Farmer Frankie's foray into fromage

Written to Move by Yourself by Donavon Frankenreiter*

Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth.
- Muhammad Ali

Farmer Frankie was at it again this week, enhancing her portfolio of farm skills to include cheese making, and not a moment to soon as Bolina is scheduled to calve sometime in May, with Alfheim's dairy production to commence shortly thereafter. On Wednesday, Lone and Marina joined our very own Parabuina cowboy, Beto, at the sitio of his wife's uncle, Sebastião, where Paulo Urbano showed them the secrets of caseiro cheese production. As the principle beneficiary of Farmer Frankie's newly-acquired talent, I, of course, fully support her commitment to further education.

When not cooking the curds, Farmer Frankie reverted to her other role as head witch of Eastwick, helped along by her trusty apprentice, Marina, and spent a day burying manure-filled cows' horns as the first step in creating Preparation 500.

Otherwise known as Preparation 500 to Biodynamic farmers worldwide, manure–filled cows' horns are buried on the autumnal equinox and carefully unearthed exactly six months later on the spring equinox, the first day of spring. The manure is removed and stirred with water in a process called "dynamization", which creates a vortex that cosmic energy can be funneled into. The homemade brew is then sprayed upon the fields to stimulate the soil, promote root activity and contribute to good bacteria growth.

Since purchasing Alfheim in late May 2008, I have repeatedly been asked to explain the distinction between biodynamic and organic farming? The short answer: there is no short answer. That said I have assembled a couple of paragraphs below which I hope will prove helpful in sketching the contours of a response:

What distinguishes a Demeter certified Biodynamic® farm from a certified organic farm is that, in its entirety, a Demeter Biodynamic farm is managed as a living organism. This is the fundamental principal of the Biodynamic farming method. The special body of knowledge, which underlies Biodynamic agriculture, is derived from Rudolf Steiner’s “Agricultural Course”, and the spiritual context of Anthroposophy, within which this Course was originally held.

The Biodynamic method dates back to 1924 and is one of the original approaches to organized organic farming worldwide. In day-to-day practice Biodynamic farming involves managing a farm within the context of the principles of a living organism. A concise model of a living organism ideal would be a wilderness forest. In such a system there is a high degree of self-sufficiency in all of the realms of biological survival. Fertility and feed arise out of the recycling of the organic material the system generates. Avoidance of pest species is based on biological vigor and its intrinsic biological and genetic diversity. Water is efficiently cycled through the system.

Over the years, Demeter certified Biodynamic® farming has maintained its expansive view of the farm as a living organism. In addition to the requirements of organic certification, Biodynamic standards include a biodiversity set aside of 10% of total land, rigorous processing standards that emphasize minimal product manipulation, and perhaps most importantly whole farm certification (versus a particular crop or area). It is the highest paradigm of sustainable farming, offering one of the smallest carbon footprints of any agricultural method.

An important environmental value of Biodynamic farming is that it does not depend on the mining of the earth’s natural resource base. Instead it emphasizes contributing to it. As such, it is a farming philosophy that results in one of the lightest carbon footprints of any agricultural method.

In other news, Marcos and his father began construction on our new (grain) storage room while Clair whitewashed the outside of the building...after hanging up the biggest banana cluster I have ever seen (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)!

Also, the constant, massive rains finally took their toll on the stone bridge that leads from the gate to the main house.

This week's fauna.

Saturday's wedding was great fun...Tatiana and Walter were radiant!

Finally, for all of us who continue to believe that we can multitask, I leave you (and me) with the following provocative observation:

In 2005, a psychiatrist at King’s College in London administered IQ tests to three groups: the first did nothing but perform the IQ test, the second was distracted by e-mail and ringing phones, and the third was stoned on marijuana. Not surprisingly, the first group did better than the other two by an average of 10 points. The e-mailers, on the other hands, did worse than the stoners by an average of 6 points [10].
- “Can’t Get No Satisfaction,” New York Magazine, Dec. 4, 2006

* If you ever get a chance to catch Donavon Frankenreiter live...don't pass it up...he is electrifying!