FEATURES Biodynamic efforts in the Northeast
Sustainable and Practical?
Biodynamic farming began as a series of lectures and conversations in Koberwitz, Germany, in 1924. Today, in this country, its methods have become both a sustainable and practical means for promoting agricultural integrity in a way that treats farms as unified individual organisms.
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Camphill Village Kimberton Hills
Farmer Sebastian Kretschmer meets on the southern side of the barn with his garden team every morning. The team includes seven villagers, all with special needs; two interns, who spend six months to a year here; and three full-time apprentices who stay for two years as part of the new North American Biodynamic Apprenticeship Program, sponsored by the Biodynamic Farming and Gardening Association.
Kretschmer spearheaded and piloted the program at Camphill Village Kimberton Hills, though it’s now offered on 30-plus farms in North America.
At 6-foot-6, Kretschmer towers over his help, though only physically. The biodynamic farming here in rural Chester County, Pa. is a community effort and a social cause, though he won’t deny that his height is an advantage. “I can see what’s growing, and I have a wider wing span for picking weeds,” he jests. “The job is right for me.”
Using its biodynamic farm, Camphill cultivates organic farmers and implants human dignity. A land-based community of 120 people living in 14 homes as extended families on 430 acres, together they work the land, support a successful raw milk dairy, a vegetable-growing CSA, a community orchard, an apiary and a medicinal and culinary herb garden. The work here is also therapeutic. Roughly one-third of the villagers are developmentally disabled. There are over 100 Camphill communities in more than 20 countries throughout the world.
Here, and elsewhere, biodynamic techniques are interesting at the very least. For example, behind Kretschmer an alternate-direction vortex swirls in 25-second intervals in a 100-gallon stirring machine that’s fed by water collected by a rainwater catchment system and gently heated by flat plate solar collectors. Typically, he’s mixing in two to three tennis ball-size clumps of cow dung to produce a “homeopathic biodynamic remedy” used in biodynamic soil preparation. With one tub, he can spray 50 acres.
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At Kimberton Hills, there may be 45 milking cows—75 percent of them are Brown Swiss—but their manure is what’s most important. A byproduct, it becomes great fertilizer, especially when mixed with their straw bedding.
Here, a cow’s horns are left on until they’re slaughtered, then the horns, too, are used in biodynamic preparations. The horns, and how they hook up and back into a cow’s head, illustrate the recirculating, regenerative nature of a spiraling vortex. “Those shapes affect metabolism,” says Thomas Roemer, the dairy farm manager. “To cut them off would cut off the cosmic forces.”
After slaughter, cow manure is stuffed inside the horns, which are then buried in the topsoil to winter over. In the spring, they’re unearthed and the dung is shaken from the horn.
Kretschmer admits this is a bit “esoteric,” but it’s biodynamic’s godfather Rudolf Steiner’s way, a philosophical and practical blend of science and wisdom. “Each substance is a physical carrier for the energy in the spiritual world,” Kretschmer says.
There are social guidelines to Steiner’s philosophy, too. Kretschmer doesn’t take a salary. Instead, in living out Steiner’s philosophy, he’s contributing from the heart and his conscience in following his vocation. “If you do this, and strive, all your needs will be met,” he says. “(Steiner) called it fundamental social law.”
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Camphill Village Kimberton Hills is also experimenting with horse-drawn power, another sustainable, biodynamic concept. “We’re going to see what it’s like,” says farmer Todd Newlin, whose old-order Mennonite-trained horse is named Pet. “He seems perfect. He’s a calm, steady horse. He seems to know more than I do.”
Pet runs a row in preparation for planting winter squash in less than 30 seconds. Newlin’s fiancé, Mary, controls the reins. New farmers last season, Mary has spent her entire life at Camphill. Elsewhere in their domain, they’ve planted sweet potatoes, carrots, beets, onions and turnips, all dry land, storage crops in nonirrigated fields. Rather, there’s a reliance on rain.
Kretschmer farms 15 acres for his 10-month, 200-share CSA that generates $200,000 for the village. All the patrons come to the barn in shifts. “It couldn’t be more convenient for the farmer,” he says. “That means my focus is on production and farming, and I don’t have to stress out on marketing.”
When he arrived in 2004, there was a 90-share CSA, no greenhouse, no animals, one little tractor, and the barn was falling down. He moved a 65-year-old greenhouse and modified it with radiant heat in the floors. A furnace also burns straight waste vegetable oil. Around the farm, a diesel engine truck also runs on waste vegetable oil. Three tractors—two John Deeres and a Ford—are powered with biodiesel B-100 (virgin or waste) oil.
Greenshire Arts Consortium’s Biodynamic Garden
Jim Curley and his wife Arlene are the directors and stewards of the Greenshire Arts Consortium’s 7-acre experiment in biodynamic farming in Quakertown, Pa. He calls biodynamics “gentle farming.” Its principles and practices fit perfectly at Greenshire, a center for holistic gatherings, creative arts and peace ceremonies.
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Curley says it’s simply about being kind to the earth and working with its energies, not against them. “Humankind’s destiny, though, has become industrialization,” he laments. “We’ve raped the land by trying to control everything.”
Greenshire’s garden is both biodynamic and biointensive. It includes vegetables, herbs, flower beds and as many edibles and heirlooms as possible. Biointensive planting, a way of growing more crop in less space, is similar to raised-bed gardening in colonial times, and to beds in ancient Greece and China. “If you go back in history, everything was based on agriculture,” explains Mark Fischer, a local expert in biodynamics who Greenshire contacted early on in its project. “But much of that has been lost. However, intuition, or whatever it is, has come back, and now we’re seeing [these philosophies and approaches] come back.”
Deep root preparation is key, so composting is critical, as is planting in close proximity and companion planting. Biodynamics represent gardening and planting with a dual purpose: as a food source and also to produce stalks and other compost material high in carbons and nitrogen value (especially if you’re not using manure from animals on the property). The waste creates reciprocal green compost. Over time, it leads to soft, fluffy soil, deep beds of 12 to 18 inches of topsoil and better yields. In deep soil, roots grow straight down.
With companion planting, plants that like to be next to one another grow better together, like corn, squash and beans, or parsley and potatoes. “Think of things you eat together, and they should be planted together,” Fischer says. “The Indians knew. Corn feeds on nitrogen, and beans put nitrogen into the soil. These are perfect companion plants.”
Biodynamic farming and gardening does not utilize power equipment, not even a rototiller after the first year. Equipment cuts worms. Proper composting ensures a biodynamic garden remains healthy enough to not need pesticides. You will loose a quarter of what’s growing in the exchange, but practitioners say it’s worth the trade-off.
Greenshire received a grant from Bucks Beautiful, a nonprofit with the goal of beautifying Bucks County (Pa.) with distinctive gardens, to help fund its garden. When judged by Bucks Beautiful, it was awarded first place.
The 36-by-36-square-foot biodynamic garden, which was designed by Scott Ogburn, an adjunct professor in the department of landscape architecture at Temple University, is framed by four large corner stones of white marble with a rotated inner square (slate pathways in the garden’s four quadrants) and an inner circle of Belgian block and red gravel surrounding an oblong 6-foot center stone boulder, around which 2 feet of low-lying herbs are planted. The squares create “etheric energy pyramids,” he says, and the inner circle creates a cone of “etheric energy.” The hypothesis is that the “etheric energy” generated by the sacred geometrical design enhances the plant growth and the plant’s overall well-being.
“It’s a developing hypothesis,” Ogburn says. “It’s subtle, though, but by incorporating sacred geometrical design, it helps the plants—though if they grow, we realize it could also be the soil, or a summer with enough rain and sun.”
The phases of the moon also affect plant growth. When the moon is waning, it pulls the root down, and when the moon is waxing, the plants grow up, depending on the plant. You need a moon chart to tell you when to plant a leaf crop, a root crop, and whether to harvest in the morning or afternoon. In strict biodynamics, there are even times to hoe, loosen soil and let in moisture. “You are creating an environment,” Fischer says. “Once it all rises, it should look like a rain forest.”
“It’s not hocus-pocus,” says Mary Hoffman, Greenshire’s head of landscaping, “but it may take an adjustment in thinking.”
Some of these same forces, and farmers, are at work at United Friends School in Quakertown. There, a once-gravel-pit playground was replaced with a 14-bed biointensive garden. “We said, ‘You’ve just got to do it,’” says Hoffman, who comes from a Steiner-guided Waldorf School background. “It’s a great classroom. It’s all about sustainability, and so when they’re this little and they can see how it works, then they’ll remember that when they become the CEO at Exxon.”
Among the more common crops the elementary-aged farmers have sprouted are cotton; peanuts, until a peanut allergy ended that experiment; amaranth, an ancient grain; and quinoa (corn) to tie into a South America unit on the Aztecs. The kindergartners grew wheat, and then ground it to make bread.
When there was a drought two summers ago when Fischer was away, upon his return, he stuck his hand down into the beds and the soil was still wet. “That told me something was working,” he says.
The author has been published in national and regional magazines as well as daily and weekly alternative city newspapers. A gentlemen farmer in Quakertown, Pa., he writes about people, social trends, historic preservation and 18th century America, agrarian culture, land use and sports and recreation topics. Comment or question? Visit www.farmingforumsite.com and join in the discussions.