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.

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.