Farm Magic

Life on the farm continues for us and we’ve been learning tons about growing food. In the last weeks we’ve built new planting beds, captured and studied bugs, made chili pepper insecticide, identified harmful molds and fungus, made a “duck tractor” that lets the ducks do the weeding for you, managed the worm farming operation, and continued planting and harvesting a variety of crops.

By far the weirdest thing we’ve learned about is “biodynamic” farming, which is basically organic farming…plus magic. Created by Rudolf Steiner, who was a pretty far our character in his own right and founder of Waldorf schools, biodynamic farming incorporates cosmic influences into the planting and harvesting cycles. For example, if the moon is ascending though Aquarius, the sun is in Capricorn, and there is a trine with Mercury and Venus, you might not want to plant that zucchini just yet. Biodynamic farming also uses a variety of “preparations” to improve the land. One preparation involves taking a bull horn filled with fresh manure, burying it for a year (when the moon is in an earth sign, of course), mixing it with water using alternating vortices for one hour, and finally using a palm leaf to apply the potion over your crops like a priest showers holy water over crowds of worshippers. Sound weird? It is. The farm here doesn’t practice biodynamics, but the instructor wanted to expose us to these methods that some people swear by. We are skeptical, but will be on the lookout for a biodynamic restaurant to see if we can taste the magic.