Toivo, our home for two weeks, is a small biodynamic farm in the lakes district northeast of Helsinki. A biodynamic farm is an organic farm that follows a particular set of principles, established by the scientist and philosopher Rudolf Steiner. These principles center on the idea of connecting more deeply to the elements around us and enriching the soil, our food sources and our bodies both spiritually as well as physically.
One of the major components of this philosophy is the organization of farm activities around particular celestial conditions. For example, the farmers determine good planting times based on the phase of the moon and the particular qualities of earth, air, wind and fire. In fact, there is a yearly booklet for each country where biodynamic farming is practiced with a calendar showing when it is good and bad to plant or harvest certain crops. they are separated into fruits, roots, flowers and leaves. Unfortunately the only two copies of this booklet in the house are in Finnish and French, so we haven't had much luck understanding the details of this system! But the permanent residents here have done their best to explain the basics to us.
Of course, the prescriptions for the timing of farm activities must be taken with a grain of salt. At Toivo, they try their best to follow the calendar, but sometimes the circumstances at hand make it difficult. For instance, this year the planting was behind schedule and we had to rush to finish before the date by which the EU mandates that all planting must be done. Kaisa, one of the permanent farm members, told us that she is first and foremost concerned with following organic practices and then incorporating biodynamic principles as able. Nonetheless, the farm has been biodynamic for its thirty-some years in existence, and all the permanent members seem to be committed to continuing this.
A biodynamic ritual that we participated in yesterday was the annual anointment of the fields. In the fall, the farmers fill a cow horn with cow manure and bury it in the field. This is meant to counterbalance the extraction that is taking place at that time, i.e. the harvest. Cows are particularly sacred animals because they consume green matter, absorbing its energy but returning some of that back to the ground as manure. What's more, their horns are always pointed towards the sky, and so absorb a lot of cosmic energy. While the horn is buried over the winter, it continues to absorb cosmic energy, enriching the manure contained inside. In the spring, the farmers remove the horn from the ground, again balancing against the dominant activity of that season, planting. They then mix the manure from the horn into water (for one hour, first creating a vortex in one direction, then a vortex in the opposite, as in the photos below) to be able to spread it over the fields. Here's where we came in. Using small balsam fir (Christmas tree) boughs, we flung the manure water from buckets while wandering over the fields. Toivo was completing this ritual a bit late in the season - generally it is done before any planting - so we just did the fields that did not have crops in them.
Anna mixing the manure into a barrel of water.
This ritual is supposed to enrich the soil, making the nutrients more accessible to the plants that will grow there. But, perhaps more importantly, it is about imbuing the soil with one's good intentions, the well wishes for a fruitful season. There was some debate in the car ride home about the validity of this practice, whether the spreading of this special manure makes any physical difference. Anna, a farmer here at Toivo and the resident expert on biodynamics, says a German scientist has been experimenting with different growing practices and has found that the biodynamic activities do result in higher productivity compared to straight organic. Whether this is true or not, Anna and the other farmers certainly believe that we must treat the earth with care and respect and enrich it through our physical practices and with our spiritual energy. Jussi, a longtime volunteer, likes to joke that "these things fall into one of two groups: the mysteries of the universe or the amazing human capacity for self-deception. In this case it is unclear which!"
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