Aaron Perry
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Pat Frazier, NP, is a Biodynamic farmer, educator, Director of the Josephine Porter Institute for Applied Biodynamics, nurse practitioner (retired), and ecological stewardship practitioner par excellence. By merging the wisdom and techniques of both Biodynamics and Permaculture (“Permadynamics”) on her “Peace & Plenty” farm, Pat demonstrates the essential importance of “re-spiritualizing” our relationships with the living environments around us.
She understands that restoring our connection with nature’s rhythms (diurnal, lunar, seasonal, planetary, etc.) grounds us on Earth, connects us to life-force and restores our own health and well-being. By working with sunlight, water, plants, and animals in a framework of “Nature Reconstructed,” Pat advocates lightly stewarding with an essential focus on building soil in our home-places. This essential action – being mobilized in urban, suburban, and rural communities world-wide – is precisely our pathway to a healed, restored, and revitalized planet Earth and Humanity in Balance. Growing comfrey, alfalfa, nettles, (and other dynamic nutrient-accumulators), and all manner of sunlight-transmuting, water-drinking, and life-force amplifying plants wherever we can – this is the Permadynamic gesture that is awakening throughout the entire world. This is the massive mobilization of stewardship and sustainability in the 21st century.
Recognizing that plants live in relationship with the Above and the Below – with the Cosmos and the subterranean wonders of Soil ecosystems, Pat shares her home-made Valerian balsam, while encouraging us to connect with the wisdom of plants, to cultivate a relationship-based (not mechanistic) world-view, and to help cultivate the era of Anthroposophia – the Age of Human Wisdom.
More at: jpibiodynamics.org
Transcript
(Automatically generated transcript for search engine optimization and reference purposes – grammatical and spelling errors may exist.)
Welcome to the YonEarth Communities Stewardship and Sustainability Podcast Series.
Today we have the opportunity to visit with Farmer and Expert Educator Pat Frazier,
Hi Pat.
Hi.
It’s great to visit with you today.
Yeah, because you made it over.
We did.
We had a beautiful drive through the mountains to get here.
Pat Frazier has been a biodynamic farmer for over 20 years.
She and her family have a small biodynamic homestead diversified farm and family dairy
in western Colorado where all of the preparation herbs are grown and utilized in making the
indigenous biodynamic preparations for her farm organism and western Colorado regional
biodynamic group.
Permaculture design is another of her passions and its marriage with biodynamics is included
in her two week residential permaculture certification in the summers.
Pat is a passionate cultivator of the biodynamic agriculture movement speaking nationally
and regionally at major biodynamic conferences and advising on three national organizations.
She is the president of the Board of Directors of Josephine Porter Institute for Applied
Biodynamics, the largest non-profit distributor of biodynamic preparations in North America.
Pat, I have been looking forward to this conversation for quite a while now and I’m so thrilled
we have the opportunity to share with our audience a direct conversation with you about
biodynamics and permaculture and all of this amazing work we can be doing more of in
our lives and in our homes regardless of our particular setting so thanks for taking
the time to visit with us.
You’re welcome.
You’re welcome.
So we have a lot to talk about, what do you feel like would be a nice place to start?
I think today the best place to start is one of the real main principles of either permaculture
or biodynamics which is rhythm.
So as you know we just passed before the July, today is July 6th and we had a very auspicious
day on the 3rd of July which was a day where the calendar indicated that in the cosmos there
was an opposition happening and opposition is where the moon is here, the earth is here
and on the other side is a planet and so the moon actually emphasizes and really brings
forth all of the qualities of whatever planet is over here on the other side of the earth.
And on July 3rd that happened to be moon opposed Saturn.
Now Saturn when Rudolph Steiner spoke to us about biodynamics, at that time Saturn was
the furthest planet out and so it was the planet where all evolution began was regards
to what we now know as the earth evolution and when it began evolving the only quality
that Saturn had was warmth.
It was the quality of warmth that generated all life.
When biodynamics we have an association with certain plants on earth with certain planets
and those associations are what create some of the herbs and the fermented preparations
that we use for fertility in biodynamics.
In July, usually at about this time in July one of the plants that is associated with Saturn
is in full bloom and so on July 3rd not only was that plant in full bloom but that plant
associated planet Saturn was emphasized by the moon.
So what we did on that day was a very rhythmic exercise where we harvested just the flowers
of the plant called the laryon and that particular plant and its flowers that are fermented into
a very potent fertility agent for us that we can use on a small as a backyard garden
to its largest thousand acre farms and the quality of that particular preparation that we
make is to bring about warmth.
So for instance it’s really practical use is for someone who may be growing fruit trees.
When we have laid frosts in the spring we can use this particular preparation to present
them from having frost.
Similarly if we want to extend our season so that we are growing earlier in the season
or later in the season we can treat our seeds with laryon and then that laryon can assist
those seeds in understanding, creating their own wisdom about how to be able to withstand
a larger range of temperature.
So it’s a very very practical preparation and I love making it because it’s a craft.
It’s like making fine wine and there are several steps to it and the first step is to harvest
just the flowers and then we put them in water so this is just the laryon flower and it’s
on a stem we would probably take the stem off eventually and we let it steep in water
to get the flowers nice and juicy.
After it’s steeped in this water for a little while we grind it up, we can use anything
to grind it up like a food mill or whatever then we press it and when we press it it turns
into this really gorgeous brown liquid and this brown liquid if you had a smeller on this
camera you’d understand that it smells like a very strangely fragrant wine after it’s
fermented.
It reminds me of a little bit of some of those really beautiful, unique balsamic vinegars
we can get from a different place.
Exactly.
It is a very resembling balsamic vinegar, particularly when it’s fermented for a long period
of time.
So where I keep all of my potions in my root cell I have various years of the laryon.
This is my favorite, this was 2013 and this is actually how it’s made.
So once the juice is pressed out it goes into one of these little fermenting chambers
which has just a bit of water in here so that it can anaerobicly ferment.
So this is last year’s laryon and so the rhythm in biodynamics is extremely important
and it keeps us grounded on the earth, it keeps us grounded on the earth and its relationship
to the cosmos.
So in the summertime when things are out and blooming and growing there are many many
rhythms that have little pulsations in time.
In the course of the year there are also many rhythms but they sometimes stretch out
that of course we know as the seasons.
But during the summertime certain plants that we’re using for our fertility here in biodynamics
are in bloom and it’s the day to harvest them and that’s what you do on that particular
day.
And it keeps you in touch, it keeps you grounded so that you understand your relationship
to the cosmos and it keeps you in a sense of relationship that keeps you mindful of
what it is that we’re doing here on earth.
So that was just a little aside that I wanted to share with you, the laryon.
One of the principles that’s really important about dynamics is on farm fertility or in
your garden fertility.
In other words it’s really not necessary for us to supply our gardens with things that
come from a bag.
We can actually make our own fertility in our gardens and make our own fertility within
the organism that is our garden or our farm and it’s very simple to do and that’s what
I really love about teaching about dynamics is teaching that self-sufficiency that we can
have as gardeners and farmers.
You know one of the things that I know you and I have talked about a few times together
that excites me almost beyond words is the potency and the empowerment that gives us as
people and this doesn’t require of us to go back to the land necessarily doesn’t mean
we have to every one of us become a farmer in our own perhaps suburban neighborhood even
if we’re in an urban setting and we have a shared community gardens down the street there
is so much we can be doing to empower ourselves with this fertility, with soil building and
I’m just struck that we have read at our fingertips an extraordinarily potent tool when
it comes to the biodynamic work and I know this is a big part of your teaching and the
work you’re doing you’re by your getting more and more folks engaged in that practice.
Right and I think the other piece that’s starting to be coined more and more and more about
our work on the land is that you know we’re regenerating we’re not just sustaining we’re
regenerating and there’s a regenerative there are many regenerative practices that
whose aim is to build soil the plants are secondary the soil is really what we’re doing and
what we’re working with and that’s why I really feel strongly about some of the new sought
things that are coming out in regenerative agriculture around combining disciplines so we’ve
started to coin a term for the dynamics and have taught our work first workshop in that particular
discipline just this spring in Virginia and a lot of people are starting to understand that
there’s no dogma here about these disciplines if they work and they marry together we should
be using them together. I love it everybody one of my favorite bumper stickers that says my
karma ran over my dogma and what maybe some of our audience is familiar with permaculture and
familiar with biodynamics but I imagine you know some of our audience may not be familiar with those
two terms concepts and practices and I’m wondering in a nutshell how would you describe
permaculture on the one hand and and biodynamics on the other you’re you’ve already given us a
flavor of what biodynamics is but in a nutshell how would you explain those two?
Well permaculture to me permaculture is best described as something that man institutes on
a particular piece of ground be it a garden be it a farm what what ever scale such that we’re
mimicking nature we’re coming into a piece of ground and we’re saying what is here what is crossing
this land be it sun wind water etc that we can observe as human beings and how is it that it’s
affecting what’s going on in the soil and what’s going on in the plants that are there already
once we discover that kind of really deep observation on any piece of land from a backyard garden
to a rooftop garden to about two thousands of acres of farmland we then become way more educated
stewards about how to manage that land and its best its best form how can it manage itself in
its best form with our guidance such that we’re just we’re just lightly stewarding it we’re not
imposing we’re just lightly stewarding it there are many many techniques and I actually think
that permaculture is best described in in the flesh so I think we’ll probably go outside and
start taking a few of those little demonstrations start that’s beautiful and then before we go outside
I’m really excited to get out there but before we go outside what with with the practice of
biodynamics how would you describe that concisely to a person who wasn’t familiar with it so biodynamics
is really taking the practice of agriculture one step forward to spiritualize in the earth and what
we do in in in having that come forth in our stewardship practices is to understand that
land can be viewed as an organism just like we can so land can be viewed as an organism that breathes
that digest that has a little force that moves the changes that is in livined and we can create
that in a vision for a piece of land so a farm as an organism is one of the primary principles
of biodynamics and creating that organism is our task to do that we understand also the more of a
of viewpoint of geosentrism so that means that if you’re a plant and you’re growing on earth you
have a certain perspective growing on earth that’s different than us humans who understand that
the earth is orbiting the sun from a plant’s perspective a plant understands the whole of its
connection as it’s growing on earth with the cosmos with all of the planets with the stars with
the Milky Way and with the all of the constellations that comprise our solar system so that viewpoint
is how we actually approach working with plants in biodynamics and allowing them to best express
these cells there are many many ways that plants tell us that they’re influenced by the cosmos
both in the way that they grow in their rhythms even in the face of their flowers so that’s
another really strong tenant of of biodynamics the third one is that we utilize the plants in a
certain way that expresses their archetype to make homeopathic medicines for the earth and that
is our fertility in biodynamics along with just basic good organic practices so these three principles
really marry one another to create the environment where we bring spirit into into agriculture utilizing
this organismic approach utilizing the the connection that we have with the rest of the cosmos
and understanding the archetypical archetypical energies of certain plants that we use as fertility
Anthroposophy is the underlying spiritual form of biodynamics and Anthroposophy means
Anthropos which is the man Anthroposophia which is the wisdom so the wisdom of man is Anthroposophy
and that was coined by Rudolph Steiner back in 1924 it’s it’s not a complicated
way of approaching agriculture it’s it’s easy to learn it makes you feel very self-sufficient
and connected grounded thank you so much Pat you know one of the things that really strikes me
I don’t think I mentioned in the introduction of you and your background that you are also a
nurse practitioner and you have a very solid western medicine scientific background and more
and more of my friends colleagues and mentors are helping me understand that a couple centuries ago
we had this profound transition from an alchemical worldview to a chemical worldview and perhaps
something was lost along that transition certainly we we’ve made many gains and many arenas
to be celebrated for sure at the same time we’ve had a lot of negative consequences as well
in this age of chemistry and it strikes me that there’s something going on with biodynamics
that is helping us reconnect to a perhaps deeper or wiser understanding of what it means to be
living on planet earth that in many respects we’ve we’ve lost in modern culture we’re seeking that
connection so the the idea that a plant living on earth has has a body and has a wise
person in that body is something that is attainable by all of us it’s it’s it’s easy for us to
understand that when we connect with plants and connecting with the idea that their wisdom
can be accessed by us and can be promoted by us is another way of us connecting with everything
that really is us it really is us there is really no separation there we’re all the same and so
um part of that is a principle called homeopathy which is where you take a small essence of what
may be something that the plant needs for its wisdom to develop and you give that plant that space
of wisdom to take in what it needs through the compost pile through the biodynamic preparations
to perform at its very highest best self then when we eat that plant we’re performing at our very
best highest self so it’s it’s um it’s a connected way of looking at things instead of a
mechanistic way of looking at there’s something wrong that’s corrected yeah um it’s more there’s
something why is let’s access it making notes as says rapidly as I can with on this well this is
so wonderful what do you think should should we head outside thank you should yes sounds great okay so
just to orient you where we are here in the landscape um this is a a permaculture gilded orchard
that’s about 16 years old and what you’ll notice here is if you pan this way and just look behind us
you’ll notice that this does not look like any normal orchard what you’ll see in here is a very
diverse mixture of plants that are living in kind of a tribal nature together that complement one
another so it consists of a canopy which is all of the trees back here and there are apples
peaches um cherries both sour and sweet plums and then there are also little bushberries
over here which you can see that are nanking cherries that are actually grown mostly for the birds
um there are several medicinal herbs in here one is comfrey which is a dynamic we call this a dynamic
accumulator of nutrients and we planted everywhere in permaculture landscapes specifically to accumulate
nutrients another one is this little plant which is alfalfa again a dynamic accumulator
nitrogen fixer which helps to build soil beneath what we’re standing on further down in the orchard
there are some other plants that are also nitrogen fixers both shrubs as well as ground cover
what we’re standing in right here is what’s called a swale this is how we capture and store water
which is one of the principles of permaculture capturing and storing energy in the form of water
is extremely important in this particular landscape because we only get 13 inches of grain a year
so one way of capturing water is to make just a simple ditch instead of a straight ditch where most
people here in the western slope irrigate their um fruit trees this ditch actually follows the
contour of the land and therefore the water moves very slowly and sinks very deeply and nourishes
these fruit trees and all of the foods that are on the floor all at once so this acts like a huge
lens underground capturing and storing water and nutrients for the trees um further down the
me orchard there is a whole bank of nitrogen fixing shrubs and the way that those release nitrogen
is to just be chopped off in the springtime then their nodules on their root feed into the soil and
release nitrogen for the fruit tree so this is just a very graphic example of how permaculture works
to build soil um it works by not disturbing the soil as much as possible and by keeping things
permanent and as much as permanent as possible so as many perennials as possible and when we
move down into the cultivation beds you’ll see some permanent culture that is um food that keeps
coming up here after you’re up here what one of the things i love about a system like this pat is
it really makes explicit the super abundance of the conditions on earth for example there is a whole
lot of nitrogen in the atmosphere right it’s a very abundant element in our atmosphere and to have
plants right here in this place pulling it down and getting it into the soil you don’t need to
bring in an artificial nitrogen based fertilizer right which is of course a multi-billion dollar
industry and you know we’ve we’ve made certain decisions over the course of the last several
decades for a variety of reasons but we have an opportunity to uh return our agriculture back to
something that’s in in closer rhythm with nature cycles and is taking you could say better
advantage of the natural abundance of this place right and you can imagine how much how much carbon
is being sequestered here we never we never turn this over we might graze it just so that it
would regenerate a little bit but that’s about the only turnover that happens here um might mow it
down a little bit true but mostly i spend time in my hammock watching it grow uh-huh i love it
okay all right we’ll walk through the orchard this way okay take you on a little tour by the camera
and end up in my 20th batch excellent So free to smack on me, that cherry.
Most of them are getting pretty light.
Give a quick shout out to my son Hunter,
who’s manning the camera today.
Hi everybody.
Oh, those are delicious tacos.
So here we have an example of the diversity of a cultivation field.
What we’re standing on here is a cover crop of rye,
which was about this tall, about a week ago,
and we mowed it off, and we just are leaving it like this
to decompose a little bit into the soil.
After it decomposes a little bit,
we’ll rough up the soil just a teeny bit,
and then we’ll grow another cover crop in it,
and then this soil will be prepared for food next year.
Other than that, it really doesn’t get any other treatment.
So instead of having us planted fence post-defense posts,
we strategically improve certain strips of soil in this field
so that they’re primed for food production,
and we get the very best food production we can.
We also have a really diverse strip in here of different perennials
that provide several different things.
Number one, they provide medicinal herbs.
This is St. John’s work here, almost coming into bloom.
This is the Valerian we spoke about for the roles of here is Yarrow,
which is a very diverse medicinal herb.
There’s a bunch done in here too.
And they’re all growing together,
and you’ll notice that there aren’t any spaces on the soil.
We want to keep the soil covered like a blanket.
You know, to keep it protective.
And if you continually agitate the soil with tillers
and machines and things like that,
then it never has a chance to make the bloom
that pulls everything together that nourishes the roots of the plants.
So you keep everything covered as much as possible.
In this particular bed,
you will walk through and find butterflies,
ladybug, parasitic wasps, honeybees,
fragrant flowers, things that you can enjoy all the time.
The other thing that’s growing in here that’s a little known benefit is
this is a perennial nitrogen-fixing
with you, who calls sandplains.
It’s an amazing forage for animals
because it doesn’t cause bloat.
And it’s also a very valuable seed crop.
So in this particular bed,
I have two of the eight biodynamic herbs that I need to make fertility.
I have a seed crop that provides me with an income.
I have other medicinal herbs that provide me with medicine.
There are fruit trees growing in amongst all of these
that provide me fruit.
In the ground cover further up this bed,
we have strawberries and rhubarb.
Most everything that’s growing here is either edible,
has a medicinal value,
or has a nutritional value for animals and the soil and us.
Absolutely beautiful.
Even though it looks very wild,
we want it to look wild.
This is nature.
This is nature reconstructed in a permaculture-esque manner
so that we want it to stay wild like this.
We don’t want it to be disturbed all the time.
Now come with me.
Now this side of the production bed
is where we actually are growing food for production this year.
Again, you don’t see any bare ground.
I don’t mind if the weeds are here.
They don’t take up too much nutrients.
In fact, they actually mine up nutrients for the plant.
In the midst of it, you see this long, long hedgerow.
This long hedgerow has all berries, cherries,
currants, raspberries, all kinds of things in here for us to eat.
And so it also pulls in diversity.
It pulls in birds, it pulls in insects.
It’s after the water loans, captures water.
All through and here, this is cover crop
that will also then be turned over.
As potatoes, peas, garlic, onions, greens, etc., etc.,
and then another hedgerow.
So these hedgerows are really important in permaculture
because they do something in the landscape
to create a block for the wind, which we can feel right now.
And these hedgerows have diversity in them,
as well as the wind breaks that allows the landscape
to settle a little bit.
Instead of being hushed across it, it’s settled.
It’s just a little bit gentler, sweeter, nicer.
Then it would be if this were just the meadow
that it was when we first came here.
And then right below your feet where you’re standing,
this is a trial in here that I’m doing
for Rocky Mountain Seed Alliance,
where I’m growing several different kinds of heritage wheat,
sorghum, corn, sunflowers, beans,
all to see how well they do here.
So that if they do well, then we know that
this will be a good thing to breed seeds
that are adapted to this particular climate here.
And the only treatment that this field receives
is about mimic preparations for fertility.
There’s a theme running through all of this
of the local knowledge and relationships
that emerge even in the plants themselves.
It’s not a one-size-fits-all kind of solution
across an entire state or continent or even region.
So we’re really trying to breed seeds here
in this climate for this climate that are adapted
that understand what it’s like to grow at 6,800 feet
and 13 inches of rain.
Not that know what it’s like to grow in Oregon
with no sunshine, acid soils, all those kinds of things.
This is specific to us.
This is an indigenous wisdom in the plant.
The same thing happens out here in this pasture behind us.
This pasture has an indigenous wisdom
that feeds the animals at this point, only one,
who reside here.
And the wisdom that comes through the manure
with this animal that resides here, my dairy cow,
that wisdom in that manure is what makes the fertility
on this farm.
So what she eats, the plants that she eats,
create a much better, much more well-adapted manure
for this farm, only for this farm.
And so that’s the permaculture in action
that I love to talk about because when we first moved here,
this whole entire landscape that you’re panning around seeing
looks just like that pasture.
This is all 16 years old.
Yeah.
Beautiful.
On 13 inches of rain.
Absolutely beautiful.
So that’s what we can do with regenerative agriculture practices.
And we can do that fairly simply.
And there’s been no importation of fertility here,
except what’s here on this farm for many, many years now.
Probably a decade.
Absolutely remarkable.
Pat, I’d love to ask you, thinking again about our friends
and our audience who are perhaps living in a suburban setting
or an urban setting, what can we encourage our millions
upon millions of urban dwelling friends to do
to help this restoration and regeneration process?
I think the main thing that is important around urban landscapes
is to take one small corner of that urban landscape
and let it be wild.
Let it be wild.
Don’t do anything to it.
Yeah.
Don’t make it be lawn, don’t make it be bushes,
don’t make it be weed, not mulch.
Just let it do what it’s going to do.
And here on this farm, the majority of what we have here is wild.
And so it’s fairly easy to import that concept in.
But in urban landscapes, it’s very manicured and managed.
And that’s okay for what it is.
But there’s always got to be at least a little corner
of any landscape that can be left wild.
Let the weeds grow, let the shrubby weedy trees grow in there
and the bushes see what happens.
And that place is where all of the magic happens.
That place is where all of the elemental beings
which are behind all this work that we’re doing in the spiritual world
coalesce and make themselves known.
Yeah.
I think that’s the main thing that people can do in urban landscapes.
It’s just to let a little bit of it be wild.
And really cultivate that.
Yeah.
Really say that’s as special as this vegetable garden that I’m growing.
Easily.
Easily.
One of the things I gather from my exposure to biodynamics
and even permaculture over the years is that it ultimately
is giving us humans a beautiful invitation
and a big wide door to walk through for our own spiritual nourishment.
And it just brings me great joy thinking that more and more
of us will be able to experience this directly
as we transform our culture in the coming years.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And we are, we have the opportunity and we have the gift as a steward
to be able to create these spaces and maintain these spaces
and say that this is what’s valuable.
This is what’s valuable.
Yeah.
Okay.
I’m reminded of this quote that President Franklin Roosevelt
said almost a hundred years ago, not quite.
And he said, a nation that destroys its soil destroys itself.
And it strikes me.
There’s probably a corollary to that statement.
And it’s a nation that heals its soil heals itself.
And I think we are experiencing this as we see more and more
and more friends and students and who become teachers
help to proliferate this understanding,
this humble wisdom into communities all over.
Quite something.
And of course Pat, you’ve taught so many folks.
It’s just remarkable to think about that the ecological impacts
you’re having through those networks of teachers now
and folks who are stewards and places all over.
Yeah.
This place is my recipe, it’s my food, it’s my soil,
it feeds me like no other.
And I give back to it.
It’s a reciprocal relationship that I’m having here
that is such an incredible gift.
And every day I have a prayer for this place
that I say to it very often on a pretty regular basis
that is, you know, I will always love you.
I will never hurt you and I will never leave you.
Oh, that’s so beautiful.
No, that’s kind of how we live together here.
Yeah.
Well, let me take the opportunity to just remind our audience
that this is the Why On Earth Communities Stewardship
and Sustainability Podcast Series.
And right now we are visiting with Pat Frazier at her
piece and plenty farm on the West Slope of Colorado.
And I want to make sure to give a shout out to some of the sponsors
who are making this podcast series possible.
That includes Wailay Waters, Patagonia, Earth Coast Productions,
the Association of Walters Schools of North America,
the Lidge Family Foundation, Purium, and Equal Exchange.
And I want to also invite our audience to get involved
and help support this effort yourselves.
We now have a monthly giving program
and are inviting folks to make a contribution
at any level that works well for you.
Also, one of the benefits of being a listener
is that you can get free downloads
of all of our electronic products, eBooks and audiobooks.
Go to whyonearth.org and use the code EarthDay,
which works every day, to get your free downloads.
And you can also at whyonearth.org, go to the support section
if you’d like to join the monthly giving program.
And I want to be sure to mention too that for those of you
who would like to learn more about biodynamics
and about the work Pat is doing,
you can get more information at jpiviodynamics.org.
And that’s the letter j letter p letter i biodynamics.org.
And we’ll put that in the show notes for you as well.
Pat, my notes are full up here.
And it’s just, it’s so wonderful knowing that
because of your experience and expertise as a teacher,
you’re able to convey so much information
in a relatively short period of time.
And to be able to not only go into biodynamics,
but also permaculture,
and how these two really work together
and become an incredible synergy together,
like goodness, what a gift.
Thanks for sharing that with us today.
You’re welcome. You’re very welcome.
My pleasure.
Of course.
Well, and I’m wondering before we sign off,
is there anything else you’d like to share with our audience
in general?
Well, I think the thing that I alluded to
when we first started the podcast was to not be afraid
to marry these concepts together.
To be able to understand when something feels right
around agriculture, gardening,
it usually feels right because we’re doing no harm.
It usually feels right because something
is drawing you into the garden that catches your eye,
it’s a smell, it’s a feeling,
it’s just an ambiance that says something’s different here.
And I think that that marriage of these regenerative practices
where we’re truly creating something
because we know it’s right for the soil
and truly making fertility because we know we can do that
ourselves.
That marriage together is something that just feels right.
I tell my kids every now and then, you know,
if I check out here in a little while,
it’s okay because I’ve done right with her.
I’ve done right with her.
I’ve done all I can to take care of her.
And I think keeping that still small voice
in the back of our head of not doing
harm can just possibly turn us over
to the next evolutionary step that we have here on the planet
to regenerate the planet.
Hopefully somebody will come and visit us here.
She’s being pretty shy.
So this is Diamond.
Diamond is a large, very lumbering,
very gentle, wise presence of fertility here on the farm.
This is my dairy cow.
She’s about three and a half, almost four years old now.
And lingering over in the shadows,
and hopefully she’ll come over and visit us
is her brand new half-a-half of about three weeks now.
Let’s sweep these.
And these guys run the fertility over farm.
She provides us with the highest quality protein we have on the farm.
Milk, cheese, butter, ice cream, sour cream,
all kinds of different kinds of cheeses.
Depending on what sex of calf she has,
if she has male calves,
we slaughter those at about two years for meat.
In the meantime, we get all of her great fertility here.
One of the real important aspects of biodynamics and permaculture
is making sure that the fertility on the farm
matches the scale of the farm.
So like if you’re in the city and you have a backyard garden,
the fertility that you can create there might be a chicken or a duck.
And that might be the exact scale that you need.
Here on this farm,
we have six acres of pasture
that really does pretty much do about the right scale
of supply and demand for one calf.
We could potentially have two as many as three,
but not much more than that.
So that means that all the grass that’s growing here
is what she needs for her life
for almost the entire year.
So we rotate her back and forth on these pastures
so that we can ham sometimes
and we can keep the grass back
so that she has fresh pasture all year
so that we mean the calf to the pasture
when we finally get to a really heavy milking cycle.
And then her fertility
in the form of manure goes into the compost pile
and recirculates on back onto the farm.
You know some of our audience may not really be as familiar
with this notion of regenerative agriculture
and what this means in terms of
a ruminant manure going into the soil building process
and perhaps you could describe that for folks.
So the ruminant manure is a very different kind of manure
because it goes through four stomachs.
And as it goes through four stomachs,
the cow regurgitates the manure in the form of cudd
and that first digestion, second digestion,
third and fourth digestion
are what finally culminates in cow manure.
Each time that that cudd is generated into a new stomach,
all of the stomachs of a cow
are made up of the shapes of nature.
So one cow stomach is a waterfall.
Another cow stomach is a honeycomb.
Another cow stomach is kind of a fur,
a pillard interior that’s kind of like the interior
of our gastrointestinal tract with lots of little Pillai.
And those shapes in nature are replicated, replicated,
touching all of that plant material
and that plant material and the interior of the cow stomach
are communicating intelligence back and forth.
All the while when the cow is ruminating,
that’s why we call it ruminating.
They’re actually meditating when they’re out on pasture.
And a form of that meditation has to do
with the fact that most biodynamic cows keep their horns.
Their horns actually are a really important organ for them
to be able to communicate with the earth.
And so to take a cow’s horn off, dulls the animal.
But we keep them on because we want them to have that intelligence.
So that ruminating process with the manure
and as it comes back on the ground signals when it comes back on the ground
a certain rhythm within that manure,
spring manure is different than winter manure,
has a different quality because in winter we don’t have a whole of this.
We have hay.
And so the quality of a manure of a ruminant animal
is something that’s wholly different than an animal
who has one stomach or two stomach.
And that’s why we use the cow.
They’re very meditative.
They’re like an organ of digestion on legs, really.
That’s really what they are.
They’re just gigantic organs of digestion moving through the landscape
and meditating landscape as they eat it.
In the meantime, they produce this amazing,
besides the manure, this amazing quality and milk.
Milk is one of the best fertilizers that you can put on the ground.
In fact, when I stir by dynamic preparations,
I often stir them in milk, her milk,
so that that intelligence that’s coming onto the land
can come in very different forms, milk being one.
It’s also alive.
You don’t homogenize or pasteurize the milk.
We eat it, we eat it raw.
We make all the yogurt and cheeses and butter
and everything out of it raw.
The only thing that we do with the milk to heat it
or change it in any way is when we make yogurt,
we displace the normal bacteria in the milk
and replace it with a new bacteria
that we specifically culture to make yogurt.
But fresh cheeses are…
I mean, we eat like kings.
We work a lot, but we eat like kings.
There’s this theme running through all of us,
two of the microbiome doing its work
in the cow’s stomachs, in the soil,
the living critters in the live milk,
the culture of the milk,
and it gives a whole deeper meaning to this notion
of a land of milk and honey, doesn’t it?
There’s actually a milk and honey bio-dynamic spray, too, that’ll be used.
Yeah, and it all flows together.
Not too long ago there was an article,
it’s not a decade now, as well as it’s still a nurse,
about the hygiene principle,
being something that was starting to be examiners,
maybe not so great for our kids.
Maybe it’s not so great for everything to be so cleansed up
with bleach and detergent and sterilized.
Maybe it will be such a great idea for them to just
kind of eat a little dirt on the farm every now and then
to create the conditions of diversity inside of our gut biomes
and that perhaps that would help their immune systems get educated.
That was published 10 years ago,
and now it’s clearly been documented over and over and over again,
the dangers of sterilizing our guts
from antibiotic use in animals that we’re eating.
So here, that just doesn’t apply at all.
Beautiful.
Sweet Peas got a little slice of heaven here.
Yeah, she does.
Thank you.
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