Dear friends,

I created this blog so that I could invite a few friends to read it and to give me feed back. Please understand that I am still editing it. Especialy the last two chapters still need some work to become more intelligable.

Thanks,

Walter

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

UNDERSTANDING THE HORN MANURE AND HORN SILICA PREPARATIONS

As a farmer, horn manure and horn silica preparation are the two preps that I have worked with most. They are relatively easy to make and most years I could cover the whole farm two or three times with my spray rig.As I described earlier, the horn manure preparation is made by stuffing the manure of a cow into a cow horn and burying it for the winter. When you dig the horns up in the spring, the manure is completely transformed and loses its manure smell and consistency. Four hundred horns took up a lot of space, so I would use the bucket of my skid loader to dig a hole about two feet deep, eight feet long and six feet wide. Into this I would layer my horns, with earth between each layer. When the horns are dug up in the spring, the prep can be stored in clay pots that are then placed in a special box that is lined with peat moss. The peat moss stops the energy or forces from being dissipated into the surroundings. When you use the prep, you need about a handful per acre, or less if you are spraying a big area, and you stir this into the water for one hour. The stirring is important because it transfers the imprint or information of the prep into the water. If you are stirring by hand, say in a five-gallon bucket, you need a nice straight stick about eighteen inches long which you use to create a vortex in the water by stirring vigorously. When you have a hole in the water that nearly touches the bottom of the bucket, you stir the other way. This at first creates chaos but you keep stirring until you have achieved a new vortex. So you stir back and forth for an hour and then you can spray the desired area with a Wisk broom or backpack sprayer. As I had over five hundred acres to cover, I used a stirring machine, with an electric motor, that stirred about ninety gallons at a time. This I would then transfer to my spray machine which was attached to my tractor and I could cover about thirty acres. Usually we could do two loads an afternoon or about sixty acres. As much of my land was either in hay or pasture, I would try to spray these fields in the Spring and Fall and when possible after making hay. The cultivated ground, where we were going to plant annual crops such as corn and cereals, would be sprayed before planting.Of this prep Steiner says “By burying the horn with its filling of manure, we preserve in the horn the forces it was accustomed to exert within the cow itself, namely the property of raying back whatever is life giving and astral.…Thus, in the content of the horn we get a highly-concentrated, life-giving manuring force.”The cow is a ruminant with four stomachs that can hold over fifty gallons of digestive juices. The plants that she consumes are permeated with life forces to which she adds her own sentient forces so that the manure is a very lively substance. When you look at a cow, you can see that she is a very inward, dreamy being. In her digestion, she is reflecting the whole cosmos and this energy is retained by the manure. All living beings have energies that are steaming in and out, which keeps them connected to their environment. The horns and hoofs, which are made from layers of skin, ray all the cow’s forces of digestion back into her stomach. Thus when you watch a cow eating or chewing her cud, you experience this total absorption that she has in her digestion. Even after you take the horns from a dead cow, they retain their function of raying the cosmic forces into the manure that is stuffed into the horns. When you use this preparation on the bare ground before planting, or on hay fields and pasture, you stimulate the forces of germination, root development and growth.
Horn Silica PreparationThis prep also uses the cow horn but, instead of the manure, we use Silica which comes from quartz crystal. The crystals are finely ground; water is added to make a paste and then the paste stuffed into a horn. The horns are then placed into the ground for the summer and dug up in late fall. The Silica prep is sprayed early in the morning, preferably soon after sunrise. This made it difficult to use this prep as we started milking at five. Usually it meant giving up my mornings to sleep in but it wasn’t all bad. I could set everything up the evening before, such as filling the stirring tank with water. Then at five in the morning, I’d flip the switch to the stirring machine while I enjoyed a cup of tea and the beginnings of sunrise for an hour. Spraying is a relatively simple operation, so driving through the fields and watching the world wake up was enjoyable work. The Silica spray compliments the horn manure preparation. In the human being, silica is found in the skin and other sense organs such as the eyes. It is a carrier of the light and formative forces; it helps to make the plant sensitive to the forces that bring quality and form. Whereas the horn manure helps with reproduction and growth, the horn Silica prep enables the plant to attract the forces that make for good nutrition and high quality.How Does a Plant Feel in a Biodynamic Soil?A fertile soil that has been treated with the biodynamic preparations is imbued with life, is sentient and has a desire to become plant-like. A plant is so close to the earth that there is not a great distinction between the root and the surrounding soil. When the seed, which anchors the spiritual archetype within it, is placed into the soil and encounters moisture and this desire to become plant, the plant can than grow in a healthy way. The forces of growth and reproduction are available to it as well as the forces that produce good nutrition and excellent qualities of smell, color and good taste. When the Biodynamic compost is spread on the soil, the soil is enlivened and the plant is led to incarnate through the planets, starting from the periphery, Saturn, and working to Moon, in an orderly and balanced fashion. In more detail;the Valerian prep is connected to Saturn. This planet is the gateway to the constellations of the zodiac that bear the blueprint of the archetype of the species. Through this prep, the soil is waiting to become the plant type carried within the seed. As the plant starts to die, it also allows for a healthy development of the new seed for the next generation.The Dandelion prep is connected to Jupiter. Jupiter fills out the archetype or idea of the plant. It allows the plant to become sensitive and attracts to itself, out of the surrounding environment, what it needs for its growth. This prep strengthens the nutritive quality as can be experienced in good taste and aroma.The Stinging Nettle prep is connected to Mars. This prep further encourages growth into space and the forming of substance, again for good nutrition. It does this by making the soil sensitive, so that it makes available to the plant what it truly needs.The Yarrow prep is connected to Venus. This prep enlivens the soil so that the plant can absorb the incarnating forces coming from Saturn, Jupiter and Mars into physical substance. It does this by making the life or etheric body of the plant sensitive, so that it can accept the imprint from the planetary formative forces.The Chamomile prep is connected to Mercury. This prep brings everything into fluid movement so that the spiritual can adapt to the physical world. It also strengthens the life or etheric body of the plant so that it does not get overpowered by the spiritual.Oak Bark prep is connected to the moon. The moon influences growth and reproduction. If these forces become too strong then disease can occur. This prep helps with the further stabilizing and balancing of the etheric and astral bodies so that the plant can be healthy.The two field sprays, the horn manure and horn silica preparations help the plant to be balanced between growth and reproduction (coming from the moon) and good nutritive quality (coming from the sun).(Need end paragraph to finish)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

WHAT ARE THE BIODYNAMIC PREPARATIONS?

For many people, the Biodynamic preparations are incomprehensible. When I first came across them, I did not question whether they worked, although I have now studied them in depth. For me, they were simply remedies to strengthen the life forces of the land. Maybe I felt so comfortable because I had gone to a Waldorf school for a few years and had had such a good experience there. Maybe it was because I was already comfortable with Steiner’s ideas. In any case, I want very much to explain their potency to others so that your farms and gardens will thrive.First, I will describe the six compost preparations and then the field sprays. The compost preps are made from plants, the energies of which are further enhanced by putting them in animal sheaths and then burying them. Virtually all these elements may sound very foreign to you but their effectiveness has been so well validated over the years that scientists consider them proven. The plants and sheaths are:· The flowers of the Yarrow plant stuffed into a stag’s bladder, which are then hung in the summer sun and buried for the winter· Chamomile flowers made into sausages from the intestines of the cow and buried in the ground for the winter· Stinging nettle is compacted into a bunch and placed in the ground for a whole year, starting in the fall.· Oak bark is ground to a fine consistency and placed where the brain used to be in the skull of a cow and then placed in a wet place like a stream for the winter.· Dandelion flowers are stuffed into the mesentery (stomach lining) of a cow and placed in the ground for the winter.· The Valerian flower is pressed for its juice, which is then diluted with water and stored until it is needed.The above preparations, except the Valerian juice, are placed in the compost pile in separate holes as the pile is completed. I like to put the Stinging Nettle in the middle, the Oak Bark and Chamomile opposite each other at one end and the Yarrow and Dandelion opposite each other at the other end. The holes go about three to four feet apart and only a teaspoon of each prep is needed. The valerian juice is diluted and stirred and sprayed on the pile with a watering can.There are two other preparations that are used as sprays for the fields. One is made from cow manure which is stuffed into a cow horn and buried for the winter. The other is made from quartz crystals that are ground very fine and then put into a cow horn and put in the ground for the summer. When used, both these preps are diluted with water, stirred for one hour and then sprayed on the ground.Over the years, my relationship to the preps has deepened but it is not a very intellectual connection. I think that most farmers who come across them for the first time just sort of accept them because they know from others that they work.

You can buy them but they are pricey so there are regional groups that make them. Michaelmas, which falls around the autumn equinox, is the time to make most of the preps. In East Troy, Dick and Ruth Zinnaker host such a gathering every year. They have the oldest working Biodynamic farm in the States, started in the forties and now run by the third generation. They have a lovely old stanchion barn that is set up to make the preps. Ruth gathers and prepares all the ingredients beforehand and everything is ready to go. Usually about thirty people turn up to help and it is a real special fall festival. For my farm, I needed about four hundred cow horns filled, so I would bring my own horns and cow manure. About twenty of us at a time could sit on straw bales and stuff horns with spoons. Conversation was good, as many of the people knew each other but only met once per year, so it was catch-up time. In another part of the barn, the flowers and sheaths would be waiting to be worked on. When working with the preps, they don’t seem weird or esoteric. The experience is closer to alchemy, working with plant and animal energies which are then given over to the earth to be further strengthened and transformed. It all seems quite normal and possible…..futuristic, rather than old fashioned. After the preps were buried, there would be a pot luck dinner, a bonfire and music, deeply enjoyed by everyone.Trying to make rational sense of the preps is difficult, so I have made my own relationship to them. I am not much of a chemist, so looking at them from that point of view has not been very interesting for me. Studying the planets and the energies that radiate from them has given me a door through which I can relate to the preps. Many of these ideas come from a series of lectures that Dr. Lievegoed gave to farmers in 1951 and, of course, Steiner’s
“Agriculture” lectures. I have had to accept certain statements and build on those. I will try to describe these as best I can but it will be more of a picture then a rational explanation.I have to say one more time, when working with the preparations, a whole new mind set is needed. Regular farm science thinks that for every pound of nutrient you take out of the soil, you have to find a way to replace it. In Biodynamics, we have to think as Alchemists, that transmutation of substance can take place and that by potansizing a substances there is an effect from the energy.Transmutation of substances, when one mineral turns into another, does take place in the living realm, in plants and animals. When the soil is living and working well, then substances can transmute. For instance, Potash, even lime, can transform into nitrogen.Potensizing works when you take one part of an extract and dilute it with nine parts water and shake it for one minute. You then take one part of this solution and add nine parts of water and shake it for one minute. This would be called D2 potency. In homeopathic medicine, the same medicine can have varying effects depending on the potency. Eugene Kolisko has done experiments showing that the number of times a substance is potencised has a rhythmical effect, even into the D sixties. Although science cannot detect the original substance, the energy or blueprint of that substance is still there.As I have said before, behind matter stands spirit, but for spirit to manifest materially it needs something to anchor it. The Preps work as that anchor. They work medicinally so that the plant can attract the substances that it needs for growth or when necessary, to balance the etheric and astral in the right way so that the plant can be healthy.YARROW PREPARATIONThe yarrow plant is very rich in Sulfur. In the agriculture lectures, Steiner states that “Sulfur is the element in protein that plays the role of mediator between the physical world and the omnipresent spirit with its formative power.” It is this Sulfur process or energy that is strengthened by placing it in a stag’s bladder to be hung in a sunny spot and then buried. Steiner says that by using this preparation “the manure once again becomes able to enliven the soil so that it can absorb the fine doses of silicic acid and lead and so on that comes towards the earth.” The Yarrow plant is closely related to the planet Venus which is the planet of copper. Copper was used in the telegraph wires that were strung across the continents to carry information. The old copper pennies and cents, that had more value in the past, were the main form of commerce and helped goods move around. A copper arm band can help blood circulation. In the Middle Ages. yarrow was also called Venus’s Eyebrows, which shows that there was an old wisdom about these things.The animal sheath for this preparation is made from the stag’s bladder. The stag is an animal that is closely connected to the cosmos. The antlers are made of bone which is usually only found inside the body, covered by flesh and skin. When observing a stag you can see how it is totally in tune with what is going on around it - its antlers are like antennas into the cosmos.This preparation reminds me of Botticelli’s painting of Venus rising out of the ocean. In the same way matter is able to rise out of spirit. By spreading compost that has been enlivened with this energy, plants are better able to attract elements from the cosmos for healthier nutrition.CHAMOMILE PREPARATIONSteiner states that by using this preparation “You will find that your manure not only has a more stable nitrogen content than other manures, but that it also has the ability to enliven the soil so that plant growth is extraordinarily stimulated. Above all, you will get healthier plants.”Chamomile has well-known healing properties. A tea will sooth a stomach ache and drinking chamomile tea before going to bed will make for a better sleep. If meat starts to go putrid, you can soak it in Chamomile tea and it will be good again. Chamomile likes to strengthen and bring forces into movement. It creates a proper balance between the etheric and astral forces.We use the intestines of a cow as the sheath because it is through the intestinal wall that the digestive juices are secreted into the substances moving through the digestive tract. It is where the astral forces of the cow (remember the cow has very strong astral forces) are given over to the manure.In traditional medicine, the intestines are often connected to the planet Mercury which has the same tendency of flowing and moving. In Roman times Mercury was the God of thieves and merchants which ensured that goods move from one person to the next.It is past the scope of this book to explain everything but Steiner states that the carrier of astrality is nitrogen. Therefore when we place this prep in the compost pile, we create an organ that has the ability to create stable nitrogen and also make a right balance between the etheric and astral forces so that the plants growing in a Biodynamic garden or farm are healthy.STINGING NETTLEYarrow, Chamomile and Stinging Nettle all have sulfur to a high degree and so help spiritual energies be incorporated and assimilated into the compost heap and then the soil and plant. Steiner says of this preparation that “the effect will be to make the manure inwardly sensitive and receptive, so that it acts as if it were intelligent and does not allow decomposition to take place in the wrong way or let nitrogen escape or anything like that. This addition not only makes the manure intelligent, it also makes the soil more intelligent, so that it individualizes itself and conforms to the particular plants that you grow in it.”This is possible because Stinging Nettle has lots of iron in it, which relates it to the planet of iron, Mars. Lievegoed says that the gesture of Mars is the Javelin thrower just as he is about to let go of the javelin. It is very directed and forceful. A person who is anemic lacks iron in their blood. It is the force that allows the spiritual archetype of the plant to incarnate into the world. When you use this prep, it allows the soil to become intelligent so that it knows what the plant needs. Again, this prep helps in the health of the plant.OAK BARKThis prep, made from the bark of an oak tree and put into the skull of the cow where the brain was, works under the influence of the Moon. It controls growth in the endless division of cells, and in reproduction it controls inheritance, which ensures the continuation of type. If these Moon forces become too strong, if the earth is over stimulated and growth becomes rampant as can happen during a wet warm spring then we start to have unhealthy plants that are prone to attacks from parasites and other harmful effects such as fungus. The calcium from the Oak Bark dampens down the too-strong life forces and balance is restored. Steiner says “It restores order when the etheric body is working too strongly, that is, when the astral cannot gain access to the organic entity…..Then we must use the calcium in the very structure in which we find it in the bark of the oak.” This prep allows the Moon forces of growth and reproduction to unfold in a healthy way.DANDELIONThe Dandelion plant is under the influence of Jupiter. Jupiter takes hold of the archetypes that Saturn has brought to the plant and moulds and fills out the form. It fills out the skeleton. The Dandelion also a high content of silica, which attracts substances that provide for good nutritive forces in plants. The flowers of the Dandelion are wrapped in the mesentery of a cow. The mesentery is a fine membrane that surrounds the organs of the stomach. It is the mesentery that is sensitive to pain and it becomes a kind of membrane of consciousness of what’s going on in the lower organs of the cow. When this prep is placed in the ground during the winter, it becomes saturated with the forces of silica. Steiner says of this preparation” it will give the soil the ability to attract just as much silicic acid from the atmosphere and the cosmos as is needed by the plants. In this way, the plants will become sensitive to everything at work in the environment and then be able to draw in whatever else they need.” In fact, they become so in tune with their surroundings that they know what is available in the surrounding fields and woods and attract it to themselves. VALERIANit is through the spiritual formative forces of Valerian that Saturn works. Saturn is the most distant planet and is the gateway to the spiritual world. It works like a spiritual sheath and encloses the workings of the cosmos. Further, Steiner says that this prep “will stimulate the manure to relate in the right way to the substance we call phosphorus.” In homeopathic medicine, phosphorus is used to strengthen the spiritual “I” of a person. For plants, it is the spiritual archetype that is strengthened by Valerian. This preparation needs no animal sheath, nor does it need to be buried in the ground. The juice from the flowers can be extracted and stored until needed. When the manure pile is made, then the Valerian is diluted and sprayed all over the pile to work as a protective covering.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

SPIRITUAL BEINGS STAND BEHIND MATTER

In her book “The Field,” Lynne McTaggart summarizes much of quantum physics research and states that “the zero point field is an ocean of microscopic vibrations in the space between things” and “the very underpinning of our universe is a heaving sea of energy, one vast quantum field. If this is true, everything would be connected to everything else like some invisible web.”To better understand Biodynamic farming, I have to share some ideas based on my understanding of how the world works. The above paragraph might help make sense and give some credibility to my beliefs, although I go one step further into the metaphysical. Behind this quantum field, I believe there is a spiritual world that is beyond time and space and energy. This world is as diverse as there are stars in the universe. Just as our earth has consciousness and we can talk about the being of Gaia, so every planet and star in the universe is a being, and there are billions. As there are so many levels to the universe, it is difficult to generalize but through ages of time, I believe our world has condensed from the spiritual world. I believe that, behind all physical matter, there stand spiritual beings. For instance, there is a being that is the essence of nitrogen. Over eons of time, this essence condensed out of the spiritual into the substance of earthly nitrogen. Over time, the spirit withdrew out of matter so that now we only experience nitrogen as the mineralized matter, the end of a process. This is the level at which science works, but there are other levels of existence that I will describe later. However, within the mineral world there are still forces at work. Science tends to think purely in quantitative terms but all minerals have energetic qualitative values as well. For instance, there is a whole healing industry surrounding crystals. Different crystals have qualities, energies that can heal conditions of the soul. We receive different energies from the ground if we live in a place that sits on granite or limestone. Metals too have an influence on the world. For instance, iron has the quality of hardness that makes it suitable either for war or ploughshares. Iron is found in a very high concentration in the mighty oak and a Steiner meditation on iron reads:The knobly oak tree speaks,Servant of the iron Mars,O Man, be rooted in the deeps
And reach up to the heights,Be active and strong,Be fighter, knight, protector.We have all these forces and substances within us that make us citizens of this mineral world. As farmers, we work with all these substances and forces. Depending on how we farm, these qualities can be stronger or weaker. It makes a difference whether the iron we get from our vegetables comes from synthetically fertilized soil or from a living soil where the forces from the cosmos are active. In a deadened soil, it is possible that the mineral substances are no longer imbued with energy, than these energies are no longer available to us. The iron does not provide us with the ability to be fighter, knight and protector.These forces only work in the mineral realm. As soon as we enter the realm of the plants and animals, the living realm, all the rules change. For the farmer, there are three levels to the spiritual world that we can experience working within nature. First, there are life forces. Although the plant or animal anchors this life force, it is one step above the physical; life as such does not rise out of mineral and chemical interactions. Rather life is a mighty power that we can experience, for example at birth. When a calf is born and it lunges to rise off the ground for its first drink, the mother patiently stands and nudges the calf into position. Or a seed breaking through the crust of soil to reach the sun. These let us experience the power of life. Beethoven catches this life force most perfectly in the Ninth Symphony. In “Ode to Joy,” the choir singsAll creatures drink of joyAt nature’s breast.Just and unjustAlike taste of her gift;She gave us kisses and the fruit of the vine,A tried friend to the end.Even the worm can feel contentment,And the cherub stands before God.Life pervades the whole cosmos and it is a celebration and hymn to god. Some of the Biodynamic preparations work directly to strengthen or harmonize this energy level. Rudolf Steiner terms it the etheric field.
The next level we can experience is the organizing principle of the plants and animals. All life is organized, in that it has parts or organs that have different functions. Most plants have roots, stems, leaves and flowers but on the whole they are not sentient beings the way animals are. For plants, this organizing principle of life comes from the outside. It is not experienced internally. For example, a leaf that is damaged does not feel sore or if the soil is infertile it does not feel hungry. Animals on the other hand are sentient beings, meaning they have feelings. This life of feeling is internalized. They are unhappy if hungry or they feel pain if infected by disease. Steiner named this body the astral body and again the preps work to heal and balance these forces.We still have one more spiritual realm, and this shines in from the periphery, for both plants and animals. The archetypes of the species are held in the realm of the constellations of the zodiac. When a seed is placed in the ground, it grows into its own kind because it fills in the formative forces coming from the zodiac with matter. For humans it is a little different, as each individual person is like a whole species of the animal kingdom. That is why astrology works for us. All people born under a certain sign, say Sagittarius, will have similar characteristics that they inherit as they incarnate. Again, the preps can strengthen and balance how the species come to incarnate into the plant or animal. As the spiritual world is so varied, people with spiritual vision have different organs of perception developed and therefore will see and experience different aspects. For me, after all these years of meditation, I can now see the beginnings of the etheric body, a beautiful, transparent blue cloud-like shape surrounding a plant. Being a beginner with this vision, it takes time to see it. I look at the plants and bring up a meditation which can vary. The core meditation for me is to be grateful that the plant is so faithful to her task in life and that every day she makes it possible for the world to survive. Here in Ecuador, the capital of the flower world, we have a beautiful flower garden and one particular white rose gives off a wonderful perfume. I am able to steep my senses with the sounds of nature, the delicate smells from the garden and earth and to take in the breathtaking view over the valley and mountains.
How Does The Farm Work As An Ecosystem?With these thoughts in mind, I will continue describing the farm as an ecosystem. I described my farm in Wisconsin in some detail but wish to continue along the lines of the terrestrial aspects.

THE FARM AS A SOLAR COLLECTOR. A farm can be thought of as a huge solar collector. Plants are about one and a half percent efficient in collecting solar energy but this is probably good as otherwise the soil could burn out. Then you need the converters of all the energy that is stored in the vegetation. Humans can convert some of this directly into food with vegetables and grains but it is hard to keep up the fertility of the farm when we only produce food for humans because humans do not give much fertility back to the land. Cows do, because they are ruminants. They love grass and legumes and so they excel at both converting the stored energy in the grass into food and also at providing fertility. They produce meat and milk and tons of manure and urine which is one of the best sources of fertility. When we spread compost made with cow manure, it is amazing how this dressing improves both the fertility and organic matter of the soil. The hay or pasture is also a restorative crop and can easily be worked into a rotation.
By rotation I mean SSSS
With all this fertility, we can grow food for people, like vegetables, corn, beans and small grains. Now we start to have a farm that is self-sufficient in both fertility and in the food needed to feed the cows.
THE FARM AS AN ETHERIC ENTITY.
The next level of the farm is the etheric and here we enter into the celestial forces. Within the farm boundary which I talked about before, the life forces of the plant are recycled. When the crops grow (we shall follow grass), the grass is full of life energy which the cow digests, and in her ruminant stomach adds her own energies. The resultant manure is a life-filled product that can be composted. In the compost pile, we are not only transforming organic matter into humus but are retaining the life energy, which when spread back on the ground, enlivens the soil. In the world of nature, there are hosts of nature spirits that we cannot see as they have no physical body. To name just a few, there are earth, water, air and fire beings, tree beings, landscape beings, cloud beings and house beings. In the past, many people could see these and indigenous people still accept and honor them as part of their lives. These beings are still around us. They carry the consciousness of the farm and they work on the energetic level. For them, it is difficult if they have to work with energies that come from off the farm. Especially hurtful are forces from synthetic fertilizers and herbicides that they have to assimilate into the farm organism. Part of my practice as a farmer is to honor these beings and for many years Susan and I spent time each morning communicating what we would be doing that day, explaining our needs and celebrating with them. In this way, we felt we were able to co-create with them, even if it was at a beginners’ level. We often felt that we were heard and helped. (Need to finish next paragraph}

THE SENTIENT LIFE OF BIODYNAMIC SOIL.

The earth of a biodynamic soil has a sentient life as well. It has the ability to strengthen within the plant the organizing principle that I talked about before. The astral principle is balanced, not over-powering the life forces and allowing the spirit formative forces to incarnate.We have now created a fertile soil that is imbued with life forces that want to become plant. Into this soil, we place a seed and the formative forces from the constellations of the zodiac that hold the archetypes ray into the seed and tell the seed what to grow into

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
STANDING BETWEEN HEAVEN AND EARTH
The Biodynamic farm stands between heaven and earth. It is influenced by both earthly and cosmic influences and the farmer works with both, when looking after his land. The terrestrial or earthly forces are the most familiar to us, so it is these influences that we farmers are most used to working with. Rudolf Steiner showed us how we can work with the celestial forces through the use of the Biodynamic preparations and by being aware of the position of the planets and constellations of the zodiac in relationship to each other and the sun and moon. When we think of the terrestrial forces, we have in mind the physical properties of the farm, mainly the soil. The smell and feel of soil tells so much, is it rich and earthy with little bits of organic matter still visible? Does it feel full of life? Does it crumble between the fingers? Is the soil deep? Are there lots of earth worms? Can the soil hold moisture? These are all good signs of a fertile soil with lots of organic matter. Other considerations might be….. Where did it come from? Is it clay or sand? What is the vegetation? Are there trees and hedgerows? Is the terrain steep or flat? These are all terrestrial forces that a farmer works with on a daily basis. Although we can’t do much to change some of these things, such as the original parent material of the soil or the slope of the land, over the years we can modify and improve the fertility.
In the past, peasant farmers felt the holiness of the earth but now with our large-scale farming and economic pressures, it is hard to maintain the feeling of reverence. It is interesting that in the Agricultural course that Rudolf Steiner gave, he spends the first page and a half thanking the hosts of the conference. This sets the mood for farming. Reverence used to be a basic mood of soul when working with nature. Growth and decay, birth and death, the wonder of a newly planted field greening up, brings me a feeling of wonder and thankfulness. One naturally starts to see the world in a flow of time and movement. This does lead the farmer through a path of initiation which can make it possible to hear intuitively what is needed on the farm. But this natural path of initiation is not necessarily available to a modern farmer. Sitting in an air-conditioned tractor cab listening to the radio in order to keep awake for hours on end…. this is not conducive to a spiritual path. It now needs a conscious inner spiritual effort by a farmer to have this same intuitive connection to his farm. By cultivating his inner soul life and caring for his land and animals, a farmer can develop an intuitive connection to his farm. He is like a mother who is closely connected to her small child and knows when she is in danger. Even in my thirties when I was most involved in building up my farm and most involved with physical work, I would try to put aside thirty minutes after breakfast for meditation.
Over against the terrestrial forces, there are cosmic or celestial forces that affect the growth of plants and the health of the animals. The sun is the driving force of our planet and allows the great variety of plants and animals ranging from the poles to the equator. The moon affects mainly the watery aspect of our world. This can be seen in the rise and fall of the tides and in the growing habits of plants. Before the full moon, seeds germinate and grow faster than at the new moon. It is easier to make and dry hay at the new moon when there is not so much moisture in the stems and leaves. We know of these influences but are not so aware of the more subtle affects. When the sun stands in front of one of the twelve constellations, the energy that reaches the earth is different for each one. The growth and nutritive value of the plants is dependent on this dance of the heavenly bodies. Rudolf Steiner gave us the gift of being able to work with the cosmic forces through the use of the Biodynamic preparations. With the use of the preparations we can enliven the earth so that our food can have the nutritional forces that we need. When Rudolf Steiner was asked about our food he answered, “Nutrition as it stands today does not supply the strength necessary for manifesting the spirit in physical life. A bridge can no longer be built from thinking to will and action. Food plants no longer contain the forces people need for this.”
One of the main concepts of Biodynamic farming is that we try to create a self- sustaining farm organism. This idea is wonderful to me as it lifts the farm out of the economic realm into a cultural artistic realm. It creates boundaries within which to work. We have a picture frame within which to balance all the terrestrial and celestial forces at work within this planet. Up above, we have the sun and stars and planets influencing the land. On the earth, we create a vessel which contains the soil, the plants, the animals and the farmer who creates the vision and orchestrates all the parts. All living entities have a skin that embraces the organism whether it is unicellular or a complicated plant or animal. A farm is part of the earth, a living system, and it is part of a farmer’s task to create a landscape where the right balance of plants and animals exists so that a vibrant whole is created that is self-sustaining. A modern conventional farm has no boundaries, only economic considerations. Its very concept is unhealthy, as there are no natural boundaries to stop growth and therefore growth becomes cancerous.
On my last farm in Wisconsin, I tried to create this diversified landscape. It was a beautiful farm, with areas of woods reminiscent of the original oak savannas of the plains. There were marsh areas with small streams that the wildlife loved. There were hedge rows between pastures and Susan always said that our farm was a bird sanctuary. Within one area of woods, we had a fine hill on the top of which we cleared the grasses for our gatherings. Kindred Spirits would gather there when I talked about the spirituality of the earth, so we called it the Sacred Hill. Many ceremonies were held there for our friends and for the community and Susan will never forget the circle of women who helped her celebrate there the morning of our marriage. On our farm, we felt the animals, plants, people and spiritual world were one.

I had some areas of good fertile soil but most of the farm was poor rolling land, good for pasture and hay and dairy cows but not suitable for intensive crop farming. I farmed about five hundred acres and I knew that I needed to have about four acres of pasture, hay and crops for every cow. Therefore everything was designed for one hundred and twenty cows. Through experience, a farmer knows how much feed a cow needs per year to attain a reasonable level of milk production. How many tons of hay or silage are needed? How many pounds of concentrates such as beans and corn? This then has to be converted to acres to be planted for each crop so that there are enough to feed the cows through the long winters. This then has to be balanced against the tons of cow manure produced. Will there be enough compost for the necessary acres of corn? This can never be an exact science, as things change yearly with the weather. It depends so much on when the rain falls. For instance, if it is a wet warm spring, it could be that the corn gets planted late and can’t be cultivated in order to kill the weeds. Yet all this rain is excellent for pasture and hay. If, at hay-making time, it stops raining for a couple of weeks, then a bumper crop can be harvested. One summer was terrible because it never rained and I was buying hay by October. That year I was certainly far from my dream of the farm being self-sufficient.
The rotation that worked best for me was forty acres of corn, forty of soy beans, forty of small grains (mainly oats but it could be rye or wheat) under sown with hay that lasted three or four years before the cycle started again. This utilized about two hundred and eighty acres and I had another two hundred acres in permanent pasture. In addition, my farm provided manure for a neighboring community-supported garden that grew enough vegetables for one hundred and twenty families and other sources. I also sold wheat to a kosher bakery and sometimes I was able to sell the beans for human consumption.
The farm organism does not stop at the farm gate. It extends into the community via the consumers. I sold my milk to Organic Valley, one of the biggest certified organic distributors in the country, so I lost the direct connection to the consumer. However it is still interesting to see how much food we could produce on my farm with just three workers, so I capturing that below.
Milk
Being a dairy farm, I produced mainly milk. Each cow produced 40 lbs of milk per day or 1,500 gallons per year. An average family consumes about three gallons of milk and milk products (cheese, butter, yogurt and ice cream) per week or 150 gallons per year. This means one cow supported 100 families and as I milked 120 cows we supported about 1200 families.
MeatA byproduct of milking cows is that you have bull calves that are usually sold to another farmer and cull cows that you sell to companies that have that specialty. We sold about 20,000 lbs of meat per year and, according to statistics, beef consumption per person is about 65 lbs per year. If a family of four eats two hundred lbs per year, then we supported about 100 families.
WheatI grew about twenty acres of wheat per year with a yield of 40 bushels per acre. This averages 48,000 lbs or enough for 24,000 2 lb loaves per year. If a family eats two loaves per week, we grew enough wheat for 240 families.
Vegetablesalthough we did not grow vegetables beyond Susan’s garden, the cows did supply much of the fertility through their manure and our vegetables were grown on the farm property. The twenty acres of vegetables which were sold through a CSA, farmers markets and wholesale channels were enough to feed 300 families.From this description it can be seen that a farm with the sun and rain and the help from the farmers can produce a truly remarkable amount of food. For Nokomis Farm alone, this totaled:Milk – 1,200 familiesMeat - 100 familiesVegetables – 300 familiesWheat (bread) – 240 families

CHAPTER TWELVE

MY LIFE’S WORK

As part of my book I want to describe what Biodynamic farming means to me. Every Biodynamic farmer would probably bring out different aspects, but the following is what is important to me. I have tried to describe the farm ecosystem and how I attempted to create this on my last farm built. Especially hard is trying to write about the different levels of the spiritual world and how they manifest in nature without using Anthroposophical terms and assuming the reader is in the least bit familiar with Rudolf Steiner’s writings. As Biodynamic farming can be a lifelong study, and I still enjoy visiting farms and picking up new ideas I have decided to add these chapters at the end, rather than interspersing the ideas throughout the book.

The Great Artist of the Landscape

The spirituality of the earth has always been important to me. As I mentioned before, when I was nine, walking home through the bush, I experienced losing my oneness with nature. By farming my whole life, I could at least be out in nature and enjoy myself. Trying to make a living from nature has been hard but I have always had my spiritual beliefs that kept me going. When most people think of nature they think about a secluded spot or time spent in a national park. For me, nature is all around me when I farm. I like to think of a farmer as the great artist of the landscape. Every decision we make changes the look of the land. Mankind most impinges on nature where we grow our food and on the whole we have done a terrible job. Just think of the corn and bean farms of the Midwest, where people are literally not welcome. Not only are they dangerous places to visit because of known chemical hazards, but there is no place for humans. The farmer could show you his farm but it would be in a pickup truck in a cloud of dust along endless rows of corn or beans. Even worse are the chicken houses, the beef lots and huge dairy farms.
A Biodynamic farm is diversified, it is interesting and it is beautiful. It is a place that people like to visit and where they feel welcome. Not only does it grow food that nourishes, but people feel connected and safe.
I was lucky in that I could farm the land and grow good food. My late wife Joan, with the help of our two children, had the social ability to welcome people into our house and farm. Later Susan and I married and she had this same social ability. In particular, she guides people to find destiny paths….. and what better place to search than on visits to a Biodynamic farm? Thus on our farm in Wisconsin, we invited her friends to visit for the weekend, as part of our “Kindred Spirits” network. I would take them walking through the pastures and in one, I would invite them to sit in a circle as gradually the curious cows would gather around. There I would talk about the spirituality of the earth and Biodynamic farming.
As I wrote earlier, my turning point in life was when I was going through some very hard times in my marriage and the most incredible being of light and love suddenly visited me. I experienced the greatest wonder and appreciation of everything that I had done in my life and felt understood, accepted, honored and loved. Many years later, I had a similar experience of love, only not quite so intense. As background, let me explain that, for me, cows are part of the earth. The cow, in her being of loyalty to the land and the cosmos, belongs to the landscape. One late August afternoon, I was getting the cows ready for milking and they were being stubborn. It was hot and muggy and I was irritated, as I had more hay to make. As I walked past one of the cows, I happened to look into her eyes and we began a deep conversation. For my part, I said “I am sorry, please forgive my irritability, but I’ve got problems. “ In reply, she communicated back to me incredible forgiveness and love. I experienced the earth welling up through this cow. The earth, as a being of light and love, came shining through the eyes of this cow. I was startled yet deeply moved that, in my frustration; I was allowed to experience this union with the earth. Thinking about it later, I realized that it was the same love I had experienced when I was thirty-three and the Being I think of as Christ visited me. I then understood that the being of Gaia is now permeated with light and love, and that this light and love are being extended to all mankind now in an unlimited fashion.
Out of this stems my growing love of nature and the Being of the earth imbued with love. My life’s path has not been scholarly but more a life of doing. My main inspiration has always come from Anthroposophy but often there was no energy left in the evenings to study. One of the nice things about being a dairy farmer is that you are forgiven if you fall asleep at meetings. Now that I am not farming and can be more awake, I want to share how my experiences allowed me to see the spirituality of the earth and how Biodynamic farming led me to my world view.
My experience of the earth being imbued with light and love is further confirmed by meditation. When I look deep into the earth in my imagination, I move through matter, and experience the earth as hollow, surrounded at the periphery by light-filled crystal, dissolving into darkness. The hollow earth itself emanates light and love. The first time this happened I was surprised, as I expected density, weight, matter and gravity.
In my reading from Anthroposophy, mainly Sergei Prokofieff and Jesaiah Ben Aharon, these imaginations are confirmed. To me, they are most attuned to the changing earth. Also, in a course on Geomancy with Marko Pogacnik, I started to actually experience the spiritual landscape that underlies the physical.
The being of light and love that I experience is personal and present but also historical and cosmic. For me, this being is the Christ Spirit, the being of light and love, the beloved one, who has accompanied the earth and humankind from the beginning of time. This is the god that ruled from the sun realms, so all peoples have venerated this being in one form or another. For instance, the Egyptians called him the mighty sun God Ra and the Greeks called him Apollo. Slowly, during our descent onto the earth, he drew closer to the earth too and incarnated into the being of Jesus, and then united his being with mankind and with the earth. By this act, he made his new home on the earth for all time to come. This was a gift from the spiritual world, as we had lost our connection to spirit. In the past, our way of being was spirit-imbued. We still beheld and experienced spirit in matter. Now when we think about nature, we experience an abyss. ….we cannot cross the bridge between matter and spirit in our thinking. When we see a tree, we only see the physical tree. We do not see the spiritual tree, imbued with life force, or the spiritual beings that surround the tree. People with spiritual vision do see them. Now we are starting a new era, when our spiritual organs of perception are reawakening so that more and more people can again see the spirit in matter. We are starting to see the etheric world with new spiritual sense organs. At a later time, we will be able to understand this realm and then to co-create with it. Even now there are forerunners. The Findhorn community in Scotland has been creating an oasis where none could be expected to be. By taking direction from the nature spirits, they have miraculously created a lush garden out of sand dunes.
As time goes on, over the next several thousand years, people will experience and live into this realm Anthroposophist call “the etheric.” Already some people live without food by tapping into spiritual energies. The physical will less and less be able to support us. My favorite grace expresses this so well:
The bread is not our food What feeds us in the bread Is God’s eternal word Is spirit, and is life.
It is the spiritual forces in the food that sustain and nourish us. This is why Biodynamics is so important to me. By looking into the spiritual world, Rudolf Steiner has given us a way to grow food with the spiritual forces that are necessary to enrich humanity.

PART TWO
BIODYNAMIC FARMING

CHAPTER ELEVEN

A VISION QUEST IN ECUADOR
We had already made a connection to Ecuador, built our house and now we had an opportunity to live there.
I was lucky in the timing as the market for organic milk was still growing. I sold my cows for a very good price and I was able to recoup my losses. I had no plans to get back into farm ownership when we moved to Ecuador. However, by true serendipity, I was offered a twelve-hundred-acre farm that I was able to buy with the money from the sale of the cows. This land had some of the purest air, water and soil on earth and represented true wealth. We don’t live on the farm but once a week I go out and make sure everything is OK. I have a young farmer, Andreas, run it for me and we have a wonderful relationship. It’s great having a farm but not have to worry if the cows get out.
Farming is very low tech here, so I have to rethink many things I have learned. Andreas grew up on the farm with ten brothers and sisters and it was his dream to run the farm one day. However he never had the capital to buy it from his mother and support his young family. I pay him three hundred dollars a month, which is on the high side of average and was able to buy thirty beef animals and pay for some capital improvements, such as fencing and extending the watering system. What makes it financially viable here is that I can sell a full-grown bull for six hundred dollars, which is a bit less than I could get in the States. However my expenses are so much less, three hundred dollars for monthly wages instead of three thousand plus back in the States. And everything is cash. My property taxes are sixteen dollars and sixty eight cents per year. My house is a bit more, forty eight dollars per year. However, on the down side, bureaucracy is a nightmare. There is no mail delivery; we still have no mail box in Loja, the main city an hour away, so it took three trips to Loja to be able to pay my taxes. The best way to do business is to smile widely and apologize for my poor Spanish while I learn it as fast as I can. “Desculpe me, yo hablo un poco Espanol “excuse me, I only speak a little Spanish” goes a long way. People are very kind and patient and I do my best to be kind and patient in return
We have other projects that help us integrate into the community. Before coming down, a philanthropist friend of Susan’s gave her twenty thousand dollars per year for three years to give away for the highest good (FlowFunding.org). There are a few healthy conditions attached. The money cannot be used to pay oneself or one’s relatives or one’s expenses and it cannot be used for your own projects. Susan was so touched by the generosity that she decided to create one of her KINS Innovation networks pro bono, and let the members give out the money, since local people would know how it could do the most good. After six months of ferreting out collaborative people in different sectors here, she started a little network called Ayni, the Ketchua word for reciprocity. Eight of us (four Ecuadorians and four foreigners) get together about once a month and discuss how the money can best be used to help the community. For instance, in the valley below our house, there is a very poor indigenous community of the Saraguro people. The young women had asked that we pay for a dance instructor so that they could learn their traditional dances. An Ayni member decided to support this project pro bono and I help him, so every Saturday I pick up the dance instructor (herself a student at the university in Loja) and watch the women practice for two hours. If neither my colleague nor I are there, the young men disrupt the lessons. At first, the girls were very shy and self-conscious but they gradually got over it. Usually I take a book along to read and occasionally I nod off. That brings a smirk to their faces and it brings us to the same level. The women are very suppressed by their men and this dancing has given them a new belief in themselves. They came in second at the Vilcabamba carnival parade. Now that my Spanish is getting better and I can have simple conversations, I am starting to make friends with them. All together, Ayni has more than a dozen projects that are carried out by the members pro bono, with all the out-of-pocket expenses covered. They range from a “Pay It Forward” program to the free healings offered by our leading shaman to covering the cost of rebuilding materials when people have lost their houses to landslides. In all there are more than 3 dozen Ayni projects in various stages of development and total out-of-pocket costs after 3 years has been $36,000.
Vilcabamba has many interesting people and we enjoy their company but mostly I stay at home meditating, reading, writing, and working with our gardener and the cows I run on the Finca VIVA land surrounding us. Susan is the people person, so she always has lots of people to meet. She is a driving force in getting the waste disposal problem fixed through Ayni. All of Vilcabamba’s waste is going to a site just above our house where it was being burned. If the wind was going the wrong way, we would be sitting in a cloud of toxic fumes and then it would drift down to the village. This was rather upsetting, as we had travelled thousands of miles to be in a clean environment and all around us there are thousands of miles of clean Andean mountain air. Now, with the help of Ayni funds, the garbage is no longer burned and a report showed that 80% of the garbage is organic. Soon a recycling program will be started which will create lots of organic compost which will be given away to local farmers to encourage them to try organics. The non-organic garbage will be recycled or taken to a proper land fill in Loja. We must also mitigate the existing open-air dump. While estimates of the mitigation were $300,000 at first, by locals and foreigners collaborating, we are hoping we can do it for $3,000.
With the history of my back problems, about a month ago my back went out again in a more serious way. It was like old times in East Troy, where I had to lie on my back for three days, with every movement being excruciating. This surprised me as I know that my back only goes out when something is bothering me and I have been in serenity here. In fact, my worries got so bad that I developed a fever and felt nauseous. Carlitos, the shaman healer from Vilcabamba, visited and told me that I was on “a vision quest at home.” I knew this was true. For two years, I had been trying to live in the moment and still my mind. As I have mentioned, when I sit on our patio early in the morning and watch and listen to nature, I start to feel light and part of the formless all. I lose my mind identity, which is a wonderful experience. I guess my body was not agreeing with this assessment. Over the years, we put our stresses into our bodies, and for me I seem to put them in my lower back. I went through a serious crisis with this recent back pain and was determined to get to the bottom of it. By the second night of not being able to move, I was able to break through. It really is hard to not worry about the future based on past experiences. It is hard to believe that my value does not lie in what I have accomplished or will accomplish in the future.
Help did come. I was able to detach myself from my life and to go to the mountain top spiritually. I looked at myself growing up and pursuing my dreams. I saw how I lived a life full of joy and sorrow, but a wonderful life, living with what I had inherited, both good and bad. I had wrestled with the earth to make a living and in the process I was molded and taught, hard head though I always had. The earth embraced me, loving me and allowing me to fulfill my destiny.
As I write this, my back is still slowly recovering and Susan and I had to celebrate our 5th wedding anniversary at home rather than hiking the Podocarpus National Park nearby as we had planned. But my bad back served its purpose because I am more firmly planted now in the present, trusting the spiritual world more deeply than I ever have before. I am fulfilling my intention to spread Biodynamic agriculture by writing this book…..and I hope you enjoy the chapters coming next on Biodynamics for non-farmers. My Spanish is getting good enough that I will soon be giving talks on organics to local farmers. I will find ways to fulfill my intention of teaching non-farmers how to steward the earth, such as by offering talks and walks here on Finca VIVA and other locations. What is important is that I have moved into a deeper level of trust in myself, in staying present and in receiving help from the spiritual world. That is enough.
We are so lucky to be on this beautiful earth. I feel lucky that I was led to farming. Despite all the hardship, the flies and manure, the kicking cows, the broken down machinery, the draughts and floods and all the hard work with little financial reward, I am excited. At night when I look at the uncountable stars glowing overhead, I experience the infinity of peace and love and wisdom of the spiritual world. Out of spirit, all this has risen. In all humility, I have been allowed to take part in the alchemy of creation and destruction through farming. All around me, I see and experience this beautiful world and know that I am blessed…..that all creation is blessed. This is my love, a farmer’s love.

CHAPTER TEN
SUSAN INTRODUCES ME TO MY KINDRED SPIRITS

When Joan died, I had just turned fifty and felt like I was being forced to start a second life. I’d lost my wife, the kids were grown up and off to college and I was starting a new business in a new town. After Celia left, I was able to face life on my own and day-to-day life seemed more manageable. However, I don’t think I was meant to lead a bachelor’s life.
Susan and I met one day in the farm yard when she was there for a board meeting of a children’s program on my farm and one of the children had accidently locked her keys in her car. I noticed her car window was opened a crack and was able to use a coat hanger to open the door. For my help, she promised me an apple pie and when she arrived with her gift, we found we had much in common. Not in our work, because I work with the land and she works with influential people in social investing and social ventures, but we were both trying to transform our world, she in social investing and I in Biodynamics. She did also have a strong connection to the land. In her previous marriage, she had been married to a Nigerian who was both chief and healer of his village. Although he had received a PhD degree from Harvard, and had been the number 2 man in Nigeria with the first democratic government, he had lost his wife and children in a tragic plane crash. At that point, he had taken up duties as the key village elder of his tribe and, after that, married Susan, his college sweetheart. . When Susan joined him, she shared his subsistence lifestyle in his farm compound and learned that it was possible to live off the land in simple surroundings. After six years, the cultural differences had been too hard to bridge and the marriage had sadly ended and, Susan returned to the States heart-broken. Soon after this we met, and our similar experiences of the grief of death and separation gave us a deep kinship.
When Susan did arrive with the apple pie, it was really good so I invited her to the Milwaukee symphony. After the concert, while waiting for the parking garage to empty, we went for some coffee. She had never studied Anthroposophy, so I offered to read Theosophy, one of Steiner’s basic books, out loud, and then we could have a discussion. She in return offered me dinner, so it was a good deal for both of us. After work, I would arrive at her house for dinner and our discussions and they grew more and more interesting. Looking back, it was strange that I offered this as I am not the type to have an intellectual discussion about a book, but I had to know if we would be compatible in our beliefs.

During the next two years, we got to know each other better and better. It was a very enjoyable courtship, as we could afford to go on some really romantic vacations. We spent three weeks in New Zealand, mainly touring the South Island in a camper van. I had remembered many of the under-developed camping sites from my youth and we would search these out and camp in our van. In the morning, we would wake up with the sun rising through the mist of a nearby river with the Southern Alps as a back drop. Not a person in sight, just a cup of coffee to warm us up. Another time, we visited England and stayed at bed and breakfasts. We had a general idea of the places we wanted to visit. Oxford for a day, London for a few days, Stonehenge, my old boarding school in Sussex and places we stopped at on the spur of the moment in-between. We didn’t have a tight schedule, so we could relax and get to know each other.

In the meantime I did have a farm to run. This was a real challenge, as I could not get the cows to make enough milk. They had a lot of health problems like bad feet, low conception rates and high somatic cell counts. I could not figure out what was wrong until one day a friend suggested I had a stray voltage problem. Cows are unbelievably sensitive to voltage differentials in their surroundings. It stresses them out and causes their immune system to kick in on a permanent basis so that they have little resistance left to fight disease. It took five years to solve the problem! A veterinarian who was also a dowser came and tested the farm. He found electrical earth currents going through my milking parlor. It was amazing to see his rods turn when he crossed a line between a low lying pond that was picking up stray voltage, the electrical control panel for my barn, a drilled well just outside the barn and then to the transformer. We solved the problem by constructing a medicine wheel from field stones off to the side of the milking parlor. Through dowsing we were able to place the medicine wheel in the right place so that the earth currents could go in a different direction and not affect the cows.
I know stray voltage doesn’t sound devastating to non-farmers, but it cut drastically into my bottom line. Every year I sold about $250,000 worth of milk but stray voltage was causing my cows to drop ten pounds of milk per day which added up to a loss of $50,000 per year. Because of the stress the cows were experiencing, I had a high culling rate (cows no longer giving milk) of over 35% so that each year I had to buy heifers that cost $1,500 each. I was cash-strapped and had to refinance several times. On top of that, I experienced a string of three drought years that made it necessary to buy a lot of feed. One year I was trucking in certified organic hay from Montana and Kansas. The hay cost $800 a semi load and the trucking came to $600, when a load would only last ten days. At times life became nasty. I would get phone calls from my suppliers saying that they would not deliver without a check. I would have to put off paying dealers who would then charge 18% interest. I would take short cuts that got me through a month or two but hurt deeply long term. It also hurt my reputation as a farmer, as I would have to put off repairs and maintenance. For example, a farmer is obliged by law to keep his thistles mowed but I couldn’t afford the right mower so I had to beg the neighbor for the use of his mower. Sometimes I would catch up on my payments but it was very stressful and I worked long hours. I thought I could be like a duck in the rain, letting the rain slide off my back without hurting inside. But I did hurt and eventually it caught up with me and my health deteriorated. My muscles became like cables, although nobody could diagnose the condition. I had to cut my hours way back or I would feel my back muscles tensing and preparing to pull my back out. I experienced that I couldn’t even let myself get angry because the adrenaline I then pumped into my body would leave me aching all over. That is a strange experience….trying to be happy when a cow shits on you in the milking parlor.
Soon after I solved the stray voltage problem, things started to improve. My calves didn’t die so I was able to raise all my own replacements and my culling rate came way down, although it took a few years for the older cows to respond. I had some cash to spare so I could replace some of my old machinery and catch up on maintenance. All through this hard time, I believed in myself. This is a spiritual lesson in itself. ….to know that you are on the right path despite all the adversity. I felt a lot of criticism from the community and felt put in a box of the failed farmer. I went through an initiation by fire.
I felt especially proud about my cows. I did several things out of the ordinary, like not using artificial insemination to get the cows pregnant. I had crossed my initial herd with Normandy bulls and in eight years, had created an all-round cow that did well under grazing management. I had decided that I would leave the calves on their mothers for four weeks rather than take them away at birth as others do. I could see that the cows craved to keep their calves, for when I started the practice, the other cows would gather around the newborn and not leave the mother and calf in peace. Some cows had sneaky ways to steal a calf from its real mother which was bad, as the calf would not get the colostrums milk it needed. After a few months of this practice, when a calf was born there would only be mild curiosity on the part of the other cows. At first, it was difficult as the mothers had lost much of their mothering instincts and it was common to lose calves out in the field. After two generations, the bonding between mother and calf returned. I felt it was important that the mothering instinct of the cows be respected and that they are allowed to fulfill this basic instinct that they craved so strongly. To see a cow and her calf together is truly moving. Even keeping the bull with the herd made a difference, as it made the whole herd less nervous and more contented.
When I first designed the farm, I had made some false assumptions. As a model to design my farm, I had used a nearby farmer who was a grazier and also used the Biodynamic preparations key to Biodynamic farming. I assumed he was trying to create the same kind of self-contained farm organism that was so important to me. In his scenario, he needed two acres per cow but he bought in all his concentrate feed. I on the other hand wanted to grow all my own feed, not only the pasture and hay but also the corn and beans so I actually needed four acres per cow. I was locked into a facility built for one hundred and twenty cows but only had two hundred and forty acres. Over the years I was able to find another two hundred and sixty acres to rent but it was a struggle to farm so many acres. Looking back it would have been better to design a set of buildings and put together a budget that was more appropriate for two hundred and twenty acres.
I still held my dream of helping people experience how a farmer can steward the earth in a caring and non-exploitive way while producing good food. Over the, years Susan had created a network of close colleagues who were interested in social issues, which often included responsible land stewardship. She invited fifty people to join a network which we called Kindred Spirits (see KindredSpiritsNetwork.com). For this we charged one thousand dollars per person, which helped our bottom line. We invited eight people at a time to come and stay at our farm for a long weekend. There were two main themes worked into the stay. Susan has a gift of matching people so that it would be comfortable for each person to talk about their lives and how they were fulfilling their destiny paths. From these discussions, they would get encouragement and support in their life decisions. My part was to take everybody for a walk through the farm and teach about how non-farmers can steward the earth. We would end up on our sacred hill where I would talk about Biodynamic farming and the spirituality of the earth. Many people have lost contact with farming and do not have a chance to experience farm life. Yet they know that their very sustenance is dependent on the earth so they appreciated this chance to see where their food comes from. In December, we would have a weekend for all fifty members but they would stay in a nearby hotel. As Susan had carefully chosen the group from her life’s work, the conversations were substantive and revolved around the idea that humanity has its ladder up the wrong wall. People think that the environment is a subset of the economy but actually the economy is a subset of the environment, because it is the earth that supports us all. Farming in particular is where we can most consciously make decisions that affect both our health and the earth. In Biodynamic farming, we have the added dimension that we work with spirit that stands behind nature. Through Kindred Spirits, Susan and I found a way to be and work together and share our lives with our friends. It was also a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) project but instead of giving away vegetables in return for financial support we gave away the opportunity to learn how to steward the earth and to have destiny path conversations with a likeminded group of people. I think the fifty people did feel a deeper connection to the earth through our farm. We created a network that covered many walks of life and covered the States. Two members in particular captured the value of Kindred Spirits. On their website, master chef and authors Karen Page and Andrew Dornenberg wrote, “We came to one of the smallest village we had ever visited to hear some of the largest ideas we had ever heard.”
After eight years, I decide to give up my lease. This was hard but I was ready for a change. I have always been willing to step into the void. I wanted to find a way to talk about farming and my love of the earth. Kindred Spirits had allowed me to experience this possibility but in the States I could not see this opportunity opening up. I needed time to recharge my batteries and to deepen my connection to nature. Serendipity soon gave us a path through the void.

CHAPTER NINE

MY HARDEST YEARS

Christopher and Martina moved to the States in the Seventies to help develop Anthroposophy and its sister organizations of Waldorf education and Biodynamic farming. They bought several farms in the East Troy area of South East Wisconsin and funded Michael Fields Agricultural Institute, a research and teaching institution for organic and Biodynamic farming. They were reorganizing their farms as there had been no cows on the land for the last few years and they felt that the fertility was going down. They asked me to lease their dairy and we came to an agreement that I would lease the land and they would put up a set of new buildings. I was then able to build my dream facility. We built a milking parlor, a double-sixteen swing parlor that was very efficient and could milk up to a hundred cows an hour. There was an enjoining office and space for a classroom. The cows were housed in a big loafing shed, where they could run loose on a pack of manure and clean straw. This method produces lots of compost and is very easy on the cows. The facilities were excellent and I was very appreciative. . I found a herd of certified organic cows close by and we were milking cows by April. I ran the farm business as my own so I owned the cows and machinery and had to take out loans for about one hundred and forty thousand dollars, which should have been quite doable. I was very excited to be running my own farm again and hardly had time to miss Joan, who was able to come out at the beginning of July.
Transitions were always difficult for Joan and although she was not happy, I didn’t think too much of it. She was going to start teaching first grade at the nearby Waldorf School and I reckoned she would make good new friends, as she always did. However, once she got to East Troy, she would wake up in the mornings crying and not feeling that this was her place at all. She was always brave and she carried on making the house and garden into her new home and preparing for the school year.
The day came for Dave to start college at George Washington University in DC. And I was flying to DC with Dave to get him oriented, so we had to drive two hours down to O’Hare airport. Joan had to go to her first faculty meeting so we all left about the same time, with Eve still in the farmhouse. When I got to O’Hare, they were paging me, which surprised me as I had our tickets and everything else in order. I left Dave in the check-in line and found the police office, where they informed me that Joan had just died in a car accident but had no details. I had to go back to the line and tell David that we were leaving the airport, as his mother had just died. That was a terrible, long drive, just Dave and me, not knowing anything. Eve was waiting in the house with no company, since nobody else knew, and, when we arrived back home, I had to call for help and tell people. The community really rallied around and helped as best they could. Friends and family came from great distances.. My sister flew in from New Zealand, her daughter came from Japan and my brother Johannes and his wife came from Ireland. Joan’s brother came from Long Island and her parents from Florida. It was especially hard to see her father’s grief, his only daughter gone. Old friends from Kimberton and Ithaca arrived and we were joined by many new friends from East Troy. Especially helpful was that the Christian Community priest who had accompanied Joan and me in our life, who had married us and christened Eve and Dave, now lived close by and he took care of all the funeral arrangements. I remember he took me to the funeral home that afternoon so we could arrange for Joan to be taken home rather than to stay in the funeral home. I wasn’t allowed to see her as she was too badly hurt. She had run a stop sign, not even slowing down, and been hit side on. She was hit so hard that her watch stopped and she was knocked out of her shoes. During the three days before the funeral, we were all sustained by the outpouring of love of family and friends and it was a vibrant celebration of her life. During the day, people would visit and we often had music and the evenings would be more intimate, when family or close friends would share stories of her life. After the funeral, people left and there was a depth of loneliness that at times was unbearable to me. Eve and Dave decided that it would be best to continue with college. Dave and I again went back to O’Hara and flew to DC and got him settled into college. A week later, Eve left to do her four-month study abroad in Africa. Luckily my sister stayed on for a month and helped me through some of the worst part. When my father died, a few years previously, I had been at his side and had experienced his “being” or soul leaving and expanding into the universe. This had been very special but unfortunately, with Joan there was nothing similar to give me solace. She was gone and I could not feel her presence. After a while, the emptiness would not be so constant but the grief would hit me hard at unexpected times. It would usually come at times of beauty. Seeing a flock of birds changing directions in mid-flight or the wind blowing through a field of wheat would leave me in tears and desolate. About two months after Joan died, a friend passed away and I went to the funeral. She had died of cancer, so she had a long time to prepare. She and her friends had written the funeral service and she had felt that after she died, she would be experienced in the wind, in the sunset and other aspects of life. I left the service furious and shaken to the bone because for me, there was nowhere to go to experience Joan. Working during the day was ok, as I had to keep the farm going and there were things to keep my mind and body busy. Much harder were the nights. When I closed the door to the milk house in the evening, I dreaded going into the house. I would sit on the steps and be with the cats and dogs for as long as possible before going in to make supper. Often at night, I would lie on the floor, light a candle and listen to Handle’s Messiah. This music let me experience death and then resurrection and helped my healing process more than anything else. Saturday nights were especially hard, sitting by myself watching TV. I am not the type of person who likes to sit around talking with a group of people. I prefer one on one conversation, so I would often feel very lonely, even within a group setting. I knew that Joan wouldn’t be happy watching me feel sorry for myself, so I decided to take the plunge and invite a woman out to dinner. I knew one of the of the Waldorf school teachers who was single and so I checked out with a mutual friend whether she would be open to going to dinner. Happily she was. I hadn’t dated for twenty-five years but I reckoned we could talk about teaching and she had lived in New Zealand. We did have a good conversation and became friends and later she moved in. After one of the first times that she had supper at my house and had to leave, my whole body went into a panic. The thought of her leaving left me in tears and I realized I had an irrational fear that I would never see her again. Celia helped me get through those lonely months, although I know local people were upset that I found a new partner so soon. We were together for two years helping each other getting through some hard times. She was twenty years younger than me, so I realized I didn’t need another daughter and likewise she realized she didn’t need a father figure. When the time was right, she moved to Oregon and soon found the man she was to marry.
At the time of Joan’s death, a friend had given me a moth chrysalis and mentioned that it might hatch in six months. I left it in my bedroom and didn’t think about it. One night I walked up the stairs and into my bedroom where I saw this beautiful huge moth sitting in the middle of my pillow. For me it was a gift from Joan that meant that although I could not experience her at that time, in the future we would again have a relationship that would transform into something new and beautiful. Eight years later, I was at a workshop run by Kimberly Herkert co-founder of Way of the Heart and one of the sessions was on forgiveness. Joan came into my mind and I became really upset at her for leaving me, holding the bag, when I had felt we’d had a lifelong agreement to support each other. Of course this feeling was irrational and I didn’t even know that I carried it, but I could not forgive her at that moment. At the end of the session, we went round the group, each person briefly telling of their experience. I was nearly in tears, and it was hard to speak and talk about my feelings. Kimberly looked at me and told me that I had just forgiven Joan. T hat evening I went to the beach and did indeed feel like a weight had been lifted off me. Since then, I have again felt closer and more at ease with Joan.

CHAPTER EIGHT

WASHING WINDOWS, GROWING VEGETABLES, BAKING BREAD AND BACK TO FARMING


The farm that belonged to the Waldorf School had been bought by Mr. Marin, the founder of Sunoco Oil, back in the thirties. He had hoped that it would be a model Biodynamic farm and school but it didn’t work out that way. Instead a Waldorf school was started and the farm was run conventionally for many years. A few years previous to my arrival, the management had changed and a group of young farmers had been running the farm along Biodynamic lines. The situation was perfect for us. There was a Waldorf school for the children, and in the future, Joan would be able to teach when a position became available. There was a school farm program in place and classes would come to the barn to help with chores. The farm had many beautiful places to walk so we invited the school families to visit whenever they wanted. We created some wonderful festivals. In the spring, we had a farm blessing based on Rogan’s Day. This was the day the early settlers blessed their land and asked for good crops that year. We had the children pull an old horse-drawn one bottom plough through the garden with a long rope while we all sang. We then placed a loaf of bread made from last year’s wheat in the furrow, covered it with soil and asked for a good harvest that year. We finished the day with a hay ride around the farm.
We were able to help start a Community Supported Garden (CSA) on the farm and integrated it into the farm organism by giving them cow manure and including the gardeners in some of the farm decision-making. Between the farm store, which we had just started, the CSA and the opportunity to enjoy the animals and land, for those members of the school community who wanted it, there was a real opportunity to feel connected to the land.
When we arrived, the farm was showing a financial deficit and the faculty and board were trying to find ways to eliminate the loss to the school. Already construction had been started for a farm store and a milk bottling and yogurt plant. As the farm was on Seven Stars Road, we changed the name to Seven Stars Farm and the yogurt was sold as Seven Stars Yogurt, which is now marketed successfully nationwide, certified as Biodynamic. I also put together a proposal whereby the farm business could be run and owned separately from the school as a for-profit business. The school board thought it was a wonderful proposal but the other farmer was against the whole idea of separating farm and school. A host of political shenanigans ensued and it became apparent that it would be years before any real change would happen. I would be stuck working with a difficult partner and Joan wanted to go back to Ithaca where she was offered a teaching position. After a year we headed back to Ithaca. This time it was Joan who had the job and we assumed I would find my way.
We rented a house in Ithaca while we looked for a place to buy. It was obvious that I was going to have to change my profession but I wasn’t sure what and I had no skills apart from farming. I did a bit of carpentry but that ran out. Joan’s teaching job could hardly support us and we were getting pretty low on our resources so I took a job with a cleaning company. I think it was during this time that I learned humility. Cleaning movie theatres and frat houses was the pits. However I did learn how I could make good money by cleaning windows and having my own contracts and, after six months, I started my own business. Sparkle Cleaning specialized in window cleaning. I also had a crew that cleaned a Hoyts movie complex and some office buildings. I was used to milking cows on Christmas Day but cleaning sixteen movie theatres on Christmas Day sure didn’t have the heart that the cows had.
It took us a year to find a place to buy. It was out in the country with twenty good acres all set up to grow vegetables. It even had a renovated house on it, just the right size for our family. I learned how to grow vegetables and after another year phased out my cleaning business. The trouble with growing vegetables in Upstate New York is that the winters are long and during these months there is not much income. I decided I would bake bread in the winters. I had read an article about building simple wood-fired brick ovens so I went to a weekend workshop where they were building one and also apprenticed at a bakery in Kansas where they were using one. I went home and built my oven with an eight-by-six-foot hearth where I could bake sixty loaves at a time and do seven batches before the heat ran out. I made mainly traditional European sour dough breads. The outside would have a nice crust but the inside would be soft and chewy. . My first few batches were a little on the flat side but I soon got the hang of it and soon it was considered the best bread in Ithaca. I had good markets in Ithaca and I was soon at my max baking up to nine hundred loaves a week. Fridays were my big day. I could sell a couple of hundred loaves at the Farmers Market and the rest sold at Green Star Cooperative. On bake days I would even deliver bread to the coop. right after the bread came out of the oven. The whole store would fill with the smell of fresh baked bread and it would soon be gone. My bread was successful and made a lot more money than the vegetables, so I gave up on them.

Eve and Dave were growing up and were passionate about riding horses. We couldn’t afford well-trained horses so we bought two young horses that they worked on and trained after school. We bought an old horse trailer and once a week we would load up the horses and go to riding lessons. During the summer, we would spend Sundays at horse shows. Eve and Dave were good but, as they got older, we couldn’t afford the professionally-trained horses that they were competing against. It was a nice way for me to be with my kids but by tenth grade we decided to stop and they got into team sports at school. It was nice to have a bit of extra money from the bakery, that didn’t have to go into farm improvements. One summer, we closed the bakery down for a month and vacationed in Europe. We rented a car, visited friends and camped. We started in Amsterdam and then worked our way through Germany and Austria and down to Italy and back up through France to Holland. I think Italy was our highlight. We camped outside Venice on one of the beach campsites and took the ferry into Venice where we spent two days walking around the city and taking a Gondola ride. On the beach, we encountered our first topless bathers which was especially interesting to Dave, being fourteen. Florence was wonderful with all the museums and architecture, although the camp ground was not so great. However the breakfast, fresh baguettes and coffee with the view over Florence made up for the rest. Here the kids encountered their first toilet that was a hole on a concrete pad. Another summer we went out west for a month, rafted down the Colorado River and camped and hiked at some of the national parks.
All this time I was still holding onto my dream of getting back into dairy farming. I felt that I had missed my life’s calling and secretly wished that I would die of some illness. I wasn’t depressed and I didn’t tell people but I just felt that making eight or nine hundred loaves of bread a week, even if they were the best, was not what I was meant to be doing. Joan was happy but when I told her how I felt, she accepted my needs. I do believe we create our own reality and during those years I had to struggle with finding out who I was.
Christopher and Martina Mann, leaders in Biodynamic circles, were looking for a Biodynamic farmer to lease some of their land in East Troy, Wisconsin. I visited several times and, after much heart searching, I decided to move again. We had been on our farm for seven years and Joan felt very much at home there and did not want to leave. This reminded me that, when I first got to America, I remembered going to a Biodynamic conference and meeting an old man. He was disappointed in his life and angry at his family for not letting him follow his dream when he was younger. He had owned a farm and, when they hit hard times, had to sell out. He had joined a dry cleaning business and then bought it, doing well. His dream had been to get back into farming but his family wouldn’t let him. Now he felt that his life had been wasted. I think Joan knew that I would be that person if she didn’t encourage me to take on this new challenge. Eve was already at college and Dave was going to graduate from high school that June, so this was a good time to move. I had to leave in March to get the farm ready for spring and Joan followed after Dave graduated in late June.

CHAPTER SEVEN

SEARCING THE WORLD FOR OUR PLACE

We were now a family, the year was nineteen eighty five. Dave the youngest just turning five, Eve ready for first grade and Joan and I both thirty-five. To keep my mind off the farm and Auction, I had promised us a trip around the world which would include New Zealand. Losing a farm is gut-wrenching and a bit like losing a child. I knew I would not be able to process it right away, so it was better to put my mind on something else first….like a trip. A farmer is defined by his place and work. Although our farm was still run down, people who knew about farming said we had really cleaned the place up. I had been making a cheese that I was proud off and selling it around the country. In my work, I had the daily rhythm of milking and chores and the yearly rhythm of the seasons. Always rushed in the spring, trying to get the crops in the ground, the summer was spent making hay and in the fall getting the corn in or filling the silo one last time. Even winter was busy, feeding and keeping the cows clean and comfortable. There is not much time to think about who you are. I was a farmer with a family. What else was there than that? After selling the farm, I had to confront that existential question and try to work out who I was without a farm. Farming has two sides to it. On the one hand it can be very spiritual. It’s all about birth and death; it’s about creating and destroying matter. In the sacrament of communion in the Christian church, the bread and wine are raised symbolically to the flesh and blood of the risen Christ. Farmers who spend their whole day working in the physical world are like a priest working in nature. We are constantly transforming matter into living substance that feeds mankind. On the other hand, farming is very physical and can drag you down into materialism. Running a farm is a bit like running a truck business. You have to haul feed to the cows and then take all the manure back out to the fields. It pays very very poorly and involves long hours. Maybe that’s why it ranks last on young peoples’ choices of professions.
I was somewhat lost about our future so Joan and I stored all our things in a friend’s barn and left. This time, we went looking around the world for our place, not just around the East Coast. We decided that we needed to retrace our earlier lives and see if we could fit into one of those again. After all the hard work, it was nice to relax and my sciatic leg soon got better. We were still interested in the Camphill Movement and we joined Mourn Grange, a Camphill community in Northern Ireland that was close to where Joan and I had met. I ran the small dairy farm and Joan taught the children and we learned that it wasn’t the right place for us. Although I truly admire Camphill and the intentional communities they create, I was not comfortable and wanted to be more independent. I felt that by joining Camphill I would have to immerse myself in the community and give up my individuality. Later, I felt, I would rise up again, remade and stronger but I was not ready to do that then.
After six months at Mourn Grange, we went to New Zealand, flying Singapore Airlines. Singapore Airlines gave us a special deal where we could have a three-day stay-over for practically free. A nice hotel and all kinds of tours were included. Our little family had a wonderful time being tourists. Singapore was celebrating the New Year which made it a little noisy and crowded but we went to temples, saw traditional dance shows and the usual places to buy stuff. This was very different and exciting for our country children.
We stayed in New Zealand for two wonderful months. We stayed at my sister Liesbet’s farm, with a beautiful Kiwi fruit orchard right on the river. My parents lived twenty minutes away so Eve and Dave finally got to know their grandparents and I was able to reconnect to my roots.
While we were there, my brother Johannes visited with his wife and two children. We had decided that we would rent a camper van and spend three weeks touring the South Island. The four children were new to each other and loved playing together and the wives were also good friends. It was more a question if the two brothers could survive each other in a cramped space. Everything was fine, we were taking turns driving, until I drove under a low overhead bridge and demolished the top of the camper van. Luckily we were close to a distribution point and another van was coming in, in three days. I have to admit I was a little shock up, but Johannes and I decided that we would not rent a car for the next three days as New Zealand has such a good bus service. Low and behold, ten minutes later as we were unloading the camper van, Johannes informed me that he had decided to rent a car without any further discussion. This brought up all kinds of boyhood memories, mainly of my older brother walking all over me and me tagging along as the younger brother. I had spent the last twenty years getting over this and I wasn’t about to fall into old patterns. I was coming down the camper van steps with an arm load of toilet paper as he informed me of his decision. I started yelling at him while throwing rolls of toilet paper in his direction. He drove back to our friend’s house while I caught a bus and walked. We continued our verbal fight in front of the kids and wives, me threatening that the vacation was over but the wives managing to smooth things over. My brother’s parting words were that it was my problem how I felt about our boyhood and not his fault. He was sorry that I was upset but not sorry about how things were when we grew up. Maybe he had a point that it was my problem and not his. I felt good that I had stood up for myself and did not allow our relationship to fall into old patterns. Recently he and his partner visited and in conversations about our youth he did say that he was sorry that it had been so hard for me, he hadn’t been aware of my situation. This made a huge difference to me as how we grow up as a family sets our patterns for life. Patterns that are hard to break out of. Sincere apologies can transform a situation into a positive experience. We ended up having a wonderful vacation and at night Joan and I got to sleep in the tent, rather than in the crowded camper van with all the children.
While in New Zealand, we visited several Biodynamic farms but did not feel called to stay there. At the end of two months it was time to find a place to be and I accepted a position on the farm that belonged to the Kimberton Waldorf School, where Joan had taught eight years previously.

CHAPTER SIX

CRESSET FARM

Joan wrote a book about our first nine months on Cresset farm but it was pretty sanitized. For Joan, writing allowed her to leave the hard times behind and remember the good. She put her heart and soul into the farm and loved the land but if you read between the lines, it was rough. It was primitive, it was hard work and all the money went into the farm. As she had little knowledge of farming, it was hard for her to have much input so she just followed my ideas. While we were in Camphill, we had saved twenty- eight thousand dollars, which really was not enough to buy a farm with the cows and equipment. Our borrowing institution was Farmers Home Administration, which really worked with us, giving us a hundred thousand dollar thirty-year mortgage at three percent on the farm and a forty thousand dollar seven-year loan for our cattle and machinery. The monthly payments on these loans put a lot of pressure on our budget and did not leave much margin for error.
We did have our hundred and ten acres of good soil but the barn was run down and the dwelling was a big old upstate farm house with no insulation. In the winter it could get so cold that peas soaking over night in water in the kitchen would freeze. Looking back, I could never do that to my wife and children again but it was also a wonderful time. I still feel that that was my best time, even if on some levels it failed. As a young man of twenty-eight, it was wonderful to put my heart and soul into developing the farm. After two years, we were able to buy neighboring land with one hundred and twenty acres. This made it possible to grow all our own feed which was important to me, being part of the Biodynamic model. Soon after that I took a course in homestead cheese making, and we were able to build a cheese house where we made Gouda cheese. We called the farm Cresset Farm. A cresset is a vessel that holds precious oils and we felt that the farm was like a container where special things could happen.
Although Joan was raised in the suburbs of Long Island and was used to having people around and a high standard of living, she was willing to follow me in my dream, be part of the back-to-the-earth movement and raise our family. She was not raised as a farm girl and never did learn how to do some things like driving a tractor, but she was indispensible in other ways. I remember the day our neighbor came driving into our yard and needed my tractor moved so that he could get out to the back. He just assumed that Joan could move it and a look of amazement came over his face when Joan informed him she didn’t know how to start it. Back in the eighties, most wives on family farms could take their turn sitting on the tractor doing chores like raking the hay. But Joan did much more than that. She created the feeling around the house and yard that made it nice to be around. She created community for us. She had a social skill that made people feel at home and wanted.
I have so many special memories. In the summer, after a hard day of making hay, we would all go down to Long Point State Park on Cayuga Lake. At that time it was still undeveloped and there would be few people. It was wonderful to relax, play with the children, swim in the cool water and then have a picnic dinner and talk as the sun went down. By then we had Eve and Dave, and they would sit happily on our laps as the evening became quiet and dusk changed to night.
Joan, being a born teacher, would tell endless stories to the children and knew all kinds of games that kept them busy on long winter days when it was too cold to go outside. In the summer, when there was field work to do, David would enjoy coming out with me on the tractor. After lunch, Joan would happily give me David and promise to get him soon. I knew that the tractor would lull David to sleep after ten minutes or so, but this didn’t bother Joan. He would be sitting in my lap, and after about ten minutes fall asleep. For the rest of the time I would have to hang onto him and prop his head up so it wouldn’t flop around. All the while, I would need one hand free to steer the tractor and lift and drop the implement at the end and beginning of each row. Meanwhile Joan would be enjoying her free time from motherhood and delay her promised return. After lunch, it was nap time for the children and often it was my job to make sure they didn’t play while falling asleep. I would lie on the floor and sometimes I would fall asleep before the children. They would notice and creep out only to be caught by their mother who would also scold me for failing my duty.
We would have festivals at special times and invite friends or later, after Joan started teaching again, the families from her class would visit. People love visiting farms that are still on a human scale and stanchion barns, where the cows are tied and handled on a daily bases, are cozy places to be. For children, it is especially nice when at milking time your teacher or her farmer husband can help you wash a cow’s udder and then squeeze the milk out of the teat. When we started to make cheese we had cheese festivals. One year, we had about seven hundred people visit on one day alone, with cars parked up and down the road. We had a seven-thousand-pound cheese vat and usually made about five hundred pounds of cheese every second day. For the festival, we made cheese in the afternoon so people could see the process and outside we had clowns and musicians entertaining. We kept the cows inside and everything was spick and span. We also had two teams of horses pulling hay wagons for people to ride on, going out to the back of the farm. The timing was just right. It was a beautiful fall day, with all the trees in full autumn color. Especially nice for us was watching Dave, who was four, sitting next to the driver, content as could be for the duration of the festival. For us, the festival was a financial success, as the community found out about our cheese house and we had many repeat customers over the years.
But life was also difficult. We were very cash-strapped and it was hard to sell our cheese. We had forty-five cows and had enough milk to make five hundred pounds of cheese every second day. This was in the early eighties when there was a huge surplus of milk and no milk companies would take on new customers. So we had to keep making cheese, filling our aging room, yet had no money coming in. In addition, as the value of the dollar was high, I could not compete against the imported Gouda cheeses. Imported cheese was coming in at a dollar eighty a pound and I had to sell my cheese at two twenty five or it was better to sell milk. It was just impossible then to wholesale cheese without losing money.
Worse, New York Agriculture and Markets was giving me a hard time. Farming is very regulated and everything has to be inspected and approved, including labeling. Ag and Markets was telling me I could not call my cheese “organic,” as all cheese is organic. This was very upsetting, as organic was what was setting my cheese apart from the competition. This was when organic was just coming into vogue but official standards were not yet in place. Officialdom can be very intimidating so I went to my lawyer who advised me that my farm was worth less than the cost of suing Ag and Markets but I should talk to my local assembly man Steve, who happened to be head of the assembly Ag committee. Steve knew that Ag and Markets had been asked, two years previously, to come up with organic standards but had not bothered about them. Steve kindly inquired where the standards were for organic cheese so I could understand their ruling. One week later I got a letter saying I could call my cheese organic but in future please talk directly to Ag and Markets. Yes, it always feels good to beat the system.
It was difficult to always be depending on interns to get the work done and also share our home with them. It was especially hard in winter. Our sole source of warmth was our wood stove in the living room. The bedrooms upstairs could often get below freezing so we would crowd around the stove to keep warm. A family with two young children and a couple of interns in their twenties was not always very compatible. Getting up in the mornings at four-thirty to milk the cows was especially painful. I would get up without turning the lights on so as not to wake Joan. All the clothing was set out in a special order, long johns first, with the tops still inside the shirt and sweater all ready to be pulled over the head without twisting up and then the bottoms and jeans and socks. Dressing was very quick. Downstairs the woodstove would be stocked up and coveralls put on. The insulated boot liners were always left underneath the stove so the feet were warm and dry. Once in the barn, it was warm as the cows’ bodies and breathing kept the barn above freezing.
I had so much to learn about winters in Upstate New York. In the fall when it was wet, we would make ruts in the lanes when we hauled the corn in from the fields or took out the manure. Then in the winter, the ruts would fill with water and freeze. When it is cold the cows are in the barn most of the time and the gutters behind the cows have to be cleaned on a daily bases. Cows make enough manure to fill a manure spreader every day and it has to be hauled out to compost piles before it freezes. That first year there were many a day that my tractor got stuck in the frozen ruts and I had to go out with a pick and break the ice up. A couple of years later I was able to buy a four-wheel-drive tractor that solved that problem.
With all this hard work and financial pressure, I lost my vision of why I was farming. I was working eighty or ninety hours a week just to get the work done and forgetting about the spiritual side of life. I was just slogging it out to prove that I could make it. This was not enough support for Joan. In the Christian Community wedding ceremony, the priest turns to the man and states:
Walter, shine before Joan
With the light
Which the Risen One
Let’s shine in your spirit

He then turns to the women and states
Joan, follow Walter
In the light
Which the Risen One
Let’s shine in your soul

Joan felt that I was not embodying the spirit light that she needed to be able to follow and therefore she wanted to leave. This was devastating to me and I did not know what to do. I loved Joan and the children and could not imagine life without them. The farm would have been empty without them but I only knew how to farm and could not imagine myself providing the family with what they needed without a farm. I tried to be supportive of her needs. Her parents visited and they went apartment hunting with Joan in Ithaca. Joan applied for Waldorf teaching positions on the East Coast. I remember one night in February, leaving Joan in Boston for a job interview; I was driving through snow storms with Eve and Dave in the back. We couldn’t leave Boston until six at night, as that was when the snow ploughs finally cleared the roads and I had promised my intern I would try to get back for the morning milking. It was still snowing a bit and I remember driving all night on the Massachusetts Turnpike and New York Thruway wedged between tractor trailer trucks with the snow coming at the windshield. We tried stopping for a rest but it was too cold and we could not afford a motel. Years later, Eve told me she never fell asleep and all they knew was that Mom and Dad were changing their lives. We did get home in time for me to put my children to bed and go out and milk. I struggled on while Joan tried to find the right place for her and the children. After I wrote this chapter I asked Eve if she had any memories of those times and she wrote back as a thirty year old women.
Hi Pops,

It is so nice to read your story and bring back memories from that time. Your writing is beautiful. I have lots of memories from our time at Cresset farm. One of my best memories is of Christmas on the farm. I remember going out with you and Dave to pick out and cut down a Christmas tree on Christmas eve, and then hanging popcorn strings and apples on the tree with mom, along with our other ornaments (those gold cymbals and candles). I remember how we went out to the barn and sang to the cows and I remember singing around the tree and telling stories during the holy nights. I remember Christmas quite well in that old house. I remember the fire being lit in the stove near the tree.
I also remember the festivals on the farm and how fun it was to have all those people come visit the farm. I remember times when we had babysitters, and I was always so sad and upset when you left (when I was real young). A lot of my memories are actually around traumatic experiences, like when mom got in that car accident and red paint spilt on me and scared her. I remember playing with Laurie and Jordan and Russell too (and I remember when he died). I remember the auction of the farm and that mom had a splitting headache when it was over and was lying on the couch upstairs in the addition that we added onto the house. I have a memory of seeing a ghost (or some spirit) walking thru my room one early morning and I remember our intern Daren. I could go on with lots more memories but I'll talk to you about them if you want. Anyway, loved reading your chapter..
Around this time of great sadness and uncertainty, I received a great gift that sustained me and changed my life. I had just gone to bed and Joan was still downstairs when a mighty Being entered the room. This Being radiated light and love and communicated to me that I was completely loved and accepted just the way I was. I knew that I had this unbelievable companion that would never leave or stop believing in my goodness. After a while, the Being was gone and I was left in tears of gratitude. I knew that whatever happened, and however painful it was, things would be all right. Somehow this experience changed me so that I could again be the light that Joan needed to experience shining before her. I don’t think much happened outwardly and I still had to work incredibly hard to keep the farm going. Yet I knew that all creation was perfect and loved to an extent unimaginable to us.

Since we first moved to our farm, Joan had been helping to start a Waldorf school in Ithaca, about thirty miles away. When Dave turned three, she started to teach the kindergarten class. The commute was long but she loved the teaching and meeting more people. Then the school had to change location and the commute was over an hour each way. Joan and the children had long days and would come home really tired. We were still struggling with finances on the farm and I felt we were spinning our wheels and going nowhere. With all the hard physical work, my sciatic nerve was bothering me and causing me to limp. Finally, after seven years, we decided to sell the farm. At that time, in 1985, the dairy industry was in disarray and our two neighbors were also going through bankruptcy and having auctions. The investment in our cheese house had no resale value and with the depressed value of dairy farms, Farmers Home Administration said they would buy back all our land and assets for one dollar and forgive all our loans. We were allowed to keep our car and about ten thousand dollars worth of cheese that we sold over the next few months. I was able to sell all the cheese equipment which I then had to deliver to Wisconsin. I still remember shutting the door to the U Haul truck, before driving out, thinking that I was closing the door to all my dreams. It is strange how I thought I was selling the farm for the good of the family but years later Joan said she loved it there and would have stayed.