by Rudolf Steiner and used extensively by Ehrenfried Pfeiffer, Lily Kolisko, Harvey Lisle and others. There are many misconceptions about the interpretation of these lovely pictures of the chemistry of soils or foods, and it should be understood these analysis pictures are not an accurate measure of quantities, but rather show in their complexity how well-organised, and thus how alive, the sample is. The silica related chemistry is non-polar and travels to the edge of the chromo while the lime polarity chemistry is charged and gets stuck early in the process  near the chromo’s centre. When marketing farm products a paper disc chromo can be an unmistakable sign of quality, or its lack. Chromos will be $50 each, quantity discounts available, and photo results can be e-mailed.

On the left is a supermarket potato, grown with chemical nitrogen. On the right is a sample of peas and wheat grown with a microbe starter and compost tea. The potato sample looks blurry and out of focus because it is salty and watery, and the lack of a dark line at the edge of the chromo indicates silica deficiency. In general the lack of complexity shows weak organisation. The pea and wheat sample shows much more complexity as well as looking more in focus. The fine radial lines coming from the centre may be unclear in such a small picture as this, but the centre of the chromo is very finely organized indeed.

Farmer Friendly Radionic Instrument

Also, Hugh has designed a new radionic instrument that uses the same Malcolm Rae cards as before. It is made on Golden Mean proportions, 4 cards and 3 plates (for substances instead of cards), has orgone accumulator amplifiers, is built with a lid that seals out dust and protects the switches and dials, and it has a timer that will shut the instrument off when a regimen is finished. Not only can this be used to directly influence paddocks or to create your own reagent packages for field broadcasting, but it also can be used to pattern any liquid farm product or fertigation application. Instruments will sell for $2000. each.