Although the dry winter has also meant fewer wildflowers this year, we can always count on the prolific California buttercup. Its sunny blossoms skip through much of the landscape and last a surprising amount of time throughout the spring. California Buttercup blooms The bad news? They are listed as poisonous to our goats! Fortunately the… Read more »
Anna’s scruffy undercoat on a walk this morning. One of the signs that winter is losing its hold is the shedding of the goats’ undercoats! It is so tempting to brush goats as they look pretty scruffy, yet last night the thermometer dropped to 37 degrees and the wind machines in the valley wined all… Read more »
If you don’t want your goats in your garden, and believe me, you don’t! —then bring your garden (weeds) to your goats! Goats (and llamas) are energetic disposers of weeds, in this case, lots of plantain and mallow, turning this windfall of green into manure to compost. This also cuts down on the hay we… Read more »
Biodynamic Preparations for 2012 arrive! Last Thursday our “preps” for the year arrived in a rather small box. I am always astonished at how little space is required for the preparations which treat 8 farmed acres over the course of the coming year. We repack the earth or compost preps preparations in ceramic and glass… Read more »
The “Spiritualized Earth” and the Birth of the New Consciousness: Analytical Psychology and Biodynamic Farming: What Might Save Us If you are in the Portland area this weekend, consider attending Patricia Damery’s Friday night lecture of the Oregon Friends of Jung at the First Methodist Church on 1838 SW Jefferson Street, Portland. Free parking. $12… Read more »
If you are in the Portland area this weekend, consider attending Patricia Damery’s Friday night lecture of the Oregon Friends of Jung at the First Methodist Church on 1838 SW Jefferson Street, Portland. Free parking. $12 at the door, cash or check. 7:30 pm to 9:30 pm, March 16. She will also be doing a… Read more »
Stirring the horned manure, “500”. We begin the growing year with a biodynamic spray sequence: Barrel Compost (BC Prep), Horned Manure (500), Horned Crystal (501), andthen fermented Equisetum tea. This is a kind of awakening sequence, awakening the soil, the vines, the lavender, and the many other plants growing here, as well as our own… Read more »
Her earliest leaf’s a flower, but only so an hour. (Frost)Opening bud of a native buckeye tree, whose later blooms arepoisonous to honey bees. Many years ago I assisted my ecology/botany sister in her research on native prairie restoration in the Midwest. My job that day was to sit in a square yard of space… Read more »
A Mighty Vally Oak at Sunrise, photo by Patricia Damery by Jillian Lewis I have been in the forest my whole life. I grew up in a rural community that was surrounded by uninhabited forest, and I now work at a state park. Throughout the years, the forest (and nature in general) has taught me… Read more »
Agaleah at work on spring’s first poison oak. There is an old practice, I am told, for building immunity to poison oak. You are to eat a leaf of the plant each day for two weeks, starting when the leaves are tiny and first unfurling from their buds. In this way, you get progressively larger… Read more »
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