You are the Quality of What You Eat

Visited Bob Mattie at Elysium Farm today. He grows good pigs. At his farm, you can understand why Rudolf Steiner called pigs "heavenly" creatures (perplexing his audience). These animals are vast accumulators of cosmic substantiality, the stuff of life. Cosmic substance is the richness of soil and the essence of life: fat. Alchemists called this fat "Sulfur" because it's what makes candles burn and brains stay on. Fat makes life go boom. Alchemists saw this fat condensing in the dew gifted every morning.

Why does it matter? As Steiner himself indicated, the fat of any animal has the least of the character of the animal itself - fat is a coalescence of plant sugars and nutrients the way that beeswax is a special concentration of honey. Fat is stored up sunlight.

Here I have to buck convention a bit with a hair-splitting quibble. We are NOT what we eat. We are the QUALITY of whatever we eat. Eating corn doesn't make us corny. Eating bones doesn't make dogs boney. But eating healthy food, for the most part, makes us healthy. Fat from animals or plants in toxic conditions collects toxicity. Fat from healthy conditions is a condensation of the entire thriving environment. By eating, we bring outside conditions inside us. It is as if you have a photograph of the welfare of an animal (or plant) in the flavor and aroma of its fat. If we eat unhealthy food, it doesn't matter if it's an animal or a plant at all! We are the *quality* of whatever we eat. Therefore, focus on quality. Eat less meat, sure, but also eat BETTER meat.

Pictured here is Bob filling a tote with sea salt and probiotics and vinegar to further improve the health of his noble beasts and his thoughtful customers. Wanna be sick? Eat cheap food and sick animals and sad plants all day every day.

Or get bacon from Bob.

Removal of What Does Not Belong

Invariably, there is something that does not belong. Whether it’s a typo in an essay or a suspicious lump that must be removed, the world of perpetual change is unpredictable. This doesn’t mean there’s not a plan, but like “irrational” numbers like Pi, it’s a kind of order of such complexity that it appears, at least to our limited rational minds, to be incomprehensible.

In an older time, sickness was considered a punishment from God and medicine — whether the intervention of herbs or witches — was considered to be diabolical magic. Very few people embrace such complete resignation. I’d wager that even Søren Kierkegaard would not have been a knight of infinite resignation when it came to seeking remedies for ailments. The concept of divine vengeance as a source of our problems is a one-sided take on what is more expressively articulated as the law of karma. Yes, everything relates to everything else, and yet, in the end, we must still act. If we are constantly trying to take into account all factors, we will be like Chidi Anagonye in The Good Place, so perplexed my moral quandaries that we find ourselves unable to act at all. Is it right to suppress weeds? Yes, in a limited sense. It is “right” because it is better for humanity to dwell here on earth and better be mirrors of Divinity. But suppressing weeds is “wrong” when it is mere convenience, facilitating the worst aspects of our nature.

When it comes to weeds or pests in the garden, there are specific practices that can be employed to transmute the very problem into its own solution. If you take pests and char them, you create a sort of pathogenic process which is antagonistic against the original pest itself, but limited to that specific species. These are called by Rudolf Steiner “peppers” but only because of the ash and char resembling the visual of cracked black pepper. The char and ash can be distributed across the garden to suppress the particular weed or pest in question.

There are, of course, weeds that do not reproduce by seeds, so the approach must be modified somewhat in these cases. To remove what does not belong means only what is essential remains.

At Perennial Roots Farm, we consult with growers of all scales and offer packages for the smallholder, the beginner, and the large-scale producer. These ideas are for all. We are here for any of your questions.

Learning by Experience or by Example

You can try your luck at at the “school of hard knocks” but that is usually riddled with unforeseeable costs. When you begin any unfamiliar task, you do not know what you do not know. The fool begins, but hopefully the fool is wise enough to enlist the wisdom of those who’ve walked the path before him. We either learn by example or we learn from experience. If we learn by example, we glean from the fruits of someone else’s mistakes, without having to suffer those errors ourselves. Yes, there’s something to be said to the “immersive” approach of diving into the deep end of the pool, but most of us need to learn to swim first.

All learning is experience — the only question is whether I have to suffer the experience myself or whether I’ll heed the warnings of others. Again, if something is new, I can’t know what the pitfalls are! I can only hear someone up ahead warning me not to stray too far from a particular path. I can’t see the potential dangers, so I can either 1) ignore the advice of others and find out for myself, or 2) I can heed the advice of others and spare myself experiencing the dangers directly. Those of us who are bullheaded will opt to ignore advice and throw ourselves into life. This path hurts. The milder path is to enlist the assistance of those who have already amassed experiences.

Manure into Gold

Alchemy is a subtle art, but it is the subtle art of life itself. There is the obscure idea that alchemy turns lead into gold, but this must be taken primarily as a metaphor. Something common, leaden, and worthless can be nurtured into something rare, golden, and priceless. This might be the transformation of manure into beautiful black gold as compost. This might be transforming an herbal preparation into a spagyric remedy. Turning lemons into lemonade is alchemy. If you weren't already doing it to some degree, you wouldn't be able to develop it further. Making more from less should be our entire worlf’s aim, but especially the aim of our farms and gardens. That's what we help people attain: ever more from ever less. If you'd like to talk to us about how you can reduce expenses and turn waste into value, just let us know.

Death and Immortality on the Farm

Farming isn’t for everyone. When we got started, our naïve can-do attitude thought of Nature as being far more idyllic than it was, and we imagined that coworkers would be far more collaborative than it turns out they really were. Death is a daily fact on the farm. It’s not for everyone to stare death in the face. You can’t push it out of your mind, because it is the basis of your livelihood. Even a human family, while circumscribed by daily dangers, tends to strive to forget the reality of death. You can’t do that if you farm, and you can barely do that if you tend a garden.

Death is what facilitates new life. It is not a mistake. As the Quran says, “Everything is perishing except for His face,” or as the Buddha says, “Everything is fire.” The world of perpetual change (samsara) is the basis of our suffering, not because change or death is the problem but rather because our attachment to transient things is the problem. The phenomenal world is characterized by dualities of good and bad, life and death, black and white, us versus them, and none of these persist more than a moment. The idea of “dark” persists — the idea of “death” persists — but so too does the idea of life. The word maya is a cognate with the word magic. The three Magi who visited the Christ are relatives of this term in more ways than one. Maya does not mean illusion but rather the divine manifesting powers of Divinity. Maya is only a delusion when we believe it is the only and final reality, and there the delusion belongs to us, not to maya.

What is the purpose of a mortal life? What is the purpose of a universe that will end? It is so that the Absolute has a mirror to witness Itself. The world is God’s mirror, so that he can see his own face. We are, so to speak, mere neurons in the mind of God. When we attempt to live of a life of “me” separate from the Divine contextual whole, that is a misfiring neuron — or, worse, the logic of cancerous growth.

The farm should be a place that fosters the capacity for ever-more reflection of the Divine Image in human form. There is no calling more sacred than supplying the material and spiritual basis for the renewal of the Earth, because the Earth is the singular platform for the human experience, and our singular purpose is to attain immortality by becoming the Self-Consciousness of Divinity. How could we ever be forgotten if we become conscious participants of that eternal field of awareness? This is why we farm, this is why we live.

The farm as an organism has a lifespan and, eventually, it too will perish. But, like the meadow that blossoms again in spring, the farm principle will itself reincarnate once more. Everything we learn in a life carries over. No experience is lost even when the outer form is shed.

The Closed System

Entropy increases over time within a closed system. But this is where your garden is an exception. Your garden is an open system which can receive more energy every season. If this weren’t possible, every field on earth would become barren quickly. The universe as a whole may be a “closed” system in which total useful energy is always on the decline, but Earth in relation to the Sun is no such thing. The Earth is constantly supplied with far more energy than it needs. The only question is whether or not we can receive and utilize the inflowing energy.. There is no such thing as a “closed” farm system, nor can there ever be. Even the most self-sufficient farm must depend on energy from space to grow next year’s crop. The only question is whether we have the practical knowledge to harvest all of this precious sunlight and produce new organic matter on our farms.

You can try this yourself, imagining yourself to be a “closed” system, but why would you not avail yourself of the energy of others and the fruits of their experience? Some people promise the moon, but we only promise the better use of the sun. As the stars are the source of all fertility, we want to share our knowledge with you so that you too can become an oases in the age of climate chaos.

Earth Alchemy 101

Earth Alchemy is a microcosm of the Earth’s relationship to the cosmos, a terrarium where new energy can be folded into a small space, facilitating accelerated development. In alchemy, entropy decreases.

A living farm organism isn’t just a metaphor. It is that the farm is a microcosm of the Earth itself. The earth in relation to the sun receives ever-new influx of energy, which is its very life-potential. There’s nothing particularly revolutionary about this idea. But to realize that rain is distillation and condensation on a massive scale shifts one’s perspective. The process of distillation and condensation can be enclosed, alchemically, within what is known as a “closed alembic.” This can be as simple as two mason jars conjoined in such a way that one is exposed to the light of the Sun and the other is shaded. The constant reflux stimulates evolution — it’s really almost a terrarium. The sustainability of terrariums, like the Earth or the garden itself, is based on this new influx of energy every day. But how do we make plants more receptive to light? This is a tricky question, one that is not as simple as planting them in full sun. Many plants placed in the sun will wither and die if they are lacking the necessary vitality to transform the light.

This is something you can learn to do yourself, making remedies out of the worst weeds on your farm. This is what we offer gardeners, farmers, and businesses: practical tools to generate value from your own limited resources. Once enough experience accumulates in one spot, it can become, so to speak, an etheric star. We offer tools to save more money than we cost as consultants, which should be the task of anyone offering advice.

The Living Farm Organism

In the beginning, as Rudolf Steiner puts it, a child is virtually a pure “sense organ”, which is to say, all it can do is absorb from the environment: food, water, impressions from people, etc. During this stage, an infant is pretty helpless. It needs constant tending and more concentrated direct attention than it will probably ever receive again. The same is true for the farm organism. As Bill Mollison liked to advise people: spent the first year doing nothing but observing. Just witness the cycles of nature on the farm. What plants grow in different areas? What are your weed problems? What patches of soil dry out? What areas get water-logged?

Initially, all the farm can do is “take” from the farmers, from the environment, and it gobbles up time, energy, and resources like a voracious child. It takes a number of years for this infant farm organism to really begin to be able to sustain itself and at least be able to take care of itself in a basic way. Expect the farm to take for the first seven years. Such a farm isn’t even (so to speak) “potty trained.” You wouldn’t expect an infant to help you set the table, so be careful not to expect too much from your farm too soon. Trying to force the farm to “grow up” too quickly is also inadvisable, because it develops hardened and set patterns too early. If you want to change those habits and optimize the farm later, it is much harder to undo bad habits than it is to learn new good habits.

Rather than pushing your farm too quickly or leaving it to trial-and-error, it helps to enlist the wisdom of elders. The hierarchy of experience is all we as human beings have. If you want advise on parenting, it’s worth speaking to parents. If you want advice on farming, it’s worth speaking to farmers. It’s as simple as that. If we can help you avoid some of our own errors, that’s how we make a better world. The value of avoiding decades of mistakes is priceless. How do we put a price tag on something priceless? When a small piece of advice, gained by years of struggling, can save you hundreds of dollars every year for the rest of the life of the farm? How can someone charge the real value of something like? We can’t! So we charge based on what we now feel our time is worth. If we take our time away from farming or teaching, we need to be able to earn as much as we would doing these other tasks. We don’t charge you what our time is worth or charge you for how much time we save you, because that’s priceless.

Integrating Animals & Vegetables

Animals have a specific set of needs - how do you integrate them with you vegetables?

Some of you may wonder about how to integrate livestock and vegetable production. Many people farming focus primarily on vegetables or on livestock and “never the twain shall meet” if they happen to keep both. It can seem paradoxical to consider putting these two things together, but if you shift your livestock focus to primarily grass-based animals (like cows), your recurring feed bill is minimal. But what do animals bring to the soil that plants don’t bring? Animals complete an ecosystem. Even in a “vegan” setting, soils are benefited from the ongoing metabolism of earthworms and microbes, not to mention wild birds and deer. What is produced as manure is not just old plant material, it is old plant material animalized and transmuted. The value of a handful of grass is negligible, but the value of a handful of manure is incalculable.

It took us a while to figure out how to integrate our livestock with our garden. In the first place, animals walking on the ground leads to compaction, so there’s the added requirement of specialized modes of conservation tillage to glean the benefits from animals without suffering the negative effects of their grazing. Though counterintuitive, if we were to start over farming, we would begin with cattle and only keep as many hogs and chickens as the farm could feed itself (without buying feed). The goal is a self-sufficient farm “organism” which is relatively autonomous, but, most importantly economically self-sustaining. After twelve years of trial-and-error farming, we can speak from experience about what works for us and what doesn’t. Therefore, any recurring expense that can be eliminated should be reduced to a minimum. Money saved is money earned. By learning to live off this year’s sunlight, we come closer to the ideal of the farm organism, which is something our entire planet needs now.

Learning from a Mentor

Hugh J. Courtney examining “horn manure” preparation samples in 2015

Energy only flows from high concentration to low concentration. This principle is expressed by the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which says that order tends to decrease over time. A more accessible way to understand this principle is that useful energy decreases as it is spent. Over time, there isn’t enough of a differential for energy to flow. But this is only given a closed system. Yes, the universe as a whole tends towards disorder but that same tendency allows for pockets of what appears to be negative entropy, where order seems to increase. Cases like this include the Earth in relation to the Sun. The Sun is always losing energy, but because the Earth always has less energy than the Sun. Because of this, the Earth continues to receive a new influx of energy. This is the possibility of evolution and the possibility of soil development. If there weren’t new energy flowing into the garden every year, there would be no possibility of soil development.

The same is true of knowledge. A mentor can only instruct you in what he knows. And you can only learn if you admit that you do not yet know. If we pretend to know that which we do not know, we block ourselves off from development and from the possibility of acquiring true knowledge. In an era opposed to hierarchies, we’ve lost sight of the hierarchy of experience. Respect for elders doesn’t come from any innate authority, but from years of experience. A good grape year doesn’t immediately make a great wine. Good grapes only become good wine after many years of aging and developing. The student comes to the teacher to learn what is not known, not because the teacher is necessarily morally or spiritually superior but because the teacher possesses knowledge someone else does not possess.

My personal mentor was Hugh J. Courtney, founder of the Josephine Porter Institute for Applied Biodynamics. Shortly before he crossed the threshold, he told me that the next generation would have to take up the work of carrying on biodynamics. That is my work today. I do not just instruct people. I guide clients to realizing their goals and to saving them more time, energy, and money than the mentorship costs. It is the duty of everyone with spiritual knowledge to shine like a star, not hide it under a bushel. It is, of course, possible to go to the “school of hard knocks” and spend years on false-starts and blind alleys, or you can follow the footsteps of someone else who’s already tripped over a lot of the problems along the way. It’s not that the person you follow is superior, they’ve just fallen enough times to warn you about what to avoid. If you want to save yourself endless headaches, enlist the help of someone who has been foolish longer than you in your field of interest.

It's always busiest in spring

It’s always busiest preparing in spring. The workload is almost three times what it is almost any other time of the year. The winter “break” is welcome, assuming you aren’t preoccupied with small repairs, building infrastructure, and catching up on paperwork. But by the time spring approaches, who’s really had time to balance their soils properly? This is an entirely separate skillset and can seem daunting for backyard gardeners and farmers alike. But if you want to get the best yield for your time and you want to get the best flavor (as well as nutrient-density) you want to have balanced soils. Ehrenfried Pfeiffer liked to say that what we see produced in the garden today is not really the effect of what we did this year but rather the effect of what we did last year. Though it may seem early, farmers and gardeners should already been thinking of next year even as we get started in spring.

For those of us with busy lives but still with an active desire to get the best out of our gardens, we offer consultations to be a helping hand through the year. For the smallholder or the commercial grower, we offer decades of collective experience and can customize a program just for you.

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Asking "Why?"

It’s a lot to ask to know why something happens. Most of us have to be content with the results of what happens without knowing the inner workings. Whether we’re too busy or it’s just beyond our grasp, most of us deal with concrete results. Asking “why” my plant is failing or “why” winter benefits the soil are questions often above our pay grade. This is why we reach to people who have some degree of knowledge about the whys of the world. If someone knows the source of a phenomenon, it is much easier to direct that phenomenon towards our own goals. In biodynamics, we can all use the preparations, but if we do not know the conceptual framework from which they emerged, we are limited to the external results rather than their living inner logic. If you knew that you could earn $500 more in produce every month, a $100/mo. fee for consulting already pays for itself. You don’t necessarily have to comprehend the secrets of the book of nature, but if you learn from someone who can read the script of Nature, you will produce better yields sooner whether or not you fathom the unmoved mover, the why of the world.