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.