Barbara Hedley signs herself 'Bioethical Agriculture Consultant' - I like that, is it what I do, I wonder? No, I am a bridge-building worker bee - bridging the chasm between the information 'haves' and 'have nots'.
Forgive me, I should have introduced myself. I joined this list today and in my next message I shall do an intro. For now, let it be known that I am a colleague (and friend) of Barbara Hedley and Hamish Mackay, a member of the Biodynamic Farming and Gardening Association in Australia, I know a very little about biodynamics and I have a few bright ideas. To get to the point - chamomile. Five years ago I suddenly began to be assailed by violent debilitating headaches which put me in bed, totally energyless, for three days. Nothing chemical would shift them, I had to wait until they passed off naturally. I have suffered from headaches for most of my life but nothing like these. They all began on the left side of the head, moving subsequently to cover both temples, then down the right side before finally disappearing. The headaches I was used to were almost without exception confined to one side or the other. Those on the left side were stomach-related and I could cure them with paracetamol. Those on the right were caused by tension or stiff neck - a soluble codeine/aspirin mix such as Solcode (now extinct) or Aspalgin did the job there. Sometimes I used both in combination. The naturopath I visited (and her successor when she moved away) uses a diagnostic and treatment system called Vegatesting. My interpretation of how it works and what it does is that it is a form of radionics. At first I thought it was mumbo jumbo - sitting for an hour and a half in a circuit with a human who asked questions of the cosmos (apparently) and two machines, one of which held vials of fluid and the other beeped, whirred or burped according to whatever. After an hour I was told I had a list of ailments including heavy metal toxicity, depressed immune system, the non-HIV form of hepatitis - and Ross River Virus. That's the cause of the headaches, I was advised, would I like to know how long it had been in my system? Yes, I would. What followed was illuminating. The naturopath touched my left thumb with her stylus (in my right hand I held a cylindrical contact) and asked 'How long has this person had this disease - one year? Five years? More than five years?' Each time the noise machine whistled, indicating a 'Yes' answer. She worked her way up to 15-20 years before it became uncertain, dropping down the scale. "I cannot get it closer than that," she said apologetically. I stared at her, thinking. It was late February 1997 and my headaches had begun five weeks before. (You should note that I knew nothing of BD or radionics then; did not even come across the terminology until early 2001.) I counted back 20 years - 1977 - went forward five, one by one. "What carries Ross River Virus?" I asked. "A certain sort of mosquito found in sub-tropical conditions." I nodded. "In the midsummer of 1979 I was living in Canberra with my first wife," I said. "I went on a driving holiday around part of NSW on my own, staying at caravan parks. At least that was my intention. The first night I stayed at Wellington, a small town not far to the north of the national capital by Australian standards. The second I reached Parkes, not much further north because I had dawdled on the way. It was incredibly hot and dry and the whole region was suffering from drought, very little water in reservoirs, dead sheep and cattle about, awful. I woke up on the third morning with a dreadful headache like I had never had before." I paused, remembering. How strange it was. "One of these headaches," I continued slowly. "The first. Good heavens, I'd forgotten all about it." The lady smiled at my confusion, asked me whether I had been in similar conditions recently. Yes, I had; Robin (my wife) and I had returned five weeks before from two weeks in Brisbane in sub-tropical Queensland. She nodded. "You were bitten again, quite likely. That would do it. RRVcan lie dormant for years and be re-triggered by another attack. Now I'll work out the remedy." Which she did. It contained chamomile. As the weeks and months passed, the headaches diminished. I found that chamomile as a tea was as effective (if not moreso) than paracetamol in getting rid of the 'ordinary' left side of the head aches. I also learned my lesson as far as radionics is concerned. Came the day I decided it was all hoo-ha and gobbledy-gook and went off the herbs and homeopathic solutions. At that time I hadn't had a 'bad' headache for over two months; three days later I was in bed in agony! Over four years they got my headaches down to two hours every few months. That is where we are at today. I've learned a lot. I know when I'm beginning one and what to do to combat it. I don't lose my energy any more. Two days ago I went to see Lisa (the successor). She's in Cooma 120 kilometers (70 miles away). She's treated me for the last two years or so. Amongst other things I tested positive for chlorine and DDT. The first I can handle, it's in the water supply and we can filter it out. The other? Don't know where it's come from but I walk over a lot of paddocks and I react to energies around me. The herbal remedies she prescribed for me (I have a few things wrong again) include chamomile, nettle, equisetum, licorice, dandelion, mugwort, hypericum. Drainage (including rescue remedy) to get rid of the chlorine and ddt. Grey Spiderflower and Hibertia (?) for the emotions. She also recommended I drink Rose Hip tea now and then. There are two landcare projects I'm involved with at a little place called Dalgety in the Snowy Mountains. One is known as the Rockwell Tree Planting. On the shore of a creek, six hundred yards about, planted with eucalypts and wattles in two plots of 400 and 150 yards, a little space of rocks separating them. Most of the trees in the long plot are good, thriving, some of them huge by comparison with the rest. Most in the other, including 90% of the wattles, are dead. They were all planted at the same time less than 2 years ago. It's an area of low rainfall but that's not the cause. The first time I walked over it I got chronic diarrhoea. No warning - one minute OK, next a headache, next the you-know-whats. When Barbara Hedley visited Rockwell, she 'saw' a massacre on the long section of the planting, white on white, and began a healing process. I 'dowsed' the period as 1850-1880. On my next visit, I came away from the short section with a recipe burning in my head. Chamomile, red clover, dandelion, stinging nettle, rose hips, mullein. Sound familiar? That was 2 months ago. I made up 60 litres and fermented it with molasses. It was sprayed out two weeks ago on that poor section where I believe the graveyard to be. Yesterday I walked on it again and it felt happier. But I won't go there after dark yet, it isn't permitted. BD is a wonderful thing. I do have problems with certain aspects of it. Not the practicalities or what it does or how it does it but that the information isn't travelling far enough, fast enough. A landcare coordinator said to me recently that she thinks BD is wonderful also but the way things are 'it will be at least fifty years' before the message gets across to the average farmer. I agree. 50 years is too late, will be too late for our soils and water quality. We need the information out there now, not in fifty years. Get people started, let them come to the cosmic aspects in their own good time. Don't wait for conditions to be right for they may never be, do it now. Listen to your tribal voice and get going. Sorry if I offend anyone, it is not my intention. In truth, I am here to learn. Apart from my delayed intro, if anyone wants to know more about me, ask Barbara; she knows me better than I do. Cheers Roger Barbara masquerading as James Hedley wrote: > > > I have been interested lately in what the individual preps do. We > always seem to use the compost preps in a block to add to compost or > to brews or to cow pat pit. So I began reading again about the > individual preps. The description and pictures of the chamomile in the > intestine of the cow, while the prep 503 was being made, set me > thinking. Then I was at a workshop on BD and someone said that this > was about the digestive process in the compost heap. I realised at > that moment that it was about the digestive gesture or energy, full > stop - in anything. >
