Ep. 336 Monty Waldin on Biodynamic Wine | Biodynamic Compost Part 1

Italian wine podcast. Chinchin with Italian wine people. Hello, and welcome to the Italian wine podcast. I'm your host, Monty Walden. In recent years, I've noticed increasing interest in ideas such as organic wines, so called natural wines, and Biodynamic wines. I'll read for you some excerpts from my book Biodynamic wine, and follow-up with some commentary on the topics covered for those interested in acquiring the full biodynamic wine text. It's available from my publisher, infinite ideas, who right now is offering a discount of fifteen percent. Through July thirty first twenty twenty. To get the discount, use the code, which is bio fifteen off at infiniteideas dot com. That's bio, which is b I o one five o f f. Last week, we touched on biodynamic preparations that are applied to fields as sprays. And this week, we'll get to know a few of the treatments that are actually prepared as compost. Let's begin straight away with three of the remaining six biodynamic compost preparations. These include yellow, chamomile, and stinging nettle. Six compost preparations. Rudolphsteiner created the six biodynamic compost preparations, which are yarrow, chamomile, stinging nettle, oak bark, dandelion, and valerian, as a response to modern methods of fertilizing which, in his words, sometimes give a astonishing looking results, but risk ultimately turning potentially top quality crops into mere stomach fillers. He said, they will no longer have real nutritive power for human beings. It is important not to be deceived by things that look big and swollen, are hydroponically grown tomato perhaps. What is important is that their appearance be resistant with real nutritive power, meaning food which could nourish both body and spirit. Steiner said making the biodynamic compost preparations does take a certain amount of work, but if you stop and think, it actually takes less work than all the fooling around in chemical laboratories that goes on in the name of agriculture and which also has to be paid for somehow. You will find that what we have discussed is much more economical, those are his words. The yarrow preparation five zero it's called sometimes by the yarrow preparation. Rudolf Steiner, said yarrow has a beneficial effect simply by its mere presence. Yarrow or Aquile millefolium is a member of the Daisy family. It's a hardy, persistent, and perennial herb often considered a weed, but sometimes sown as a vineyard cover crop. It grows wild up to waist height in Europe and North in patches along road sides and in pastures and meadows. The flowers, small and finely divided, are white, creamy yellow or pink in colour. Making the yarrow compost preparation. The yarrow flowers are collected in sunny weather, but only when all the florets in the cluster have opened. The florets can be dried on Hessy and sack or on slatted trays, or they can be hung in bunches in an airy room as for herb teas. When Rudolphstein talked of using gyro in his words in the right way in our compost, What he meant was that the florets had to be prepared by being stuffed into the bladder of a red deer stag and remain there for six months. Steiner said that putting yarrow into the deer bladder, quote, significantly enhanced is its inherent ability to combine sulfur with other substances. In steiner speak, sulfur is the element which by carrying the quote's spiritual force or will organizes how matter For example, the carbon plants absorb from the atmosphere which becomes carbon rich compost and the key mac grown nutrient potassium is formed, shaped, sculpted. If any preparation could be it at a microcosm of biodynamics, yarrow is it. In spring, the fill bladders are hung in a dry place exposed to the sun facing the equator and remain there until autumn when they are buried. The aim is to expose the filled bladders to the same weather conditions as will affect the farm during spring and summer. After spending a full summer outside side, the fill bladders should be taken down in autumn from the hanging place and buried for the duration of winter. The fill bladders should be dug up in late spring or just after mid a day at the latest. The excavated arrow preparation should be light brown in colour and feathery light in texture. The contents of a single stag's bladder should produce enough yarrow preparation to treat two fifty hectares of cropland. Calimal five zero three, both chamomile tea bags and sausages, pork, beef, tofu, feature in almost every contemporary kitchen. Yet the no of combining both in a chamomile sausage, which is what this preparation is, seems anaphne. But having made chamomile sausages for the first time, you might conclude that although biodynamics is bizarre, modern life is even more so because so few of us in our blithely disconnected from the food we eat world have ever had to make any kind of sausages before, whether meat, tofu, chamomile, or otherwise. Rudolph Steiner said that the chamomile five zero three preparation helps compost to have a more stable nitrogen content. Its effect is to enliven the soil in such a way that plant growth will be stimulated and more vital. Camelmar's ability to reign in nitrogen, to hold in the life forces seems arbitrary until one understands that before refrigerators were invented, chamomile was used to preserve meat, preventing putrefaction and the forces of decay. Making the chamomile five zero three compost preparation. Although several varieties of chamomile exist, the flowers needed for this compost preparation should come from true or German chamomile. Or matricaria Camamilla. Camweil is a member of the Daisy family. It is an annual plant which dies off after mid summer. Soon after it is set and dispersed its seeds Peter Proctor says, quote, it has a mercurial quality and tends to pop up in different places each year. If relatively large quantities of chamomile are needed, it is best to start picking the flowers as soon as flowering begins, which is toward the end of May or early June in the Northern Hemisphere flowers, which are to be stuffed immediately into fresh cow intestines for hanging over summer before burial should be allowed to wilt slightly first. If the flowers are to be used in intestines, which will be both filled and buried in autumn, then it is recommended to dry them as moist flowers are likely to turn moldy when stored. The cow intestines should be fresh, ideally from animals reared on your own agricultural holding. The filled cow intestines are usually buried in autumn, but in handwritten notes for his nineteen twenty four agriculture course, steiner suggested that both the chamomile and dandelion compost preparations would benefit from spending six months hanging in a tree before being buried in the ground. In a similar way to the stag splatter for the yellow preparation. Steiner directed that this preparation be dug up around spring equinox. Kamomar sausages buried the previous autumn rather than the previous spring may wait another month or two. Using the chamomile five zero three compost preparation, roughly ten units of chamomile flowers will produce just a single unit of the finished preparation, a single unit being enough seven to ten tons of compost. A thirty centimeter long chamomile sausage should produce enough of this compost preparation to treat one hundred hectares of cropland. Stinging nettle five zero four. Stinging nettle is the easiest of these six compost preparations to make. Even if you'll need to collect great arm falls of nettles just to make a handful of preparations and do so when the nettles stings are at their most potent. When the midsummer sun is at its most sweat inducing, and the plants pollen at its most sneeze inducing. Stinging nettle is the only one of the five compost preparations to be prepared without being in case in an animal sheath as a sense organ. Stinging nettle in either its wild form or as a compost preparation and even as a soil spray has many uses for soil. It warms in the sense of softens, its appearance, the soil's appearance with this. What we mean there? It balances excesses of both iron and nitrogen. It gets otherwise blocked soil minerals moving. It activates enzymes beneficial for crop roots. It makes heavy soils more porous. It builds humus and prepare soil for nitrogen fixation. Making the stinging nettle five zero four compost preparation. When collecting these stinging nettles, Steiner said to collect the whole plant when it is in flower. The flowers, leaves, and stems can be used to make the preparation, but not the roots. Steiner said the freshly wilted singing nettles can be compressed a bit and then put straight into a pit in the ground. Although a thin layer of loose peat or something similar around the sides does help separate the nettles from the surrounding soil. Filling the pit is easier if the nettles are bunched tightly or are stuffed into a coarse sack like a burlap. This separates the nettles from the peat layer, and this will also makes scraping away any moss or peat used to line the pit when excavating the preparation much easier. Steiner said that the nettles should spend winter and also the following summer in the ground, they need to be buried for a whole year. Then you will have a substantiality that is extremely effective is what he said. The implication here is that harvesting stinging nettles in late spring, bearing them immediately, and digging them up exactly a year later, risks making an immature less fully transformed, and thus less powerful preparation. Because when steiner said the stinging nettles must spend, quotes, the following summer underground, he meant the whole of the second summer up to and until autumn Equinox. Steiner said that Steam Netel was a real jack of all trades capable of doing many different things. Use in the steamedettle five zero four compost preparation. This preparation can be produced in large quantities and can be used generously. These have been just three of our six Spidemic compost preparations. We'll save the remaining three Oakbark, Dandelion, and Valerian for next week. Bear in mind that this is just a very general overview of the preparations themselves and what they involve, my book, biodynamic wine, covers each of these treatments in greater detail and laws, some of the reasoning that led Rudolphsteiner and some of his contemporaries to the development of these preparations. As always, thank you for listening to the Italian wine podcast and join us next week for more Biodynamic wine and Biodynamic preparations. If you're interested in my book, Biodynamic wine, my publisher, infinite ideas is currently offering fifteen percent off through July the thirty first two thousand and twenty with offer code bio one five OFF. Listen to the Italian one podcast wherever you get your podcasts. We're on SoundCloud, Apple Podcasts, HimalIFM, and more. Don't forget to subscribe and rate the show. If you enjoy listening, please consider donating through Italian wine podcast dot com. Any amount helps cover equipment, production, and publication costs. Until next time, chi chi