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Subtle Energies
http://www.his.com/~claymont/bd/subtle.html
--
Lawrence F. London, Jr. - Venaura Farm - Chapel Hill, NC, USA
mailto:london@sunSITE.unc.edu http://sunSITE.unc.edu/InterGarden
mailto:llondon@nuteknet.com http:nuteknet.com/london Venaura Farm
Title:
Subtle Energies
Subtle Energies in a Montana Greenhouse
by Woody Wodraska
Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center (1)
In some 20 years as a gardener I have worked in greenhouses
in Pennsylvania, Florida, Oregon, Illinois, Minnesota--but never
have I seen plants flourish in a Spring greenhouse as they did
in the B Bar Ranch greenhouse in Montana this year. At 6,800
feet elevation and 45 degrees North latitude, Winter temperatures
linger. The gardener can scarcely step a digging fork into the
soil until late April. The greenhouse becomes a place of refuge
and the embodiment of his/her burgeoning dreams of growth. This
greenhouse--a leaky, cobbled-together, 75 by 18 foot double-layer
polyfilm hoop house with a propane heater--was my warm place of
retreat after a long, brutal Montana Winter.
The term "Subtle Energies" in the title of this piece refers
to three major things:
* The Biodynamic preparations, herbal compounds
traditionally used by Biodynamic farmers and gardeners on soil,
compost, and plants as I did also in the B Bar greenhouse, and
again as seed soaks--not quite a customary application, but one
that deserves much more attention;
* The Flowforms (2)--sculptural waterforms whose vortices
potentized all of the preparations applied in the greenhouse;
their overall contribution to the ambiance of the place was
wonderful;
* Agnihotra (3). Here you may have to stretch yourself a
little bit. Agnihotra is an ancient Ayurvedic sunrise and
sunset ritual, a healing, purifying ceremony, both for those
who perform it and for the local and Planetary atmosphere.
Why No Controlled Study?
I have what I hope is a healthy skepticism about the
scientific method and the way it is conducted in the real world.
I was trained as a scientist--in psychology, not agriculture--and
early on saw that such an experimental mindset wasn't my forte.
If someone else wishes to validate these greenhouse energies in a
proper scientific manner, I'd welcome his or her efforts. But
the methods of science seem to me to be an exceedingly coarse net
to catch the elusive fish of truth.
More important, though, is this point. If I, as a Bio-
Dynamic practitioner with a market to serve, a job to do, believe
in my best judgment that a particular practice will result in
better yield, or healthier crops, or enhanced soil life--if my
intuition, experience, and judgment tells me something is worth a
try...why wouldn't I go for it? Shall I hold all other variables
steady and change just this one thing, or shall I go
the whole hog? If I have a problem in garden or greenhouse, or
if I want the best quality, the most healthful produce, why
wouldn't I throw everything I've got at it, everything I think or
know will help?
These three strategies--the Biodynamic seed soaks, the
Flowforms, Agnihotra--all became available to me as greenhouse
enhancements during the past Winter and early Spring and there
wasn't any question I was going to use them all. As a Biodynamic
gardener I practice what is to me more of an art than a science.
The Biodynamic Seed Soaks
I am grateful every time I delve into the bright yellow
binder that holds all my back issues of Applied Biodynamics,
from the Josephine Porter Institute (4). Hugh Courtney not only
writes wonderfully well, but he also has a fine sense for
publishing just what the practitioner needs to know to stay on
the cutting edge of Biodynamic practice. In the Spring, 1994
issue of Applied Biodynamics, Issue No.7, Hugh has a brief piece
on "Seed Soaks with the Biodynamic Preparations," with a table
suggesting #507 for maize, #505 for lettuce, and so on.
Germination rate, fruit set, and root development are said to be
enhanced by the practice. In his laconic way, Hugh suggests at
the end, "Much more experimentation seems desirable in this area
of seed soaks," and leaves it to the rest of us, as he often
does, to pick up on the significance of all this.
This Spring I decided to take Hugh up on his challenge, and
virtually every seed we sowed in that Montana greenhouse was
soaked in the appropriate preparation before it went in a bed or
flat.
Germination rate and seedling vigor were both remarkable,
far beyond anything in my experience. Photos taken at 13 days
after sowing prove the point.
Fruit set and plant longevity? I am writing in mid-
September. Yesterday I called Mark Waite, the apprentice I left
behind in Montana, and asked him how the 65 tomato plants we
tended there in the greenhouse were doing. He told me he was
picking 20 pounds of tomatoes a day for the kitchen. The last
two weeks of July they'd started to come on ripe. The first two
weeks of August he was harvesting 10-15 pounds a day, and a solid
15 pounds a day during the last two weeks. In September, no
question about it, 20 pounds a day. I know from experience that
as the light begins to fail after Michaelmas (the Autumnal
Equinox), there will be a drop-off in yield, say an average of 10
pounds a day for the month of October. Around Halloween it's all
over with the B Bar greenhouse. Guests are gone and heating the
place would become prohibitively expensive. But July-October
tomato poundage for 65 plants: is in the neighborhood of 1,300
pounds--20 pounds per plant. And these are heirloom varieties,
not chosen for high yield, but rather for taste, color, and seed
saving.
There were similar results with many other vegetable
varieties at the B Bar this Summer:
Bushel after bushel of pole beans from a dozen plants;
An elephant-head amaranth with a seedhead as big as a
football;
Cucumber plants that continued bearing fruit for three full
months;
Flowforms
My article on Flowforms in the greenhouse appeared in
Biodynamics #206, July-August, 1996. In Biodynamics #207 Anne
Mendenhall responded with a piece, "Flowforms Revisited,"
accompanied by a study conducted by Freya Schikorr, comparing
hand stirring, machine stirring, and Flowform potentizing of the
preparations. While Anne seems somewhat wary of the Flowforms,
regarding their vortex as "no more than a whisper of itself," I
am more enthusiastic about their use and the Schikorr study would
seem to support this. Yield from plants treated with Flowform-
potentized preparations were significantly greater than control
yields or machine-stirred yields. Only hand stirring surpassed
the Flowform results, and only just barely. A whisper
communicates quite as well as a shout, it seems, and the vortical
form itself may be the crucial factor, not its depth and vigor.
Yield, of course is easily measured and talked about. What
is not so easily defined and communicated is the remarkable
enhancement the Flowforms afford in the greenhouse environment-
-the sound of flowing water, the visual attractiveness of the
sculptural forms themselves, the lovely sight of the swirling,
pulsating flow, the negative ions generated wherever water is in
action. Here too, there are subtle energetics involved. In the
last week of March I sowed a few Kwintus pole beans on the
centerline of the greenhouse, one going just next to the Flowform
cascade. The plant that arose from that seed was for the
remainder of the season remarkably healthier and fuller than the
others, with greater fruit set and and overall yield. I have
photos of two Soro red cabbage seedlings, one potted and residing
next to the Flowforms, one placed perhaps 30 feet away The
seedlings kept pace with each other metamorphically--i.e., the
number of leaves on each was the same at 4, 7, and 10 weeks, but
the Flowform plant always had about one-third more leaf area.
When I wanted to hurry plants along in their development, for
special purposes--potted miniature sunflowers for guest cabin
porches, potted basil for the kitchen windowsill--I crowded them
around the Flowforms for speedy and healthy growth. This
strategy worked every time.
Agnihotra (3)
We cannot fathom what ancient cultures may have known.
Certainly it is not too much of a "stretch" to believe that much
important knowledge may have been lost over the millennia,
particularly perhaps in the past couple of hundred years as
materialism became the reigning paradigm. How did the Egyptians
and the Maya work with stone with such precision? Did Methuselah
really live for 969 years--how? Were Native Americans and other
indigenous people able to commune with plants (and the Devas?) in
order to learn their uses for healing?
Agnihotra comes to us from the Vedas, the ancientmost body
of knowledge known to mankind. It's not difficult for me to
believe that the ancients--closer to the land, the seasons, and
the sources; undistracted by technology's blandishments, may have
had holistic understandings about Nature that are denied to
contemporary scientific method.
Agnihotra involves preparing a small fire of dry cow dung
and ghee in a small, inverted copper pyramid. At the exact
moment of sunrise and sunset, a simple mantra is chanted and a
few grains of rice are placed into the fire. The practitioner
sits quietly until the fire dies out, meditating, witnessing, and
honoring the coming and going of the sun.
I had been aware of this practice since reading Secrets of
the Soil (5) some years ago, but had never seen it practiced
until early this year. I immediately began daily practice of
Agnihotra in the greenhouse at the ranch in April, coincident
with the onrush of seed sowing, and there is no doubt in my mind
that some of the spectacular growth of plants there can be
attributed to Agnihotra. One quite specific instance of this
comes to mind. Toward the middle of May I had about three dozen
broccoli seedlings in 4-inch pots, ready to go into beds, but the
only space available for them was in the unheated "back" portion
of the greenhouse. (It's a measure of the harshness of the
Montana Spring that I wasn't even considering transplanting Cole
crops outdoors in May.) I crossed my fingers and put the plants
in the ground. That night we had a hard frost with temperature
about 20 degrees Fahrenheit. Those broccoli plants were
prostrated by that frost, laid out flat on the ground when I
inspected them in the morning; they hadn't recovered even a
little in the warmth of the noonday sun. Recalling that
Agnihotra ash is said to have healing qualities, during the
afternoon I placed a couple of pinches of ash around each plant's
stem and gently worked it into the soil. Within a week the
results of this treatment were clear: 80 to 90 percent of those
plants were building new leaves and by harvest time each of these
was producing usable heads. Now I have seen many times before in
my gardening career Cole crops affected by late frosts in the
Spring, sometime completely destroyed. But never have I seen
plants this badly damaged recover so nearly completely.
Since then I have used the ash from the dung-and-ghee fire
to good--if not quite so spectacular--effect in greenhouse,
garden, and landscape plantings. The Agnihotra effect is said in
the literature to be one of counteracting atmospheric pollution-
-and where on the planet is any farmer or gardener working in a
pollution-free place?
Conclusion
It would be easy, even reasonable, for Biodynamic
traditionalists reading this to dismiss some of my observations
as the fuzzy fantasies of an unreconstructed Hippie, forgetting
perhaps that Rudolf Steiner's indications for agriculture 72
years ago must have seemed equally off-the-wall...stag bladders
and skulls, skinning field mice when Venus is in Scorpio--humph!
I don't do the ain't-it-awful scene. I won't tell you what
dire straits we are in--war, corruption, pollution, topsoil
loss, the family farm virtually vanished. What I will suggest is
that agriculture is going to have to be a whole lot more
sustainable and interesting if we are going to attract the next
generation of young people into the field--the generation that is
going to turn ain't-it-awful into isn't-it-marvelous!
I have five internship slots open at Tree of Life
Rejuvenation Center for the coming year.(6) We have a year-round
gardening season and the opportunity to feed people --60 to 80
guests and staff by 1998--with life-giving, spirit-enhancing
Biodynamic food. I plan to run that program in the most
interesting and inspiring way I can, for the good of the people,
the land, and the Planet.
Notes
(1) P O Box 32, 771 Harshaw Road, Patagonia, AZ 85624 (520)
394-2319 e-mail:
woodyw@juno.com
(2) Waterforms, Inc. Route 177, P O Box 930, Blue Hill, ME 04614
(207) 374-2384
The Flowforms pictured are the Bristlecone cascade.
Woody Wodraska, Flowforms in the Greenhouse--A Preliminary
Report,
Biodynamics Number 206, July/August 1996, Bio-Dynamic
Farming and
Gardening Association, Inc.
(3) Literature from The Copper Works, Rt. 8 Box 365, Madison,
VA 22727 (540)
5463; Vasant V. Paranjpe, Homa Therapy, Fivefold Path,
Inc., RFD #1, Box 121-C
Madison, VA 22727
(4) The Josephine Porter Institute for Applied Bio-Dynamics,
Inc. P O Box 133, Wool-
wine, VA 24185 (540) 930-2463
(5) Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird, Secrets of the Soil:
New Age Solutions for
Restoring our Planet, Harper & Row, New York, 1989.
(6) Bio-Dynamic Gardening in a Permaculture Context: Information
on Internships,
available from (1) above.