Applied Biodynamics — Issue 045 (Summer 2004)

Applied Biodynamics Issue 045 (Summer 2004) joins Manfred Klett's expansive spiritual-scientific account of the compost preparations as sense organs with Hugh J. Courtney's repeated Barrel Compound and BD 500 soil demonstration. Together they present the preparations as living forces expressed through attentive making, compost transformation, smoother soil, and distinct root forms.

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Preparation making develops thinking, feeling, and willing

Manfred Klett begins with the human capacities of thinking, feeling, and willing. He presents preparation making as a freely chosen activity that brings study, imagination, observation, skilled work, and devotion into one process. In this work, the maker becomes an active participant in the living interior of nature.

Klett says the preparations unite the most advanced spiritual knowledge with highly practical agricultural work. Making and using them can strengthen the ability to perceive living relationships while giving spiritual insight a concrete form in plants, sheaths, burial sites, compost, soil, and crops.

Dandelion from living flower to finished preparation

Klett follows BD 506 dandelion from study of the Agriculture Course to observation of the plant's rosette, blossom, seed, silica relationship, and potassium process. Flowers are collected and dried, wrapped in bovine mesentery, buried after Michaelmas, and recovered in spring.

He describes the finished substance as humus-like and newly formed: a seed or germ that carries the plant's cosmic form as a potential within mineral substance. Placed into compost, the preparation participates in transforming decaying material toward living humus and, in Klett's account, contributes balancing forces to the manure heap and the farm individuality.

The six compost preparations and their sheaths

• BD 502 yarrow is enclosed in a stag bladder, which Klett describes as a three-layered sensory organ that receives, concentrates, and preserves influences around the yarrow blossoms.
• BD 503 chamomile is enclosed in bovine intestine, whose folded inner surface and lively metabolic role form the complementary sheath for the flowers.
• BD 504 stinging nettle needs no separate animal organ in this account; its silica-rich outer form provides its own receptive and preserving sheath.
• BD 505 oak bark is placed in an animal skull. Klett connects the bone-lined cavity with perception and concentration, while watery burial brings the calcium-rich bark into a setting of active decomposition.
• BD 506 dandelion is wrapped in bovine mesentery, which he describes as a preserving, transmitting, and concentrating organ around the abdominal system.
• BD 507 valerian forms its own sheath when the diluted juice is sprayed over compost: a warmth mantle that protects the heap and preserves the activity of the other preparations.

Why Klett calls the preparations sense organs

Klett describes the sheaths as receiving, concentrating, and preserving influences: outwardly receptive and inwardly formative. He then extends the sense-organ image to the preparations themselves. In his account, they magnify the plant's sensing of sunlight and the cosmic circumference, draw formative forces and substances into the earthly realm, and become germinating carriers of new life in compost and soil.

The six preparations work together as a differentiated whole. Their plant forms, sheaths, seasonal burial, transformation, and application help the compost heap become an individualized realm of well-organized decomposition and humus formation.

Barrel Compound and BD 500 soil demonstration

Courtney records a method learned from Maria Thun. The issue uses the name Barrel Compost; JPI uses the U.S. product name Barrel Compound for the same preparation. One unit was stirred in three gallons of water and sprayed over three garden beds approximately 100 feet long. The beds were cultivated three to four inches deep. Three Barrel Compound applications with cultivation were followed by three BD 500 applications, also followed by cultivation.

Courtney reports an enormous difference in the ease and smoothness of the final cultivation compared with the initial pass. When the full sequence was used on another garden bed a few days later, the same difference was again noticeable.

Side-by-side beds and an equal-water comparison

At a 1990 JPI gardening workshop, two beds were placed side by side and participants each raked a section after every application. One bed received the three Barrel Compound and three BD 500 treatments. By the final cultivation, every participant reported a significant difference: the untreated soil was compared with cold butter, while the treated bed moved with the smoothness of softened butter.

Participants then requested a plain-water comparison. The next day, a second set of beds received either the six preparation applications or six equal water applications, with each section raked after every round. Courtney reports that every participant again detected a significant difference and that the rake moved with much greater ease through the preparation-treated bed.

Root forms in treated and untreated soil

Courtney also describes lambs-quarters plants of equal age and size from the two soils. The plant from biodynamically treated soil showed a more vertical, taprooted, carrot-like form. The plant from untreated soil showed more lateral, horizontally branching roots.

He presents the vertical form as an expression of cosmic forces and the lateral form as an expression of earthly forces. The issue includes paired illustrations so growers can observe how the preparation work may become visible in the plant as well as perceptible in the soil.

Key topics covered

• Thinking, feeling, willing, and the creative human role in preparation making.
• Dandelion preparation from plant observation through mesentery, winter burial, spring recovery, and compost use.
• The distinct sheaths of BD 502–507 and their complementary spiritual-scientific functions.
• Preparations as sense organs that receive, concentrate, preserve, and mediate living forces.
• Three Barrel Compound and three BD 500 spray-and-cultivation cycles.
• A repeated side-by-side demonstration and an equal-water comparison in which every participant reported smoother treated soil.
• Vertical taprooted growth in treated soil and lateral branching in untreated soil.

Explore related resources

• Complete Set of Biodynamic Compost Preparations and instructions
• Barrel Compound and instructions
• BD 500 Horn Manure and instructions
• Agriculture: Spiritual-Scientific Foundations for Agricultural Renewal

Articles

• The Biodynamic Preparations as Sense Organs (M. Klett)
• Preparations “Not As Substance But As Forces” (H. J. Courtney)

Citation

Source: Applied Biodynamics, Issue No. 45, Josephine Porter Institute for Applied Bio-Dynamics, Summer 2004.