Applied Biodynamics — Issue 065 (Summer 2009)

Applied Biodynamics Issue 065 (Summer 2009) presents Sophia's Garden's positive three-year gopher-ashing account, the farm individuality and zodiacal garden, hands-on preparation making at JPI, Enzo Nastati's Agriculture Course commentary, and JPI's planned leadership succession.

Download the complete original Issue 065 PDF

Seasonal consciousness from St. John's to Michaelmas

Christy Korrow opens with the movement from midsummer's expansive light toward autumn's inward gesture. Festival days serve as anchor points within a larger living cycle. Following the weeks between St. John's Day and Michaelmas helps the practitioner experience the earth's breathing, changing light and warmth, and the movement from illumination toward active knowledge.

This seasonal attention prepares the central work of the issue: meeting an imbalance through observation, cosmic rhythm, clear intention, and repeated action.

Sophia's Garden and the farm individuality

Monique Camp farmed the six-acre Sophia's Garden organically for thirteen years, began biodynamic work in 2004, and achieved Demeter certification in 2006. The valley property has predominantly sandy soil and strong water limitations. Camp cultivated a conscious relationship with the physical, etheric, and cosmic dimensions of the place and developed a zodiacal garden for medicinal herbs, cultivation, teaching, and sacred movement.

Camp reports two formative experiences of nature responding. During drought, a drilling company found no water and was preparing to leave. After prayer, she directed the drillers to two places; water was found in both. When she later promised to create a sacred rose garden if water came, the thirty-foot tree shading the chosen site split during the night and was removed, allowing the roses to be planted.

These experiences strengthened Camp's understanding of Sophia's Garden as a farm individuality in which land, water, plants, animals, elemental life, cosmic rhythm, and human intention meet.

The Sophia's Garden gopher-ashing sequence

Encroaching development had reduced natural predator pressure, while the sandy soil supported a very large gopher population. Camp used Rudolf Steiner's animal-ashing indication and Hugh Courtney's guidance to prepare a gopher pepper:

• Gopher skins were stretched and dried in a protected place.
• Four skins were burned while Venus was midway through the constellation Scorpio in the historical source account.
• The resulting ash and a portion of wood ash were ground for one full hour with a mortar and pestle.
• Six tablespoons of the dynamized ash were potentized in 1:9 ash-to-water stages up to D8.
• The D8 liquid was sprayed for three consecutive days.
• A second three-day application followed several months later with the Moon in Taurus.
• A three-day application was repeated in each of the next two years.

Camp understood the work as a message to the reproductive forces of the gophers, distinguishing the gardens from areas where their presence could remain. Prayer, clear intention, personal participation, patience, timing, grinding, potentization, and repeated application belonged to one complete method.

This is the exact historical sequence reported in Issue 065. Current calendar dates change from year to year; JPI's native guidance directs present-day users to the current biodynamic planting calendar for the target animal.

A significant change over three years

Three years after the first ashing, Camp reported a significant decrease in gopher activity. She heard owls, saw bobcat and fox return, and observed a California ferret enter a gopher hole. In her account, the declining activity and renewed predator presence expressed a wider ecological balance returning around the gardens.

Camp emphasizes that the work asks for commitment through time. The practitioner stays close to the land, repeats the sequence through the seasons, watches the whole ecological community, and continually asks, “How can I serve?”

She describes the preparations as bringing order into the farm and allowing harmony to radiate outward. The gopher-ashing account therefore belongs within a larger pattern of biodynamic stewardship, farm individuality, and active relationship with nature.

Hands-on preparation making at JPI

Maria Mihok's reflection on JPI's Fall 2008 workshop shows how making the preparations transforms understanding. Participants prepared dandelion, chamomile, oak bark, horn manure, and Biodynamic Compound Preparation; filled animal sheaths; turned manure for hours; and unearthed preparations made the previous year.

The work made transformation perceptible through touch, scent, texture, color, warmth, and the changing materials. Mihok noticed the marked difference in manure before and after turning and experienced how animal, plant, tree, mineral, and human activity unite in a healing substance.

The workshop gave participants practical confidence and a lasting relationship with every preparation they would later buy, stir, apply, or discuss. Mihok describes the work as a meeting of knowledge, gratitude, sacrifice, skill, and service to the earth.

Enzo Nastati's Agriculture Course commentary

Hugh J. Courtney presents Enzo Nastati's commentary as a substantial study companion for serious biodynamic practitioners. Nastati relates the Agriculture Course lectures to successive cultural epochs and offers close attention to planetary motion, including whether a planet is above or below the Sun's path and whether its motion appears direct or retrograde.

The work explores rhythms and movements of planetary bodies, the recovery of living agricultural wisdom, homeodynamic preparations, and a horn-clay practice associated with the twelve days of Christmas. These themes extend the issue's attention to cosmic rhythm, qualitative observation, and the farmer's conscious participation.

JPI continuity

The issue records Hugh J. Courtney's planned transition from executive leadership after twenty-five years of building JPI as a major preparation supplier and educational center. The Board's staged process of applications, interviews, selection, and extended orientation demonstrates responsible succession in service of preparation quality, organizational stability, and the future of the work.

Key topics covered

• Seasonal attention from St. John's Day to Michaelmas.
• Sophia's Garden, its zodiacal design, farm individuality, and positive nature-response accounts.
• The exact historical gopher-skin ashing, one-hour grinding, D8 potentization, and three-year application rhythm.
• The reported significant decrease in gopher activity and return of owls, bobcat, fox, and a California ferret.
• Prayer, intention, personal participation, patience, and service within the ashing method.
• Hands-on preparation making at JPI.
• Enzo Nastati's spiritual-scientific Agriculture Course commentary.
• JPI leadership transition and organizational continuity.

Explore related resources

• Biodynamic Pest Pepper Video Recording
• Rudolf Steiner's Agriculture Course
• BD 500 Horn Manure, guide, and current instructions
• BD 501 Horn Silica, guide, and current instructions
• BD 502–507 Compost Preparation Set and current instructions
• Biodynamic Compound Preparation, guide, and current instructions
• BD 508 Horsetail, guide, and current instructions

Articles in this issue

• Biodynamic Ashing at Sophia's Garden: Weaving Together Biodynamics, Healing Medicinal Herbs, the Zodiac and Cosmic Dance — Christy Korrow
• Commentary on Dr. Rudolf Steiner's Agriculture Course by Enzo Nastati — reviewed by Hugh J. Courtney
• Reflections on the Fall 2008 JPI Preparation Making Workshop — Maria Mihok
• JPI To Accept Applications for Executive Director — Gena Nonini

Citation

Source: Applied Biodynamics, Issue No. 65, Josephine Porter Institute for Applied Bio-Dynamics, Summer 2009.