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.

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.

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.