Applied Biodynamics — Issue 013 (Fall 1995)

Applied Biodynamics Issue 013 (Fall 1995) brings together Nicholas Franceschelli's interview with Missouri farmer Richard Okorn, Chris Stearn's garden-recording essay, Dennis Klocek's clay-bed account, and a historical fats-and-oils essay. The available scan contains printed pp. 2–6 and 9–13; printed pp. 7–8 are missing.

Richard Okorn's biodynamic farm

Okorn had farmed near Napoleon, Missouri since 1960. The interview describes roughly ninety acres of erosive loess soil, with about fifty acres used for agriculture, alongside crops, dairy, milling, processing, preparation-making, and delivery (printed p. 3). He describes learning through Rosina Arndt, earlier biodynamic publications, and Steiner's agriculture lectures before making his own preparations.

Okorn reports applying BD 500 horn manure to cultivated soil before planting, sometimes from a knapsack while a tractor-mounted disk follows. He applies BD 501 horn silica to plants and places the BD 502–507 compost preparations in compost, repeating them when a pile sits a long time (printed p. 4).

His farm account includes open-pollinated corn, saved soybean and wheat seed, red clover, hay, compost spreading, and rotations that fit the field. He says a mature sweet-clover stand left a visible soil-building effect for years, with greater growth and yields where it had grown. He also recounts a baker's favorable response to bread from his wheat and recalls a protein test of 17.1 percent (printed pp. 5–6). These are Okorn's reported working-farm observations.

Observation and garden records

In “What Row Was It In????,” Chris Stearn recommends a garden journal to preserve variety names, planting dates, seed sources, disease and insect response, preparation applications, rainfall, weather, and the grower's impressions. He explains how consistent records help gardeners notice patterns, make variety choices, and learn from one season to the next (printed pp. 9–10).

Stearn also summarizes a rabbit-feed comparison reported in another journal article: in his account, second-generation pregnancy rates were 86 percent with biodynamically grown feed and 59 percent with conventionally grown feed, although the feed grains' chemical analyses were similar (printed p. 10). This issue presents Stearn's summary of that comparison.

Clay-bed cultivation and cabbage

In “The Heart of Clay,” Dennis Klocek describes a combined, labor-intensive treatment for a heavy clay garden bed: opening the soil, working in gypsum and peat, preparing finely triturated eggshell and basalt, using a fermented kelp-and-alfalfa drench with Barrel Compost, adding compost, and maintaining hay mulch (printed pp. 11–13). JPI now sells Barrel Compost under the name Barrel Compound.

Klocek reports abundant springtails and night crawlers in beds treated this way, followed by large, firm, sweet cabbage heads where sourdock and nutgrass had dominated the preceding year (printed p. 13). His account preserves both the combined method and the observed garden result.

Historical fats-and-oils essay

The surviving continuation of Betsy Cashen's essay on printed p. 9 discusses whole-food fat sources and unrefined oils. Its preceding printed p. 8 is absent from the available scan.

Download the original Issue 013 PDF.