Reprinted from ACRES USA July 1991 without permission.

  INTRODUCTION [from ACRES, USA]
  Alan Chadwick, the founder of the biodynamic/French intensive school
  of growing food crops, left the scene over  a decade ago. We are told
  that on the wall to the left of his bed had been hung a copy of
  Shakespeare's Sonnet XV, a fitting summary to the man's life.

  When I consider everything that grows
  Holds in perfection but a little moment,
  That this huge state presenteth naught but shows
  Whereon the stars secret influence commeth;
  When I perceive that men as plants increase,
  Cheered and checked even by the self-same sky,
  And wear their brave state out of memory; 
  Then the conceit of this inconstant stays
  Sets you most rich in youth before my sight,
  Where wasteful Time debateth with Decay,
  To change your day of youth to sullied night;
  And all in war with Time or love of you,
  As he takes from you, I engraft you new.

  Not many people know that Alan Chadwick was a child of the stage as
  well as a gardener. World War II impacted his nature like a stunning
  hammer. The government demanded that people ignore their preferences
  and take on the choice of war. Chadwick ended up on the bridge of a
  mine sweeper, and after the war he went to South Africa to act in A
  Streetcar Named Desire. But he had this vision - a marriage between
  Steiner biodynamics and a French system of raised bed growing. Later
  he me Countess Freya von Moltke, the widow of the German general
  Helmuth von Moltke.

  It was Freya von Moltke who arranged for Chadwick to be offered a
  teaching post at Santa Cruz. As a consequence, this teacher and other
  teachers have created thousands who know the system. Hunger in this
  world would be quite impossible if such training became widespread.

  These few notes necessarily preface a presentation Alan Chadwick made
  on the subject of fertility at New Market, Virginia about a year
  before he died. His message was so timeless it rates reiteration over
  a decade later.

  There is poetry in ChadwickUs insight. Those who cannot take the time
  to cherish each syllable, each though, each sentence or fragment
  there of can go to others reports in this issue. Our editorial marks
  have been imposed to achieve clarity, and not to alter what Chadwick
  had to say. Otherwise this, a final lecture in a way, is presented
  here exactly as taped.

  FERTILITY
  Robert Graves in quotation: The decline of true taste for food is
  the beginning of a decline in a national culture as a whole. When
  people have lost their authentic personal taste, they lose their
  personality and become the instruments of other peopleUs wills. And
  Linsay Robb in his address entitled "Altius Longius Sitius": We have
  lost that essential unity with the soil. The break in this
  relationship is first indicated in the disregard for spiritual
  values, and sense of obligation and obedience to the creative powers
  of the universe.
  By way of contrast: On perceiving the violet: that the re-creation
  of the mind, which is taken thereby, cannot be but very good and
  honest. For they admonish and stir up the man to do that which is
  comely and honest. For they admonish and stir up a man to do that
  which is comely and honest. For through their beauty, color and
  exquisite form do bring remembrance of honesty, comeliness and all
  kinst of virtues. So it would be unseemly and impossible, even though
  the observer was a criminal, to be able to look upon this [flower]
  and yet remain defiled.
  Fertility has no limits. It is a gift. And it is an endless eleve
  uplift or reverse. But remember that the more fertile, the more
  eleve  we introduce, the more danger and susceptible is nature
  to the four elements, and error. It requires guarding as it becomes
  gifted in creation.
  For a moment, IUm going to talk practically again. Fertility,
  altogether in the whole our lives connected with horticulture,
  connected with the garden, connected with our art, with our craft is,
  of course, a marriage. Now, you must perceive that when we dealt with
  and looked a little into the cosmic, there were enormous keys there,
  one in particular. That so much of the atmospheres, the gifts we
  discover, receive and accept are by a form of marriage, and that
  there is a synergist in the always. And that they are the two
  energies: the energy of creation, the sun, and the energy of the
  recipient, the earth, which is always obedient to the leadership. 
  And that you accept it with an obedience and reverence and obey its
  techniques, obey its requirements in order to bring it about, in
  order to make it eleve, for it is not static. It will increase all
  the time and can increase, as you comprehend-- equally by miracle,
  instantaneously.

  Therefore, when we spoke of the sun and the earth and this marriage
  that creates atmosphere, which we call warmth and light--here you
  have a continuation of this performance, but the multitudinous the
  fertility is coming out of the energy of that marriage of atmosphere.
  And as it is part o the destiny of humanity in particular, as the
  director of the orchestra, as a gardener or a farmer or an
  >oikosomiast< to invect this and create the >eleve<. it is endless,
  remember, and can go either way, like a sedge, into the salt ocean or
  into the sweet land.
  We discussed cultivation, fertilization and propagation in very
  minimal degrees as utter basics. Fertility is a marriage of these
  (three) and it is the marriage of all other that comes out of that
  marriage in the creation of atmosphere. For the moment, I'm focusing
  somewhat on a >conservatoire< of productivity in the garden, the
  production of the garden, not only for the produce for the kitchen
  but the whole garden, of course.
  So I want to bring to your observation the utter obedience to
  technique. If you obey the technique to perfection, that technique
  will become invisible because it is a craft and that is the Greek
  word, >technae<, [technique which it has become]. >Technae< means
  art: Being the creation of God in everything and craft being the
  method by which humanity brings it into performance in the visible
  world--very much the way in which we talk about seed and plants.
  Therefore, technae is art revealed in this world by a craft, and that
  is the word technique. It combines those. It's a phrase. Therefore,
  when we look at the subjects that we have slightly dealt with
  technically, we have talked about stratifications in these raised
  beds. We have talked about why this is a raised be: to get
  >motionibus< exposing to >revolutionibus<.

  And that you have your drainage which is one of the first
  implementations of acquiring >revolutionibus<. And so you are
  applying all of these techniques into a marriage which is all working
  towards the uplift of the procedure of fertility.
  And if you will make stratifications after you have made you
  cultivations and you will add these fertilizations and
  stratifications and texture, and the performance of shapes and
  movements up to the surface of the soil, which is the skin of the
  earth, the area of discontinuity where it meets the air.
  And here you will have produced your plants in a likewise technical
  manner to produce the utmost fertility in their performance.
  And now you will either sow the seed or the plant the plants in that
  formative, artistic bed of enormous technical procedure and thought
  and obedience, and you will plant it so that all the time the (four)
  elements will be your friends and not your enemies - - the six houses
  of fertility and the six houses of destructiveness.

  And that you will sow or plant that bed in such a manner that the
  plants will cover that bed, either ley (or bee) plants or weed plants
  or other plants, will cover that bed as instantly almost as
  germination can take place. but this mean you will have breathing
  pursuing with the >revolutionibus< of each day with the cosmic forces, 
  and you will have an in flow and an intake and an outflow of breathing 
  that is of the utmost fertility that at present you can produce in this 
  area. And that those plants will aalmost immediately cover the area of
  discontinuity--the skin of the earth--with an exquisite mantle. And
  that will prevent that seizure of the topsoil, which is so dangerous,
  and a seizure of the collars of the plants, which is so dangerous for
  there will now be a little area in there of a conservatory, of a
  glass house. And if you put you hand in on a very windy day, it will
  be protected, and if you put you hand in on a very hot sunny day, it
  will be cool, and on a very dry day it will be moisture. And you
  will find you have come into a conservatoire.
  And as those plants grow, those warm, moist gases are being retained
  inside, and that the foliages are performing their duty of protecting
  that bd and the plants and that area which is dangerous with them.
  Therefore, you will get this acceleration and this beautiful growth
  whereby those plants will remain tender, young, succulent and full of
  nutritives, and gentle. And so they will grow faster and faster and
  happier and happier, and they will breathe in and out with the
  inclination and the declination, applying it into the bed through
  numerous planetary governments--minerals--and breathing into the air,
  into that atmosphere that aurora (dawn) is crating each day--those
  mineral atmospheres. It will be taking place ad lit. Ad infinitum.
  And suddenly, you have got a whole bed full of exquisite lettuce all
  ready for the salad bowl, or carrots or yount turnips or turnip tops,
  or whatever the bed may be. And now it will be taken and utilized in
  the kitchen. And when you collect that crop, you will perceive that
  soil, and you will perceive what has happened. That within its
  contents, and even deep down, a change has taken place. That although
  you have what vulgarly the agricultural world says taken the food
  values out of the soil and into the plants, you have *not*!
  This is the adaptation of the purport of fertility: that soil in that
  bed is better now since the plants dealt with it, when you prepare it
  and put the plants in and left them to it. It is superior. It is more
  fertile. And in each cycle this will take place, and out of that bed,
  what weeds you take, what roots and green matter you put into the
  compost will produce a secret.  That secret is all connected with
  >image<., (spiritual vision) with >idee< for it has come out of this,
  out of a pre-thought, for you were given this thought, not from your
  thinking mind of words. You were give it through your poise, through
  your breathing, through your diaphragm, from the cosmic, from above,
  from the stars. thatUs where that impetus came from. And it belongs
  to *totemism*.

  FROM ABOVE
  And now that compost heap will go through the domrancy of winter, and
  when you place it in the bds next year, the apporaches are the same.
  you thoughts are from above. your thoughts are to fertility, not
  fertility for your use, not fertility towards a crop of 1,000 pounds
  of tomatoes or 500 baskets of strawberries. That calculation would
  get you nowhere now, or if you want to turn 1,000 pounds of beans
  into $1,000 to put it in the bank as a cash deposit! It didn't come
  out of that kind of thought. It came out of a thougtht that was not
  given you in words, an order to which you were obedient.
  And now out of that compost come seeds and plants and soil and matter
  and nutriment and humus which you are putting in the soil, and you
  will notcie that this spring the worms are different. They may be
  bigger. They may be a bit more moist, but yet they are changeing,
  There's a lot of whittling going on. There is fresh color that you
  didn't notice before, and suddenly you see a butterly.
  oh, there were those little white ones last year, but that oneUs got
  orange tips. And suddenly you will seed all sorts of new variations
  of snakes and lizards and snails and birds. And they are new! Why did
  they come? Was it just like the nightingale? Did they go when they
  know they were not wanted and had they come back up the river and
  were waiting in the tree for the emperor to come and listen that he
  may sleep and dream? And so something will happen now that is the
  greatest secret concerned with the garden and fertility and the
  gardener.
  Magic comes out of your surprise, for there is in nature always
  surprise. You don't know anything. you can go through a little
  woodland, a little alpine area, and you will think you have seen
  what's growing there., and you can go through it for three months,
  and each day you will find it incontestably new. It is not static.
  Every bit of it is new.  And now, suddnly, new weeds have come up.
  They weren't here last year and you walso notcie that there is an
  appearance of more succulence, of probably mroe intense color, of
  scent and form.
  It may not be size and you will certainly notice a differnce in
  nutritivies and flavor. And this is the gift of the plants in their
  giving and forgiving, that through their spritiual >image< now relate
  to our spiritual >image< and have come up to where were were led to
  lead them to enter--when our thoughts were given to us as from
  above--we were above that >elve< and were thinking of a new pear, of
  lettuce more wondreful, a flavor more exuisite, or walkway that id
  something tht no walkway had ever quite done before, or a tree bow
  which held atmosphere underneath in a manner that never happened
  before. They are all meetings of that matter. And now, suddenly, this
  coming up of nature, of the garden, enters you diapragm and connects
  again with the cosmic and your spiritual image is lifted again into
  a real that no verbosity, no ordinary study through words, through
  books, can give you.
  It's new! It's out of the atmosphere. Its out of the birth of the
  hand of God, that is flowing throughout this are in which you are
  constructing and fulfilling and being obedient and performing. That
  surely can proceed ad infinitum. And is this not, then, the word
  fertility? And does it not conjunct with all the bird in the trees?
  All of the things that you can't comprehend. So many people at
  lectures, like at Villa montalvo, where threee dear old ldies got up
  and said, Yes! Yes! Yes! But what do we do about the ants? But, you
  see, there is always this inclination to rush to a store for a powder
  because something's happening that's got up your petticoat.

  ELVE of FERTILITY
  Now, perceive you, that where I'm speaking of a French Intensive
  biodynamic bed, I'm only focusing on one little fraction of the whole
  focus of the garden. That, therefore, it includes all of those
  insects that you do not comprehend but appear as enemies.
  And here is a little statement about the seed of tansy; burr
  marigold. This plant, wilde, grows beside water, but not in water,
  and cannot grow away from water. It can't exist on dry land, and it
  cannot exist in abog, so it grows on teh edge of little ponds and
  pools and around the edges oflakes and streams. In the fall, when it
  goes to seed, those seeds fall on the dry land and cannot germinate.
  And when the winds of winer come, they blow it into the path and,
  Oh, dear, now whatUs going to happen? Those seeds have four horns
  on the uper end like floats, and the seed floats upwards with the
  germinative point in the air so that the see sits on the water at an
  angle facing up, and along comes Mr. Carp, and he says Oh, dear,
  here we go again.

  But those four horns are made like fish hooks, and every fish is
  aware by relationship/disrelationship of what those four horns will
  do. And any fish tht have had this tuck in their gills for several
  hours to get rid of it, wouldnt dream of goinG near tht see agAin
  knowing full well what it would do.

  [TO BE CONTINUED]