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Biodynamic Farm Story: a Big Biodynamic Issue

in 2023/Current Issue/Grow Organic/Land Stewardship/Preparation/Spring/Summer 2023/Tools & Techniques

By Anna Helmer

I am under more pressure than you might realize to produce another one of these articles called “Biodynamic Farm Story.” The problem is that my understanding of the concepts of Biodynamic farming is limited, and by now everyone must know that. I cope by dropping disclaimers to remind people to keep their expectations low (as I am doing now) and buying myself time to learn more. I keep writing about it because I think it is an important piece of the future of farming, and at my age you learn to take the soapbox when offered.

Ok. That’s done. Next, I am obliged to admit I have come out of winter having done minimal biodynamic professional development. In previous years, I have at least re-read the lectures or even attended some sort of learning opportunity. This year, the year we re-enter the certification process, I have done little more than the odd google search, focussing lately on this topic: “balancing earthly and cosmic forces in a long-rotation potato field.”

I can claim that I have been engaging in a more observational phase of learning, and that might be true, even if it isn’t solidly developmental. Happily, my observations have led to a flash of intuition, which is where I wallow now. In fact, I think I detect a Big Biodynamic Issue on our farm. It is my belief, and I must somehow turn this into cogent reasoning, that because we have been applying BD500 regularly, but not BD501, that something has gone out of whack, energetically. My main evidence is the recent struggles of the Sieglinde potato variety: the yield last year was not great, and the potatoes were overall smaller, although they maintained flavour.

I should have been expecting something big to happen. Every five years we plant potatoes in this field, and each time something pivotal and dramatic happens. One year, we had a huge wireworm problem, which led to the introduction of mustard into our rotation, and the subsequent death or disappearance of most wireworms. Another time, after spending a fortune on labour—the 1950’s Farmall 300 harvester fairly dripping with people in a desperate attempt to separate potatoes from dirt and haulm, half the crop falling off the back—we invested in the Grimme SE 75-30, the harvester of the century.

So, it should be no surprise that something thought-provoking would happen and that it would result in a change in farming practice. The big thing? The Sieglinde struggled. They never struggle. They have been reliable through thick and thin. But not last season. What happened?

What’s happened is cold springs transitioning suddenly to deliriously hot summers which meld into improbably hot autumns and precious little rain along the way. It’s been two years of this and although at any time the circumstances could change, I think the damage has been done. The soil is shocked. The Sieglinde are struggling. We’ve gotten the message, but we are not clear how to proceed.

Ponder, ponder. Reflect and ponder.

BD501 has been lurking around in the back of my mind all winter, ever since a Biodynamic farmer friend slightly raised an eloquent eyebrow when I admitted to never using 501. Not wishing to seem singular, and generally quite vulnerable to peer pressure, I saw fit to question 25 years of our farming practice. Why don’t we use BD501 again? BD500 has always been the preparation of choice, and I think it has done the job beautifully. Just the right amount of earthly energy to maintain vigour through the normally reasonably hot days of the July and August growing season. BD501, the bringer of light energy, has always seemed unnecessary. The sun seemed well able to provide the necessaries.

However, by not using BD501, we have perhaps failed to meet the challenge of the recent weather conditions: now we want more light in the cold springs, and incidentally a lot more grounding in the hot summers. I think when it’s this cold around planting time, the forces of cosmic energy that will draw the plant from the seed piece are stymied by the cold conditions. In the summer the more earthly, cool energy that draws the roots down may be weakened, dispersed, or disrupted by the shocking heat above. As Steiner talks about in the lectures, the plant lives between light and dark, cool and warm, the downward forces of gravity and the uplifting force of the cosmos: the soil mediates between the polarities. The tubers, living there in the soil, seem likely to be affected if the balance is off.

I really haven’t got this sorted out yet and there are some glaring issues with my theory: number 1 being that BD501 is meant to be misted onto the leaves of the plant and I think we need its power long before there are potato leaves upon which to mist; and interestingly, as a little aside, certain varieties are having no trouble whatsoever—the Red La Soda and Huckleberry Gold have been steadily stellar through all conditions.

I am sure I can do better than this, but in the meantime, as these cool, spring days lead inexorably to the first heat wave, we’re getting some BD500 on the potato and carrot fields, and for the first time ever following it with the BD501 before the potatoes are even up. There are lots of weed leaves available—perhaps they may suffice.

Anna Helmer farms in Pemberton and tries not to make too much up as she goes along.

Featured image: Curious cow at Bridge Creek Ranch. Credit: Maylies Lang.

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Biodynamic Farm Story?

Anna Helmer The title of this column is borderline pretentious and potentially misleading. We are not a certified biodynamic farm.

Biodynamic Farm Story: The Grass is Not Greener

in 2023/Grow Organic/Organic Standards/Preparation/Soil/Tools & Techniques/Winter 2023

By Anna Helmer

Misty rain on wet snow. This is the image I conjured for myself last summer every time it went to 40 degrees, which was many times. As a cooling vision, it is recommended. Mind you, now that I seem to encounter it every day, I find it a less enchanting experience. I am not actually complaining, though. Nothing like blue sunny skies to ruin a good day off inside.

Biodynamically, the higher latitude northern hemisphere winter is an important time for our soil as it is sealed off from the activity of the growing season. The plants are dead and decaying and no longer syphoning energy from the soil and the sun’s rays take a less direct path to earth. Cultivation plans are theoretical to the max. It’s a relaxing time for us as we really aren’t needed.

The winter soil is far from inert, however. Different types of energy (I am still in the process of sorting this out) are accumulating, perhaps balancing (the preparations 500 and 501 help with this), and certainly strengthening. We see ample evidence of this important activity, even if I’m unable to explain it completely.

Think of plants like garlic, nettles, and fall rye. The development of their robust, healthy roots takes place all winter: strong indication of life in the soil. In spring, the overwintered rye plant, supported by its roots, will enjoy some immediate riotous growth as soon as the snow melts. Anyone who has fought to knock down fall rye before crop planting can attest to its early-season vigour. And just look at that garlic greenery shooting up like a strong pillar, almost like a crystal.

Nettles, sometimes up even before the garlic, are imbued with fresh and strong wintery energy and here’s a bonus: we can get at it! The young plants are edible, and they make a powerful tonic for young seedlings. Gathering nettles for both eating and making compost tea has been on the spring to-do list for yonks—and by that, I mean for as long as there have been growers. Rudolph Steiner bemoaned the near-universal loss of folk wisdom in agriculture, but this gem seems to have survived, likely because it was so demonstratively helpful.

It is common practice on all sorts of operations to make a pass with the rotavator just before the snow falls—just enough to kill the forage and expose it slightly to soil. The result we see in the spring is a field almost ready for potato planting, so much of the cover crop has been incorporated. If that fall cultivation isn’t done, we must expect to have a very busy spring on the tractor making several passes with rotavator, spader, disc and harrow to prepare a seed bed that will likely be of lesser quality. The winter soil is more powerful than all that equipment.

So, while all those forces are wanging around down there, and we are welcoming excuses to stay inside, our farm application for proper Biodynamic certification is being initiated. We have been in and out of certification over the years. I hate to say it, but we are biodynamically-certified fickle. Very touchy. Historically, if we get our knickers in a knot, we are out. O.U.T. Out.

The last time we threw in the towel on certification was several years ago, when tractor use came up as an issue. The main theme of Biodynamics is that the farm is striving to become a complete entity, capable of providing for all its needs from within the property. Tractors, and their accoutrements, are obviously off-farm inputs, and there are schools of Biodynamic thought and practice that reject their use. We are not one of them. I don’t want to farm without at least two.

By way of comparison, organic certification is a more straightforward defense of our farming practices. Get the field numbers and acreages sorted out and keep a printed copy of the CGSB standards and permitted substances at the ready, alongside a binder containing the complaint log and compost records. Do a reasonable job of talking about cover cropping, be diligent in seed sourcing, keep the invoices organized, and that’s it. Mostly.

Biodynamic certification is a different story. I feel like I am back at university walking into an exam for a class I skipped too much. I can tell I am going to have to stammer my way through some very uncomfortable question and answer sessions. I feel challenged, intellectually.

The main opposition to our successful application will likely be our lack of livestock. Biodynamics come out strong on livestock, particularly cattle, as domesticated ruminants are exquisitely unique in their ability to consume the plants that have been enlivened by Biodynamic practice. They deliver the subsequently energized manure necessary to not only grow more plants but improve their quality and quantity. It is in this way that Biodynamic farms eschew the use of any sort of purchased soil amendment or plant fertilizer. The yields are robust and increasing because the non-physical forces emanating from the universe are contained in the soil, then focused on the growth of the crops. Cattle cause the cycle to perpetuate.

Which is fine if you want to keep cattle. We do not. Instead, we are using extensive cover cropping and turning the cull potatoes into useful compost for the non-potato crops. It is this conversation that makes me tremble the most. Am I going to be able to convince a Biodynamic inspector that potatoes too, are vessels for the energy of the universe which can be returned to and multiplied in the soil?

I foresee a long period of transition.

Anna Helmer farms with her family and friends in the Pemberton Valley. helmersorganic.com

Featured image: Garlic roots develop in cold winter soil. Credit: Fir0002/Flagstaffotos.

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Biodynamic Farm Story: Cold Comforts

in Crop Production/Grow Organic/Land Stewardship/Soil/Spring 2022

By Anna Helmer

Alas, alak. Which is to say, phew. My self-celebrated cull potato Biodynamic compost pile is not available to evaluate in time for this article deadline: the snowpack beneath which it languishes lingers still. Truth be told, I am relieved. I have not been shy about leading us all to believe I am a composting genius, capable of turning old potatoes into a priceless pile of loamy soil teeming with life, energy, and spiritual sensitivity. On the other hand, it might be a pile of mucky old potatoes. I am saved, for now, from the big reveal.

This winter’s snowpack has had a more notable affect on life this winter than just preserving my pride. Most of it is from December’s excesses, when several feet accumulated in just a few days. The temperature plunged and the farm was in the proverbial grip of winter. The work focus narrowed: clear greenhouse, shovel path to chicken house, monitor the cooler temperatures, keep water pumps from freezing. As always, the first few days of minus twenty were fine, but then things started to freeze. It’s amazing how much work this becomes.

Rain is inevitable of course, which adds crushing weight to snow that was this year extra sticky, clinging even to the metal roofs of barns and homes. This became a grave concern. Not only is there the potential collapsing problem, but a very real danger to anyone or anything in the line of the sliding snow when it finally does let go.

Our farm escaped the situation with little more than one blown apart railing, one bent greenhouse rib (from a tractor-mounted snow blower injury), and a day or two of frozen water pump. It’s not hard to spot other winter casualties in the area and it is considered polite to avert your eyes and not mention it.

Meanwhile, under the snow, the soil has been hard at work. It’s hard to believe, as the landscape seems so inert in the depths of winter, but Rudolph Steiner says it’s so. This year in particular the soil seemed so remote, buried under four feet of concrete snow. A lot of the time it was a walkable snowpack and striding about the farm on an elevated even surface felt like freedom. Anyway, it was easy to assume there wasn’t much going on down there.

Biodynamically-speaking, however, winter is a time of dynamic change in the soil. I really don’t pretend to understand the technical aspects of many of Steiner’s arguments, and this one has really confused me. Something to do with the formation of crystals deep down which will collect the forces emanating from the further reaches of the universe and stream them upwards into the plants. Don’t quote me.

Obviously, there is activity. We habitually try to rotavate the next year’s potato field last thing in the fall before winter. Just a shallow rotavate, and perhaps a slightly deeper spading. It breaks up the sod that has formed over the previous five years of cover-cropping. It’s pretty rough, but in the spring, this field will dry a little quicker and much of the organic matter will have broken down. This is a sign of winter activity, isn’t it?

It’s more than that, though I am struggling to put my finger on it. My understanding was nudged along when we went to dig the equipment trailer out of the snow. We had parked it under a barn roof line. Oops. See above. It was buried early and often this winter. The extraction project took place over a two-day period and involved heavy equipment. When done, a churned-up mess of soil, snow, ice, and mud was left in its place. The ground won’t recover from that this year.

We would never do this to a field, but the message remains the same: we farmers ruin soil. The soil needs winter so it can get away from us and do its thing. If you haven’t slapped your head with understanding then I haven’t done a good job of writing, for this is very profound.

Think about the fall-rotavated potato field. It will emerge from the winter ready for an (almost) single tractor pass for final seed bed preparation. When we don’t do the fall rotavating and spading it takes several passes with disc, cultivator, spader, rotavator, and harrow to do the same job, with likely a substandard result.

The field, left alone in the grip of winter, was busy, busy, busy and did a better job of it than we could have done.

The BD500 preparation, which some call the gateway drug of Biodynamics, is buried over winter. I won’t get into the details, but it transforms from a muck of fresh manure into a dryish plug of pure power. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it makes sense, but I admit to a slight glimmer of understanding.

Now I am kind of excited to see the compost pile. I think it was always out of my hands.

Anna Helmer farms in Pemberton and is grateful for the opportunity. helmersorganic.com

Featured image: Credit: Hemler’s Organic Farm

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Biodynamic Farm Story: Late Pandemic Musings on Thriving, Not Just Surviving

in 2021/Crop Production/Land Stewardship/Organic Community/Preparation/Soil/Summer 2021

Anna Helmer

The Biodynamic baseline regeneration mission: replace the vitality of the soil—successfully drawn into the plants and then removed along with the crop, for consumption. In Biodynamics, the way to do this is through composting—the creation of humus that supports soil to regain its power.

The Biodynamic Compost Preparations are the fertility tools of Biodynamics. Steiner wants us to think of them as forces, rather than items, substances, or amendments. They are not directly aimed at plant growth, but rather intended to compliment, enhance, energize, and enliven the soil. Soil thusly treated can grow the very best of crops.

Compare this to nutrient replacement programs that are aimed at crop yield. Soil, although obviously important, is not the object of support. It’s necessary as a vessel to hold amendments long enough and close enough for plant roots to find them, and of course, it is there to hold the plants upright. Luckily for soil, nothing else does a better job of this! However, in the pursuit of weed-free big yields, it tends to get neglected and its performance diminishes. Biodynamically-supported, it is capable of much more.

The Compost Preparations transform compost into a special treat for the soil itself, to the benefit of the crop: holding moisture and warmth, for example, and providing the conditions necessary for essential relationships to form and flourish between all the biological, chemical, and physical elements. Most importantly, as far as I can understand, the application of Biodynamic compost allows for the possibility that science doesn’t have all the answers and optimum plant growth and health-giving properties are the result of mysterious things that probably occur in healthy soil.

It is difficult for me to reconcile this grand notion with the reality of my scraggly heap of cull potatoes. It doesn’t look like a regenerative treat for the soil.

My compost heap is beginning to levitate.

This is not a Biodynamic accomplishment. It’s a seed potato situation.

As you may recall, I am attempting to create a Biodynamic compost pile that will digest cull potatoes into useful material, an expectation made necessary by a sad lack of cattle, those immensely more efficient composting machines. I started the pile in late fall, layering the rejected potatoes with hay, kitchen compost, chicken litter, leaves, and eggshells. By way of example, I added periodic scoops of a precious Biodynamic compost made from the manure of the departed cattle.

The culls that went in during the winter months are good and rotten, having been subjected to freezing, but the additions since the last freeze have encountered nothing but premium growing conditions. They are vigorous seed potatoes with only unsightly blemishes to hold them back.

Unsightly blemishes have no effect on vigour, I can tell you that for free. The potatoes are growing lustily, and the pile is expanding rapidly.

I dug into it earlier in the year, once the sun had some warmth, to see what was happening. It was hot in there, with a plethora of worms. I reckon all these seed potatoes are now sitting on top of a nice warm bed and that is making them grow with even more gusto. Should I leave them to flower? That would be a lovely sight. At any rate, there will be a generous amount of fresh green material when I turn the pile and finish it by adding the Compost Preparations.

It’s a reasonable plan. However, these potatoes are currently dominating the compost pile, and I think it might take more than one turn to stifle their urges. Talk about a living force. I don’t think I should apply the Compost Preparations until the pile becomes…more balanced…inert…less unhinged…   

Turning to a more optimistic aspect of my Biodynamic practice, I am thrilled to discover that all the plants necessary to make the Compost Preparations are to be found on our farm. Oak tree bark was the missing piece until I belatedly realized there is a massive specimen looming out front of mom and dad’s house, right there in the main farmyard. I have been raking its copious leaves for about 40 years and lamenting almost annually that they are useless in a compost heap. One supposes a proper Biodynamic farmer would be a touch more aware of her surroundings. Anyways. Turns out the bark is full of calcium and it plays a big role in making strong plants.

So that’s the lot: oak bark, along with yarrow, stinging nettle, dandelion, valerian, and chamomile.

Just need a stag’s bladder, dog skull, and sheep mesentery. Say, what? Oh shoot, it got weird again.

Anna Helmer farms with her family in Pemberton, and still does not exactly know what she’s going to do everyday. helmersorganic.com

Feature image: Russian blue heart potatoes. Credit: Idéalités

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