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Tasting is believing

Esoteric practises, like burying manure inside cows’ horns, has put many people off biodynamic agriculture. Now the sensational flavour—and ­ecological benefits—of biodynamic produce is winning them over.

Now I know a thing or two about organic apples straight from the tree, having gobbled many in my father-in-law’s backyard orchard. And this apple is different from any I’ve eaten before, I exclaim to Saal—it has a more intense, complex taste, which seems to offer many flavours at once. “That’s what we say about biodynamics,” he answers, chomping his own apple.

Greedily, I take another bite, and decide I have no problem with cows’ horns, quartz rock, stags’ bladders, chamomile blossoms, stinging nettles, intricate manure recipes, the full moon, or any other spiritual dimension of farming. Anything that produces an apple this good makes perfect sense to me.

The alchemy of agriculture

Two key recipes for biodynamic farming

Rudolf Steiner (photo) believed there was a spiritual dimension to agriculture (and all of life) that modern science ignored. That belief influenced his formulation of biodynamic farming, which involves processes that may not be readily explained by science but Steiner felt improved soil and crop quality. He prescribed these two preparations for farm fields each year:

• Preparation 500: A small amount of manure is stuffed into a cow horn and buried over the winter. It’s dug up in the spring and sprayed on crops in a solution of 250 to 300 grams (9 to 11 ounces) diluted in 40 to 60 litres (11 to 16 gallons) of water per hectare (2½ acres).
• Preparation 501: Ground quartz is stuffed into a cow horn and buried over the summer. Five grams (less than a quarter of an ounce) of the preparation is stirred into 60 litres (16 gallons) of water per hectare and sprayed on fields several times over the next growing season.

In addition, the following preparations, made from medicinal plants, are added to compost in tiny amounts to improve soil conditions:

• Yarrow blossoms in deer bladders
• Stinging nettle in peat
  
• Chamomile blossoms in cattle intestines
• Oak bark in animal skulls
  
• Dandelion flowers in cow stomachs
• Valerian flowers in water

Jay Walljasper is a senior editor at Ode.

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