A pile of crap will eventually turn into useful compost. Not because of unknown "forces" or "gnomes". But because of well-understood natural processes, that can be adjusted if necessary.

I think that for alternatives to the current energy- en resource intensive monocultures to flourish, it is necessary to ditch the pseudoscience in favour of proper methodical improvement through experiments.

So keep up the good work you two! Hopefully one day the Walden Effect will be the yardstick by which the others are measured.

Roland --- I was curious to hear what you thought about biodynamics since my understanding is that it's bigger in Europe than here. As you can tell, I agree with you to some extent. But I never like to throw the baby out with the bathwater --- I think that a lot of the hands-on portions of biodynamics might make scientific sense if people bothered to research why they worked. And I like the idea of trying to cycle nutrients within your farm.

And maybe some people have researched the science behind biodynamics. I just listened to the one lecture! If fans of biodynamics are reading, I hope you'll chime in with your references.

In short, the methods may work but the explanations make no sense. That's why the latter should be separated from the former and discarded.

Have you ever tried reading Steiners lectures on biodynamics? I've struggled (in vain) to find any explanations that makes sense in them. They do redline my baloney detector quite nicely, though.

This isn't meant to be a coherent paragraph leading anywhere; it's just a series of unrealted responses to your post.

1. I don't know much about biodynamics either, and I'm now living on a farm that uses the preparations so I've been doing some reading.

Open up the brain, and show me exactly where the mind is located?

To me, that sums up biodynamics.

1. From my reading, I think one of the "forces" refered to is the gravity of the moon. It causes tides to roll in and out, so could they affect plants somehow?

They also talk about planetary influences. It sounds a lot like astrology, which I generally find quite interesting but not nearly as reliable or generative.

1. I'm interested to learn about this art because of the writings of Thomas Berry on humans alienation from nature. As you know, societies were able to maintain soil fertility in dense growing areas for hundreds of years -- they didn't think in terms of nitrogen, phosphorus, soil pH or relative humidity. Language is METAPHOR (words are the limited tools we must resort to using to convey ideas to others) The "kooky" language may point to something valid. Watch out for being overly literal -- there are some who think the Bible is literally true.

A book titled What is Biodynamics? is a good intro to the fundamentals of biodynamics. The introduction itself is worth a read. What the book tries to do is give the necessary background to the Agriculture Course where Steiner outlined Biodynamics. The reason this is important is that without a framework of where Steiner is coming from, people new to the subject are liable to make claims that he has, in his Ag Course, a muddled concoction of vague ideas and quackery. In truth he had very rigorous methods of understanding and interpretation, however since they are unconventional methods he is often written off out of hand. He didn't decide to teach the Ag Course to a bunch of people who had never heard him before--they were people who had been to many of his lectures before and actually understood many fundamentals when he spoke about them in a sort of shorthand. Today not many people are willing to invest the time and energy into reading so much dense material to understand what Steiner does and why.

This might sound like I'm a gung-ho biodynamic nut. I'm not--I've been reading Steiner for a while and only recently have I started reading more about this subject. It does sadden me that you think coupling spirituality with agriculture is a copout--working with the earth is an incredibly spiritual act. You may not call it this so that may be the reason you think it's a copout, or maybe it's not the right spirituality.

Doc --- I'll bet you'll disagree with today's lunchtime post even more then....

J --- I think you've got some very good points. I was trying to explain more with my throwing out the baby with the bathwater comment, but wasn't having any luck articulating it yesterday. After reading your comment, I think what I wanted to add to my post is --- I think that anyone who spends serious time observing nature has insights to share, whether they have a clue how to scientifically test what might have caused the things they observed or not. And I get the feeling that farmers who follow biodynamics are good at observing, which is why my gut says that it's worth testing out why some of their preparations work.

I still think it's worth doing the testing, though, before blindly following. Every patch of earth is so different --- if you don't know why something works for someone else, it probably won't work for you. (For example --- my swales. )

Chris --- Thank you! That's some very good context. It sounds like that book would be a better point for me to start from than a few random lectures.

I think I wasn't entirely clear when I said that I thought coupling spirituality with agriculture was a copout. I don't mind the spirituality --- I certainly get a lot of joy from being in the garden and don't see any reason other shouldn't link it to a religion or spirituality of their choosing. I simply think that if you base decisions on spirituality rather than seeking out real understanding, you're not going to do as good a job in the long run. (See my comment to J above.)

I'd recommend starting with maria thun's basic book on biodynamics. Pretty simple and accessible. It feels like Steiner was onto something and approached it without needing to pull things apart in the mechanical sense that we view living organisms these days. I think that once we investigate far enough in the mechanistic system to have a BASIC understanding we stop investigating and apply it as if it is the WHOLE system. The corner cases are lost. The outliers are disregarded. This, to me, is dangerously shortsighted in an attempt to move forward with new methods and how humanity blunders into dangerous and toxic/harmful situations.

That said I think biodynamics needs to adjust because it holds one very very valuable thing, knowledge that is integrated into spiritual systems survives longer than most other knowledge that humans accumulate. That alone becomes a reason to integrate good scientific knowledge about healthy farming and healthy living into a spiritual system.

Note: I have a biology degree and struggle on an emotional level to "accept" and "trial" something that is as un-explained as much as biodynamics is. That said, I'm planting on maria thun's schedule this year in a "let's see what happens" experiment. There is one really good thing to following her calendar. I can ONLY plant SO MUCH in a day. Her calendar acts as a brake on my enthusiasm and exhaustion in the spring planting season. There is a bit more calm to my spring, a bit more ease to my schedule, I'm still getting the day job done at the same time this year!! yippeee!

That benefit alone might make me follow her calendar again next year.

I greatly look forward to your additional impressions of biodynamics.