Update: Experimental 500 Horn Manure

Originally published 2023-11-03. By Stewart Kahn Lundy, Ben Nommay.

Experiments and Comparative Chromatography

Here at JPI, we made chromas of fresh cow manure, buried (but untransformed) 500 horn manure, and transformed horn manure.

We compared the images generated from the chromas, which you can see below, as well as a parallel experiment germinating radishes in closed jars. 

This raw cow manure was carefully dried; 1.5g of dried manure was measured out and diluted in 50mL of 1% sodium hydroxide (NaOH). The full process can be found in Ehrenfried Pfeiffer’s work Chromatography. 

You’ll notice a kinship between these two images. They’re clearly “related” but something has changed. If you let your eye settle on one image for several seconds, and then look at the other, you may have the experience of light raying out as you move to the second. If you linger on the image on the right and then move to the image on the left, you might experience a sort of contraction.

In the following image, we see untransformed 500 horn manure. This sat underground all winter and was unearthed, but did not properly transform.

As Steiner suggests, it can be left in the ground until needed: “On the whole, it is best to leave them in the ground until one uses them. If they are to be used in early Autumn, they should be left in the ground till the moment when they are wanted. The manure will not suffer through this.”1 There are different strategies for attempting to finish the contents of horns that do not finish transforming during winter: one is to put them back in the ground, another is to move them into a root cellar. In the case below, this horn was left in the ground but remained saturated with water, even through August. 

If you compare the image on the left to the image on the right, it’s easy to see a dark “bleed” outside the edge of the circle. None of the radiant quality of the right image appears in the left. Instead, it almost feels frozen – almost woody. Much less kinship can be seen in these two images.

If we compare the untransformed horn manure (left) to the raw cow manure (right) above, the raw cow manure appears favorably. On the left, the process has become top monochrome, remaining anaerobic in the ground and becoming dominated by a narrow range of conditions.

Steiner speaks to this when he says, “Consider what happens when a very wet spring follows upon a very wet winter. The lunar force enters too strongly into the earth, which thus becomes too much alive.”2 When this happens, there is a strong tendency for the soil to produce gaseous compounds. A plant feeding off this tendency will also have a tendency to “leak” smells. This is not the impulse we want to impart to our plants.

Instead, we wish a plant to contain its odor. In Paramagnetism: Rediscovering Nature's Secret Force of Growth, Philip Callahan writes about how sick plants radiate signals that attract more pests. An unhealthy organism “leaks” its inner atmosphere like a cloud, which attracts pests. Steiner says, “All the forces working inside the skin, all that stimulates and maintains life, must — pardon the phrase — inwardly smell, must have an inward stench.”3 As such, we want an image of self-containment and not bleeding edges. The untransformed manure (left) is not able to contain its contents within its own limit. This is the opposite of what we want to spray over our fields, so this is obviously discarded.

Of these images, it is perhaps worth dwelling on the most favorable of them. Below is an image of a fairly well-transformed horn. While not absolutely ideal, we can see a gesture striving towards an ideal chroma.

Notably, these images will vary based on numerous factors: the quality of the original manure, the burial conditions, the climate, and the altitude. As water boils at different temperatures at various elevations, so too does the capillary action in chromatography vary. Horns buried in clay or sandy soil tend to show a distinctive influence of the area’s terroir.  

Healthy horn manure, made in the horn (which naturally covers the nasal cavity of the cow) is to help teach the soil – and plants — to smell inwardly, to contain their own inner atmosphere rather than leaking it. Every plant has its aroma (especially in flowers) but a trained nose easily recognizes the smell of healthy or unhealthy organisms with enough experience. 

Radish Germination Experiment 

Using the manures above, we ran a trial of sprouting radishes in closed jars to see which would germinate best. The results can be seen below:

Quickly, finished compost emerged first, noticeably taking the lead by day three. Followed by experimental 500 horn manure that spent its entire transformation in our root cellar (“Cave 500”).

By day four, the Finished Compost sample was nearly reaching the top of the container. Cave 500 was following, with Ground 500 in third place. The Raw Manure sample showed no germination. 

By day six, the Raw Manure sample still showed no germination. But here Finished Compost was pushing entirely out of the container (lid removed to show). The Ground 500 had approximately caught up in height to the Cave 500, though the darkness of the Cave 500 leaves was noticeable. 

By day seven, the Ground 500 showed spindly growth compared to the Cave 500. Cave 500 showed more coherent vertical growth. The finished Compost showed more germination. Raw Manure still showed no germination.

Conclusions

The marked inhibition of germination with raw manure confirms the biodynamic recommendation to use “odorless” manure-based compost. The vigorous upward growth from finished compost versus the denser and darker growth from the 500 horn manure and the experimental horn manure bear further reflection. It may be that the slower initial growth from the horn manure may reflect a mycorrhizal connection which is known to reduce initial growth rate but later (due to extra phosphorus delivered by the fungal relationship) exceding plants without a mycorrhizal connection which at first appear to be growing fastest. But, due to the limitations of this small experiment, more will need to be investigated to say more.