Stir it Up *
Today I took part in my first biodynamic stirring.
Biodynamic farming has a number of practices which are frankly ritualistic, and stirring is one of them. I had read about biodynamics and how it works, but in the few times I had worked down the farm I had not seen any of the more cultish ideas in operation.
Two large wooden barrels were filled with water and the principles of the stirring process were explained. Essentially, the water was to be stirred continuously for an hour so that there should be a constant vortex. Meanwhile, clay and cow manure, and perhaps another substance, were to be added. Thus the molecules were to mix.
The first thing was to put all mobile phones away. We all put them on a table about a metre away from the first barrel. This was to prevent them from interfering in any way with the stirring process. One student had, I think, two mobile phones but protested that one was turned off. “I don’t think it makes any difference,” said Boothie, the farmer.
Once the stirring was complete, the water was to be used to ‘potentise’ (was that the word?) the freshly harrowed field by throwing trowel fulls either side.
Used for all this were the trowels made in bronze casting with the wood handles made in wood work. According to the bronze casting tutor, the copper is ideally suited to the loamy soil at the farm because, in homeopathic amounts, it makes the soil more water retentive. I am, of course, a great deal more supportive of the idea that it is positive for the students to see the interdepence of the various workshops than I am of the idea that copper, distributed through the farm in the amounts that are guaranteed by the constant abrasive action of the sandy soil, is likely to have any great effect on the qualities of the soil.
Similarly, I have never believed that the homeopathic stirrings and applications of Arnica (?) and other homeopathic remedies could have any beneficial effect on the soil.
When reading about these practices, I am sure I read that they were a great deal more strictly, though arbitrarily delineated, with stirrings one way for a certain amount of time, stirrings the other for another set period, and then being thrown to one side a certain number of times and then the other. Either way, Boothie seemed in some ways to express scepticism himself. When describing the effect that the clay could have to the field, he said that there is very little clay in the barrel. He also made a comment about how it is witchcraft, (or something like that).
I had wondered how far Boothie and the others at the farm subscribe to the principles and philosophy of biodynamics and had taken note of comments made in my presence, conversations about anthroposophical medicine and the like, such as “what is an anthroposophical doctor doing concerning himself with heartmath” and so forth. Boothie’s comments one time when the Supreme Leader was speaking (giving a speech which directly led to my becoming genuinely depressed) [reverie about taking over the organisation, giving a speech in which I praised certain anthroposohically-minded individuals for coping with the abrupt transition to the new materially-minded regime], that, materially, one form of sugar differs little from another. All of them certainly seemed to believe in homeopathy in the same way that most people in the organisation, which is formed of so many different groups, did, though I did once note there was one exception, a guy who took exception to the way that homeopathic remedies spoke of energy fields rather than material changes Often I had struggled to imagine them basing their practices on the wilder extremes of biodynamics, such as the burial of cow horns full of bovine excrement for six months. Boothie’s take on it seemed to raise the possibility that here was an analogue of reform judaism. Essentially, my take on this is that, in much the same way that I find anglicanism amusing because it is at times so apologetic about the doctrine that Jesus rose bodily to heaven, say, or even that he was resurrected, I find it bizarre that such rituals could be, as it were, diluted with something approaching common sense. Why be embarrassed about transubstantiation but not the resurrection? If something is to be based on belief and not evidence, based on the writings of a long-dead guru held to have greater insight than the bulk of men, how then can you temper it, and why should you do so? This is something I cannot understand.
It is of course futile to search for logic where there is none, and the attempt to justify the practice in molecular terms accounts for none of the peculiarities of the practice which differentiate it from other farming methods, such as the apparent necessity to keep the water moving for that hour, nor the necessity of keeping away mobile phones at a frankly arbitrary and inadequate distance (mobile phone signals of course cover far greater distances and are in any case substantially undifferentiated from the base station signals which it would probably be impossible to isolate oneself from in mainland Britain).
The students, incidentally, so far as I could see, took to it well and continued to stir the water for that hour.
I continue to respect Boothie and the other workers at the farm. I continue, of course, to believe that organic produce, and by extension, biodynamic produce, is superior in every way from food from what has, scandalously, become known as conventional farming, and indeed defended organic produce on scientific grounds once again to our rather anti student Peter Govan today, but today’s experience has only once again confirmed that I am a materialist through and through. I must get down to some reading on science!
