September/October 2002
Feature Articles
Holistic Health Q & A
by John DeCosmo, D.O.
Of genes and gene testing and evaluation.
What is... the Organic Movement?
by Robert Roman
Part two of a three-part article detailing
the author's personal experiences and the growth of the organic movement.
UnCommon Sense!
by David Findlay
War - Iraq - Should we remove Saddam
Hussein?
Articles on the theme "The Learning Process"
A Basket Weaver
by Lou Galgano
An example of how one artist learns
and teaches what he knows.
Getting "It"
by Lewis Fishman
Using "it" as an inspiration
to learn.
Learning Without Harm
by Barbara Bedingfiled
How intellectualism has negatively
influenced our education of the young - and how to counter this.
Music and Movement, and Learning
by Bob and Claire Franki
How the combination of music with movement
from age zero not only facilitates musicianship but increases coordination
and learning.
September 12
by Janet Kato
A moment when the learning process
became the healing process
Learning From Everything
by Patrick Plaskett
Learning from life - from both the
"good" and the "bad."
Learning From Other Cultures
by Dr. Jean Houston
The birth of the Planetary Human
The Relationship Learning Process
by Bob Murray, Ph.D.
How our problems stem from failed relationships;
how to make good ones.
What is the Organic Movement?
by Robert Roman
[Part Two of a three-part article detailing the author's personal experiences and the growth of the organic movement. Part One was published in the July/August issue of New Times Naturally! ]
I knew this was the right work for me, so I decided to study biodynamic agriculture full time. I wanted to go to the best teacher in the world, as long as they spoke English! Fortunately, the best teacher in the world, a world-renowned German soil scientist named Dr. Herbert Koepf, taught a class in England, in English at Emerson College. So I wrote to him telling him who I was, what my background was, and that I wanted to study with him in the fall. I also asked if he could possibly help me find another biodynamic farm to work on from April until September.
Now sometimes you find out you may be on the right path. Dr. Koepf wrote me back quickly, accepted me into the program, and offered me a position on the college farm, called Tablehurst Farm. Tablehurst was a mixed biodynamic farm of 445 acres, with dairy cows, cheese and yogurt making, beef cows, all the pastures and fields needed to grow all of their feed, hundreds of free-range chickens, and a vegetable operation that grew the food for the college of approximately 300 people. All of the latest research was going on there, using the biodynamic preparations, as I had at Hawthorne Valley Farm, the natural pest controls, and weed controls, and laboratory analysis of the soils, the compost, the feed and hay quality, the milk quality, etc. What an exciting opportunity!
I said yes. I didn't have a passport, but I got one quickly. I parked that old pickup in my friend Ricki's field, and off I went to England.
By now, I was strong. Real strong. The strongest I had ever been in my life. I had always said that if I needed the muscle, I would get the muscle. I had needed it, and I got it. Now I was the strongest apprentice on the farm at Tablehurst. We worked hard that summer, moving the animals, caring for them, making hay, harrowing and topping the fields, hauling manure, planting, hoeing and harvesting the vegetables, and studying.
I had to keep a daily journal here. What did we do to each and every field every day? Did we take hay from it, or add manure to it? How many animals grazed there? Full grown animals, or young stock? What new plants, flowers or birds did I see? What was the weather? Which way was the wind blowing from in the morning, the afternoon, at night? Which one seemed to mean rain or good weather? What was the temperature at different times of day? Did we do any maintenance on the equipment? What was it? Did we make or apply any of the biodynamic preparations to the fields or the compost? What kind of herbal tea did Katherine make for us that afternoon? It was all about paying attention, observation, record keeping. How do we do the research if we don't keep the data? I still have those journals. They remind me now and then of what it takes to do your work thoroughly. And to observe all around you. You have to be still to do that, like watching the garden. And "still" has always been one of my favorite ways to be.
I was able to keep working on the farm until November, but then the classroom studies, which had begun in September, became too overwhelming to do at the same time. I had to stop one of them, and since I had come for the classes, I gave up the work on the farm. It was a good decision. Our classroom work was extensive. These classes met for 9 hours a day, 6 days a week. It included a wide variety of material on soils, animal life, plant life, astronomy, and the arts.
I have 8 notebooks with an incredible amount of information that I wrote down, plus many textbooks that I bought. Let me just list some of the topics covered. No particular order here, just going through the books. Raising and keeping bees, the life cycle of each member of the hive, and the life of the hive itself; different tree woods, and when to plant them, harvest them, and how to use them; seed production, selection, saving and care; orchard care, pruning of every type of fruit, fertilization of fruits; the uses of stinging nettle, chamomile, dandelion, yarrow, valerian, oak bark and foxglove in preventing and curing orchard problems; the uses of diatomaceous earth; types and formation of rocks; types of soils and how to enhance them on the farm; the difference between calcium and silica, and their uses; so much dealing with astronomy, the rhythms of the movements of the planets, when to plow, plant, weed, harvest, prune or anything else to use the forces of these heavenly bodies.
This is a good time to interject a very important fact about the science involved here. At that time for nearly 55 years, and now closer to 80 years of daily research has been done on the effects of these heavenly bodies. By planting seeds everyday of the year, and watching them as they develop more or less root, more or less stem, more or less flowers, more or less fruit, and more or less seed, and correlating this information with the movements of the moon, the sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Saturn, and the rest of the planets, you come to the truths about them. Not the cause and effect, but the correlation. The cause is a whole other conversation. The scientific, useful, practical information from this study is undeniable. If you want grasses for soil improvement, plant for roots, and if you want them for animal feed, plant for stems and flowers! This is understandable. Just follow the Kimberton Calendar, and do what it says.
Now sometimes you find out you may be on the right path. Remember what my friends thought of these ideas back in Columbia, MO? This was one of the key elements for me, having been a chemistry major for some time in college, and a strong believer in scientific methodology. This course had that science.
Nitrogen sources, potassium, phosphorus, trace minerals; earthworms and how to get more of them, and the quality of their castings since the earth has literally been brought back through a living organism; protein; light and darkness; the story of nitrogen in so many varied forms such as laughing gas or poison; pollination; plant vs. animal protein; horns which have blood vessels through them vs. antlers that don't, and what that means to a farmer; the similarities and differences between milk from a human, a cow, a goat, a whale and others; why tomatoes are bad for cancer patients; weather patterns around the globe and the constant flow and interchange of all systems as they move around and around the earth; the 19-year cycle of the moon, and what that means to a farmer; the elements of fire, air, water, and earth and their relationship to the heart, kidney, liver and lung; soil formation; the uses of green manures; conventional chemical fertilizers, so we could understand them, how they are used, their properties and origins; crop rotation; grasses and their uses; understanding nightshades, cucurbitaceae, and legumes; medicinal plants, growth and uses; water quality; insect life cycles; composting and manuring; mineral fertilization; and laboratory testing with chromatograms for soils, plants, fertilizers, foods.
If you are still reading at this point, you either skipped that whole list, read part of it and skipped the rest, got overwhelmed by it, or possibly were as fascinated by reading it as I was by digging through all of my notes to put it together. If you were fascinated, please contact me. I want to know you. That was a very intensive year, and the list I gave is not even complete.
One other aspect of the biodynamic (BD) agriculture course is very interesting. As you can imagine from the above list, a BD farmer has a wide interest. But part of the course not mentioned above is the art work. We took classes in drawing, dance (called eurythmy), singing, and sculpture. These help the farmer (and anyone else) to see beyond just the physical form, and begin to relate to the movements, (of plants, the planets and stars, etc.) the rhythms around us, the flow of life. Can you see behind the physical form and sense the true being of something? Artistic training helps. So we took it.
I described the science and the arts as important elements of this course. The daily planting of seeds for 80 years to understand the correlations of plant growth with the movements of the moon, sun, and planetary bodies is a small part of the ongoing science. And the art forms mentioned are but a few of so many available. And the course was titled Biodynamic Agriculture Course, but it could have been titled Preparation for Life, How to See and Understand.
But it was a one-year course, and it ended. So now I was ready to bring nearly 2 years of practical work on organic/biodynamic farms and in-depth study back to the farms of Missouri. I wanted to grow fruit, having fallen in love with the care of the trees, and have dairy cattle, having learned to care for them, and to make the cheese and yogurt as an added-value product for a small farmer. In Missouri, the southwestern part of the state offered both types of farming. Usually separate, I intended to bring them together on one farm. But I knew I still had a lot to learn. No lender would lend me money with as little experience as I had. So I drove to that area of Missouri, and began to search the local papers for jobs on a dairy farm. I soon found one in Pierce City. I would work on Danny's 770-acre farm. I became the herd manager, milking almost 100 cows in the mornings, doing field work the rest of the day. I drove those big John Deere tractors, with the air conditioning, am/fm radio, windshield wipers, and comfy seats. The year I spent with Danny was more about experience than learning, though I did learn about herd management, and especially the work of the Dairy Herd Improvement Association, DHIA. Danny used artificial insemination for his cows, always looking to produce more milk. This was different than the organic/biodynamic herds at Hawthorne Valley Farm, and Tablehurst. There we looked for health of the animal and longevity, and then at milk production. Danny's cows were "forced" or pushed to grow faster with hormones, produce more milk but with a lower fat content, and typically had more mastitis health problems than the organic farms did. But, in his world of farming, high milk production was a goal, and Danny won "Farmer of the Year" in his region. He used 2-4-D herbicide quite a bit to control weeds, and to control his hedges. I was asked to apply the herbicide, and that is when he and I parted company.
I had some friends back in Columbia, MO who owned 600 acres of second bottom land along the Missouri River. That meant it was not right along the river itself, but was along a major creek just before it poured into the river. And now, with my training, they were interested in converting to organic/biodynamic farming, and setting up a dairy herd, making cheese on the farm. I moved there, and we started planning.
Now I had a stronger bond to the farmers and gardeners in the area. I had the practical work on several farms, and the formal training. So when the Missouri Organic and Biodynamic Growers and Buyers Association (MOBGBA) was formed, I was in my own kitchen, along with about 18 others. We went over those previous rules we had written, revised them and put them out in Missouri. What we didn't know at the time was how many other groups across the country were doing the same thing, and laying the groundwork for what would become the National Organic Program, sponsored by the USDA.
But it turned out that not everyone was as serious as they thought they were about the transition of this farm I was on, and soon I was wondering where to go next. Fortunately, I had met Jim and Margie by then.
(To be continued next issue.)
Robert Roman is general manager of Nature's Food Patch in Clearwater, FL. (727) 443-6703 ext. 223. rroman@naturesfoodpatch.com
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