2008 article on biodynamic farming in vineyards

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Luke and Sue sit beneath a tree, scooping up handfuls of ripe manure and packing it tightly into cows' horns. Nearby sit four "sausages" of chamomile wrapped in cow intestines. Both will be buried around the fall equinox and unearthed on the spring equinox after having amassed "etheric and astral forces" – for which the horn serves as an amplifier. The concoctions will then be diluted to form Biodynamic Preparations numbers 500 and 503, respectively. Just half a pound of the manure is considered enough to treat 2.5 acres of land, where it supposedly aids root growth. The chamomile is applied to the compost pile, where it allegedly stimulates growth and stabilizes nitrogen.

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"We do astronomy," says Philippe Armenier, a French-born Biodynamic consultant now living in Santa Rosa. "It is quite complicated. We work with the planets and constellations. Astronomy is for plants. Astrology is for human beings." Armenier and others are fighting a losing battle with the dictionary — one definition of "astrology" is simply "a pseudoscience claiming divination by the positions of the planets and Sun and Moon" — but they appear to be winning the marketing war.

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The winemaker adds that he and other Biodynamicists are also practicing responsible organic and sustainable farming — and yet, "when it comes down to it, the most powerful part of Biodynamics is the preparations." So, more than recycling wastewater, avoiding pesticides and herbicides, and enhancing biodiversity, Benziger believes what really matters is the oak bark in cow skulls, yarrow plant fermented in a deer's bladder, and chamomile in bovine intestines, applied to the field or compost piles at the appropriate dates of the astrological calendar.

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Within these lectures, Steiner prescribed the nine biodynamic preparations. He also imparted advice such as how to rid a field of mice: A farmer should catch a young mouse, skin it, burn it, and spread the ashes about the field when "Venus is in the sign of the Scorpion." The "ashing" of insects, however, must be undertaken when "the Sun is in the sign of the Bull." This, he told the crowd, was how they used to do it back on Atlantis.

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Hugh Courtney is the executive director of the Josephine Porter Institute for Applied Biodynamics, a Virginia nonprofit that makes Biodynamic preparations for farms and vineyards throughout North America. He believes the preparations can bring rain, prevent earthquakes and volcanic activity, and, quite possibly, stave off the apocalyptic "War of All Against All" Steiner predicted would commence at the end of the 20th century.

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No less a figure than Jim Fullmer — the executive director of Demeter-USA, the sole American Biodynamic certification agency — admits that "science hasn't proven our efficacy yet." But, like many Biodynamic advocates, Fullmer went on to claim that Biodynamics has deeper meanings the scientifically minded can't appreciate. As Steiner himself put it, "Spiritual scientific truths are true in and of themselves and do not need to be confirmed by experiments."

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