Applied Bio-Dynamics — Issue 004 (Summer 1993)

Issue 004 (Summer 1993) combines institutional history, nutrition and food-system reflection, Hugh Courtney's concluding preparation lecture, and a detailed account from Evergreen Elm's therapeutic garden. Its strongest practical value lies in the specificity of the garden report; its claims about causes remain practitioner observations rather than controlled evidence.

Issue Overview

“Letter from the Editor” — Candace Coffin. Coffin responds to criticism of JPI's Associative Contract, especially its requirement that recipients affirm they can store preparations properly. She retains the requirement as part of JPI's preparation-making responsibility while noting that experienced growers with superior arrangements need not follow JPI's exact storage guidance. She also lists reader questions—including sequential spraying, fermented BD 508, “x 500,” succussion, and BD 501 (5x)—for future issues.

“Josephine Porter — A Biodynamic Pioneer” — Candace Coffin. Drawing partly on a 1992 Pocono Record article, Coffin traces Porter's path from dairy farming and Depression-era milk deliveries to biodynamics. Porter encountered biodynamic agriculture in 1946, became secretary-treasurer of the Biodynamic Farming & Gardening Association in 1956, made preparations for roughly thirty years, and answered thousands of practitioner letters. Hugh Courtney's seven-year apprenticeship with Porter explains the practical lineage connecting her work to the Josephine Porter Institute.

“About Nutrition” — Betsy Cashen, R.D. Cashen frames nutrition as a relationship among food, farming, resource use, and sensory attention rather than as a prescribed diet. She advocates seasonal and local food, less packaging and processing, and choices that support regional agriculture. The article's historical figures—an average 1,200-mile journey for produce, 4 percent of U.S. energy devoted to food packaging, and roughly 1,000 new food products introduced monthly—belong to its 1993 context. A group exercise with sprouted beans, wheat, and sunflower seeds illustrates how close observation can renew appreciation for familiar food.

“Biodynamic Preparations” — Hugh Courtney. The third and final installment of Courtney's 1991 ACRES USA lecture presents his personal spiritual-scientific interpretation of the preparations. He describes warmth, light, chemical or tone, and life “ethers” acting through fire, air, water, and earth, and treats preparations as carriers of formative forces rather than as substances. These are the author's anthroposophical claims and framework, not findings established by the issue's garden report. Courtney also urges practitioners to use the preparations, learn to make them, and take storage and handling seriously. The original lecture was delivered at ACRES USA.

“Selke, Courtney, and Evergreen Elm” — L. A. Rotheraine. Rotheraine describes the Evergreen Elm therapeutic garden in Bradford, Pennsylvania. After 11 ribbons from 14 entries in 1991, the garden entered 21 vegetables in the 1992 McKean County Fair and received 18 ribbons, including 11 first-place awards and both market-basket prizes. The report gives unusually concrete methods: deep raised beds built over clay; branches, leaves, composted horse manure, and topsoil; intercropping; manure mixtures; a biodynamic compost-starter tonic and root dip; planting by the Stella Natura calendar; Thun Barrel Compost; mulch; and repeated BD 501 sprays.

The 1992 season was cold and rainy, and fruiting lagged. Rotheraine reports spraying BD 501 two to four times per plant in the early morning on fruit days, with three cucumber plants lost—probably, in the author's view, because spraying occurred too late in the morning. The fair results are public observations, but the article supplies no untreated control and changes many practices together, so it cannot isolate BD 501 or any other input as the cause.

“BD #501” — Hugh Courtney. Courtney challenges the habit of omitting horn silica wherever sunlight is already strong. He proposes that geography and the balance of limestone, clay-humus, and silica should shape interpretation, and cites work then underway at the Michael Fields Agricultural Institute as having found no inherent crop harm from appropriate BD 501 use. The piece is an argument for context-specific observation and testing, not a controlled trial reported in this issue.

“St. John's Day Festival” — Candace Coffin. Coffin associates the summer solstice and St. John's Day with the Earth's maximum “outbreathing,” ripening, alertness, and human will. She presents the festival as a seasonal prompt for conscious action and harmony on farms and gardens.

Why This Issue Matters

Issue 004 preserves the practical lineage from Josephine Porter to JPI and records an unusually detailed community-garden case. Its usefulness increases when the reader keeps two levels separate: repeatable procedures and reported outcomes on one hand, and spiritual interpretation or causal inference on the other. The newsletter itself identifies its preparation lecture as Courtney's personal views; the garden account is valuable field documentation but not a controlled experiment.

Articles

• Letter from the Editor — Candace Coffin
• Josephine Porter — A Biodynamic Pioneer — Candace Coffin
• About Nutrition — Betsy Cashen, R.D.
• Biodynamic Preparations — Hugh Courtney
• Selke, Courtney, and Evergreen Elm — L. A. Rotheraine
• BD #501 — Hugh Courtney
• St. John's Day Festival — Candace Coffin

Key Topics Covered

• Josephine Porter's preparation work and Courtney's apprenticeship
• Preparation storage and JPI's Associative Contract
• Seasonal, local food and the environmental costs of packaging
• Sensory observation as a way to reconnect with food
• Courtney's etheric-force interpretation of the preparations
• Raised-bed construction, intercropping, tonic water, mulch, and compost
• Early-morning BD 501 use during a cold, rainy season
• County-fair outcomes and the limits of causal inference
• St. John's Day and the seasonal “outbreathing” motif

Download Issue 004 PDF

Citation

Applied Bio-Dynamics, Issue 004, Summer 1993. Josephine Porter Institute for Applied Bio-Dynamics, Woolwine, Virginia.