Anna Helmer
I guess everyone knows the main claim to fame of a perfectly-run Biodynamic farm is that it is a closed loop system. Everything needed by the farm is produced within the farm. Going outside the gate, especially for fertility, indicates a problem with farm health. Biodynamics, and particularly the preparations, are intended to help re-balance the farm system.
A closed loop farming system is a lofty goal. There is apparently little public glory in success, and there may be scant time left over for self-promotion on social media. How would we even know these farms exist? I am betting they don’t do social media. Social media may be an unbalancing force. I digress.
If only these farmers were writing this article, instead of yours truly with her woefully inadequate Biodynamic credentials. You seem to be stuck with me, however, as I keep saying yes when asked.
I am strongly motivated by the belief that way too many of our farm dollars flow off the farm and I think Biodynamics can help with that. As you know, I am low on the learning curve and not moving quickly—there is little risk of disconnect with non-Biodynamic farms. Try to keep up.
Okay. Let’s carry on. I have prepared a meticulous outline for this column. I should experience no difficulty executing the task with vigour, accuracy and just the right number of words.
Au contraire. Not at all. As if.
I have but a starting point and it is this: the chickens are really making a meal of my latest beautiful, Biodynamically-organized compost pile of cull potatoes. I’m generally a supporter of chickens (and their eggs), but in the spring they can really wear out their welcome. In this case, they have all but ruined my compost pile. It looks like a cull potato wasteland.
I may have mentioned (not more than a few hundred times, I am sure), that I have been on a now years-long process of developing a composting regime that deals with all our cull potatoes. My goal has been to emulate cattle, those champions of cull potato processing. In his lectures, Steiner used plenty of bovine analogies to describe the effects of the preparations. In fact, cattle, along with their pasture and the sun, are capable of being part of an exemplary closed loop system.
Why not just get some cows? Too much work frankly, and I am not afraid to say it. I comfort myself with the thought that there are cattle people out there who buy potatoes at the grocery store. We all do the best we can, right?
So, absent cattle, my goal has been to turn cull potatoes into dirt using the Biodynamic compost preparations. It’s a tall enough order. You won’t find potatoes on any list of likely composting stock because they don’t go easy. One of the tricks I have is to try to let as many of the potatoes freeze as possible during the winter. I stockpile the cull potatoes in the cooler as I am sorting and then layer them onto the pile whenever the temperature is below zero.
I stop adding potatoes in April. That’s when I mix it all up and pile it high. In order to give the pile an idea of what’s expected some of the adjacent finished pile is sprinkled on top.
And of course, I add the Biodynamic preparations. The compost preparations are my favourites because they don’t require spraying equipment and endless stirring. I also love the smell of the valerian liquid 507.
They are also my favourites because I can really see their effect, in the form of piles of dirt where once lay piles of potatoes. It’s a profound transformation. I believe I could put an old car in there and confidently expect results.
To return to the chickens. They have been let out of their run for this special two-month period between the end of snow and the planting of the garden. This is an indulgence allowed to them on account of the amazing eggs they produce during this period.
However, the chickens are not respecting my composting program. Since I finished the pile two weeks ago, they have made it part of their daily routine to spend an hour or two scrambling around pecking at what I can only imagine are precious earthworms. Scratch scratch peck peck. They have reduced my plump, proud pile to a flattened, dried, fish-on-a-stick sort of thing.
It’s a very unsatisfactory situation, made especially acute because we recently hosted a Pemberton Farmers’ Institute meeting. Several conventional seed potato growers are part of that group, and they tend to be a little eccentric where cull potatoes are concerned. Cull potato compost piles form no part of conventional seed potato acceptable practices. Cull potatoes are considered a disease source and should be fed to cows or buried in a deep hole.
It was that afternoon, as the chicken crowd departed the compost area and the farmer crowd started arriving, that I realized that the compost pile, located in full view of the parking area, resembled nothing other than a careless deposit of cull potatoes.
Thankfully, I was able to squash potential approbation by presenting our impressive group of special guests from the organic world. My cull potato composting program was not mentioned, the chicken freedom days are soon to be numbered, and I’ll shortly be able to restore the integrity of my compost pile.
Balance emerges.
Anna Helmer farms in Pemberton where she juggles rather than balances.
Featured image: Rascally chickens looking for trouble at UBC Farm. Credit: Hannah Lewis.
