Standing amidst ten-foot high blueberry bushes loaded with fruit, I push my garden fork into the ground, lifting dark rich soil teeming with life: earthworms, deep roots, beneficial fungi, microbes, and insects. Using the biodynamic method of growing on my family’s blueberry farm, we have transformed a few inches of decent soil and poor subsoil into over twelve inches of friable, humus enriched, life-filled earth.

Biodynamic farming and gardening originated in 1924 when Rudolf Steiner presented a series of lectures to European farmers who asked him for advice and help after seeing the degradation of plants, seeds, and land caused by artificial fertilizers. These lectures are now known as the Agriculture Course and published as the Spiritual Foundations for the Renewal of Agriculture. Steiner (1861-1925), born in Austria, was a philosopher, author, and founded the Anthroposophical society, Waldorf education, and much more.

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