Dear Frank and All: Frank wrote: <<Woody, have some compassion on your land poor, cow deprived urban and >suburban brethren, eh? If biodynamics is ever going to be mainstreamed, it >will have to address the situations in which the family cow is just not a >possibility. >So what do you suggest? >Frank Teuton---noting that to err is human, to moo, bovine.....:-)>>
What I said was that cow-based compost is the gold standard, to which every other form of compost can be compared. I've made plant-based compost, hundreds of tons of it with the RS preparations, that was pretty darn good. Earthworm digestion is a wonderful second-best to the bovine version. So that's what I suggest. "Brought in" manure from a commercial dairy or feedlot is not a good option, nor is brought in horse manure...not only because of the various wormers, antibiotics, hormones, etc. that may be in there, but also because of the potentially damaged animal astrality from less-than-humanely treated animals that comes along with it. Shep Ogden's is a curiously derived criticism of cow manure, as he is thinking in terms of what the cow extracts from the plant material, but not what she adds on the subtle end of the scale. We must always remember that we're dealing with FORCES here as much as we are substances. Anyway it's perfectly possible to make very acceptable soil-building compost from all plant material. And it's possible to enhance it with the Steiner compost preparations and with homeopathic amounts of "starter" compost from a farm that makes the real thing with cow manure. Divine Regards, Woody, Aurora Farm http://www.kootenay.com/~aurora -----Original Message----- From: Frank Teuton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Friday, December 21, 2001 5:45 AM Subject: Re: Milking the Home-based Compost machine Re: Soil building with plant matter compost > > >> >> Bovinely, >> >> Woody [PS-for all the folderol about plant-based vs. animal-based compost >> material, no one has mentioned the obvious: that the cow manure IS plant >> material, run through the most awesome digestive system in the known >> universe.] > > >Too obvious, even, eh? Sam Ogden once wrote that a vegetative compost has >everything in it that manure does, plus what the animal didn't take out of >it....I think we all know that cows eat plants, plus a few microarthropods >and yer occasional cow parasite.... > >Someone writing within the biodynamic paradigm who nevertheless >distinguishes between composts made from cow manure and those made directly >from plants, is Heinz Grotzke: > >http://www.acresusa.com/books/closeup.asp?prodid=130&catid=14&pcid=2 > >And, like Coleman and Steve Moore who Allan mentioned earlier in this >thread, Grotzke recommends veganic compost in the greenhouse, where he >suggests a manure based compost can cause problems. > >Woody, have some compassion on your land poor, cow deprived urban and >suburban brethren, eh? If biodynamics is ever going to be mainstreamed, it >will have to address the situations in which the family cow is just not a >possibility. > >So what do you suggest? > >Frank Teuton---noting that to err is human, to moo, bovine.....:-) >
