From the Newsletter archive
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Reflections on Working With the Preparations
In this Spring 1995 archive essay, Nick Franceschelli reflects on preparation making as a living process that unfolds over time. Drawing on his years at JPI, he explores patience, careful practice, sound farming, personal development, and the communities formed through service to the land.
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Making the Stinging Nettles Preparation
Stinging nettle offers an accessible doorway into making biodynamic preparations. Stewart Lundy shares detailed harvest and burial experience, including the use of unglazed clay vessels, protection from roots and earthworms, and the year-long transformation that brings this generous plant into service of living compost.
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Holy Week
Holy Week becomes a lens for contemplating valerian, aromatic oils, and the upward striving of plant life. Stewart Kahn Lundy connects the image of anointing with compost and soil care, exploring gypsum and valerian as expressions of the meeting between earthly substance and cosmic activity....
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Biodynamic Pest Management — Part 2: Weed and Pest Peppers
The second part of Stewart Lundy’s pest-management exploration follows the transformations of seed, decomposition, and carefully tended fire. Drawing on Steiner, Chadwick, and practical garden experience, it places weed peppers within sound cultivation, ethical purpose, and the wider circulation of fertility.
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An Invitation to Incarnate
Spring’s awakening becomes an invitation to bring winter intentions into living action. Russell Blackstone reflects on seeds, elemental activity, the seasonal polarity of Virgo and Pisces, and the farmer’s opportunity to cultivate love, beauty, and responsibility as the growing year begins.
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Biodynamic Pest Management — Part 1: Weed and Pest Peppers
The first part of Stewart Lundy’s biodynamic pest-management exploration introduces weed and pest peppers through careful preparation, dilution, and sustained observation. Historical references and practical distinctions show how this work belongs within a long-term relationship with the living farm and its particular conditions.
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The Eye of the Cosmos: Viewing Soil Life through Chromatography
This March 2025 announcement introduces JPI’s hands-on soil chromatography workshop in Floyd, Virginia. Stewart Lundy describes how making and observing chromas can deepen a grower’s relationship with soil, alongside plans for practical instruction, shared samples, and an accessible recorded presentation.
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Index of Articles
Explore Applied Biodynamics through a growing index of practical guidance, spiritual reflections, and historical writing. This March 2025 resource points readers toward preparation work, compost, soil chromatography, the Cosmic Journal, The Vault, and Spanish-language articles, with keywords to help find a path through the collection....
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A Letter from the JPI President
In this March 2025 letter, JPI President Teresa O’Shaughnessy shares a winter farm experience shaped by reverence, friendship, and renewed purpose. Personal reflections on working with the preparations accompany an invitation to support community learning and the year’s hands-on workshops.
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Contemplative Chromatography
Soil chromatography becomes a practice of disciplined perception in this meditation on living images. Stewart Kahn Lundy connects careful laboratory work with patient observation, inner preparation, and Goethe’s exact sensorial imagination, inviting the observer to grow alongside the pictures being formed.
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Cosmic Journal #40
Fresh from the Fellowship of Preparation Makers gathering, Russell Blackstone carries community inspiration into early spring planning. This February 2025 Cosmic Journal follows sowing, soil care, pruning, and preparation work through a spirit of openness, intention, and shared responsibility for living land.
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Standing on Common Ground
A journey through Colorado and Utah becomes an invitation to let biodynamics take root in each place. Stewart Lundy shares conference work with Lloyd Nelson and Russell Blackstone, soil chromatography, desert landscapes, and reflections on learning to belong to the land we tend.
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