Goat-in-the-Garden Alternative

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 “Preps” arrive!

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

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 »

A Way to Begin a Biodynamic Garden: Spring Spraying

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 »

Native Pollinators and What’s Blooming

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 »

Guest Post by Jillian Lewis:Lesson from the Mighty Oak

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 »

Good Goat!!

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 »

Bee Report: What’s Blooming

Besides plum trees, the black oaks are budding out with miniature red leaves. Baby Black Oak leaves Soon they will have tiny, pollen-filled flowers dangling from them like pearl earrings. Same Black Oak, six days later. The rosemary bushes are still favorites with the bees. The dry season has meant very few wildflowers, at least… Read more »

Plums Trees at Dawn

Rain is coming, they say, all day Wednesday, all Wednesday night. We hope!  Meanwhile, the wild bloom proceeds! Wild plum blossoms on forest edge on red morning (“sailors take warning”)  View Our Lavender Products