Seeing it illustrated is better than any
verbal description. For that one can consult the colorful books of John
Jeavons, an enthusiastic English proponent of the method who claimed
abundant yields from double digging. Practicing it until your back
screams is better still.
What are the preps? Steiner, whose upbringing
was a slow drift from rural to urban with a life-long respect for peasant
wisdom, adored the cow. Sometimes I wondered (to myself – it wouldn’t
have been cool to speculate out loud) if he’d been a Hindu in a previous
incarnation, so much did he respect humble Bossey. He dubbed her milk
“the perfect food” long before the American dairy pundits used that
slogan. He “saw” the peasant farmer and his bovine partners living in
perfect symbiosis, and cherished all cow production, including her
manure. Preps, we were told, are a combination of cow manure and “certain
herbs.” Their precise chemical combinations were not revealed to mere
mortals such as me. Indeed the composition of biodynamic preps is a
secret reserved only for those who have been welcomed into the innermost
sanctum of biodynamic gnosis.
This is not only where the rubber meets the
biodynamic road but also where the logical may depart from it. Preps are
concocted in secret and administered in tiny homeopathic doses in
carefully proscribed rituals involving lunar cycles and the correct
stirring techniques. Remember the sensitive chaos of water? Well, preps
have to be handled using an arcane set of movements. An important
ingredient in one of the most common preps, Number 501, is horn silica,
incorporated into the mix, I was given to understand, by compressing
manure and herbs into a cow horn (generously donated by Bossey,
posthumously, of course).
As one biodynamic practitioner reports, “When
sprayed on the plant 501 works as a sense organ for the plant to feel and
thus perceive the light coming from the sun and the entire cosmos. This
enables the plant to become a better material image of its heavenly
archetype on earth.” Prose that Steiner himself might have envied.
The classes I was taking at Emerson were
geared toward working in Third World communities, and one classmate from
Cote D’Ivoire opined, politely of course, that in his country, if someone
were to make secret potions, pack them in a cow horn and insist on
applying them to the fields by the light of the moon with ritualistic
stirring motions, there would be rumblings of “witchcraft.” It would not,
he felt, be a welcome intervention. But he, like me, stayed the course
because he could see that biodynamics was a method that, in general,
enriched and enlivened the soil and resulted in delicious vegetables and
luminous flowers.
In color, in size, in bloom and in beauty, you
could scarcely hope to find a more inviting broccoli than one grown
biodynamically, and it is this quality that attracts the proponents of the
method.
Be advised: the majority of information
currently floating in cyberspace about “biodynamics” is a mishmash of
organic best practice and some passing respectful references to Steiner
and the preps. Generally, American gardeners want to keep the baby and
send the bathwater spiraling sensitively down the drain. Preps are used
only by a very few, mostly in Camphill and other Steiner based
communities. Almost no-one outside the Steiner sect would attempt to
apply biodynamic principles to anything other than small home gardens,
because of the incredibly intensive labor involved, and the reluctance to
get into the arcana of the preps.
Hardcore Steiner followers are a generally
cheerful robust lot, idealistic and willing to give over their logical
processes in favor of the magical thinking that biodynamics, in the end,
requires.
Communities gathered around Steiner’s
teachings often include the loving care of the extremely mentally
handicapped, people whom modern medicine has despaired of helping. There
is a strong Christian element, but very far from the church-going
mainstream. There is usually a lot of good natured coming and going as
the newly converted soon burn out on the hard work and the cultic
ambience.
Loving obeisance to the great leader is valued
more highly in the biodynamic world than competence or scientific method,
which begs the question, “What would Steiner do?” It’s doubtful that
he would have preferred to see people follow him unquestioningly without
continuing to experiment and break new ground (or soil).
But still I believe that the practices –
double digging, reverence for the entirety of the plant’s earthly home,
avoidance of chemicals, companion planting, respect for the interactions
of herbs with one another, and the building of rich soil – are optimal.
And so, even when I plant something as non-utilitarian as a rose bush, I
plunge the spade in two spits deep, put in some straw, and so on and on.
