Merla wrote > > Andrew looked like he'd been hit by a ton of bricks. "I've been using > Bio-Dynamics for some years now. Let's chat about it at our place. My wife is > baking so we'll have something to snack on. I'll put the tools back in the > trunk." > > 'Thanks for your help with the white beast. I'd be quite interested in a tour > of your place and a cup of tea. The lady climbed back in the rented car and > off they went...
As they cruised back down the gravel road she noticed the vertical plastic pipe in a new wheat crop (almost like the pipe she had seen at the BD conference last fall), and as they pulled up in the farmyard another beside the house, different, a bigger size but plain pipe with something pointing out the top. Walking past a small herb garden Andrew stopped, " just watch this little feller don't frighten you, he's having his last warm up before winter sets in" a rough coated, prickly looking lizard, slim built and about a foot long, sunning on a log border, and almost the same colour as the timber. Andrew knelt and slowly poked his finger toward the lizard's nose, at about eight inches he arched up off the log and projected a spikey collar a couple of inches out around his neck, hissing, trying his best to look mean, he subsided as soon as the finger moved away. "The bearded dragon" Andrew explained," we call 'em frill neck lizards, the Japanese tourists go mad over 'em. They're everywhere round the yard since we put that pipe up out the side and we dont have snakes around the house anymore!" "So" the Idaho lady asks " is that a Hugh Lovel broadcaster and how would it affect snakes and lizards?" " No, its a Callahan type, paramagnetic tower, just a plastic pipe full of rock dust with a crystal on top - I've heard that reptiles are highly sensitive to energies and it seems we may have moved the balance a little in favour of lizards - not part of the original plan." " you drove past a Hugh Lovel broadcaster on the way in - we have several of those that I made to his design - he's been very helpful" A short haired, smiling lady in gardening gloves appears around the corner of the farmhouse "Thought you were going into town for some pipe bits?-- Ahh you did'nt tell me we were having visitors!" "Did'nt know did I?--how did the cooking go?" "Its too nice a day outside - I'll do that later - you better come in we'll have a cup of tea" The threesome chatted for most of half an hour then Andrew pushed his chair back and said " you better come see my workroom" They walked the hallway and turned right into a small well lit room, cluttered but reasonably tidy, two desks, bookshelves full, a well worn swivel armchair, large storage cupboard, but what caught her attention were the instruments and glassware, there were numerous lab racks of glass vials most of them filled with all sorts and colours of things - an ugly looking pair of pliers lay beside a small silver case open on the first desk. Fitted snugly in the case were black and yellow meters. "OK" he said "we start here, juicing pliers, homemade, these will get juice out of just about any live plant, we use these to get sap samples to test with the refractometer. " But I thought that was something the wine growers did to check sugars in their fruit, how do you use this with a wheat crop" " Any growing crop - we measure the sap brix and that indicates the plant level of health - resistance to diseases and insect pests - but more important we use it to check the plant response to foliar sprays - nutrition." "Then what" she asked, eybrow raised. "Well that brix response is the plant saying ' yes I like that' or 'no dont do that to me right now' and we also test the weeds - often we can make a foliar mix that will increase brix of the crop and decrease brix of the weeds - that puts the weeds at a competitive disadvantage, the crop outgrows them." "Now there are 'sensitive' people that say they can do this testing without instruments - just go out in the field and feel the energies - I won't argue with that - but most of us can't and its one more variable in the chain" " In here I also have pH and conductivity meters, and a probe thermometer, these are for soil testing and mixing brews - did you know you can switch a crop from growth to fruiting mode by tuning up the nutritional energy? pH is a part of that." "Over here now" he indicates the second work desk, this is my favourite gadget, its a potentiser, with this and a little box of Malcolm Rae cards I can make any homeopathic remedy for soil, man or beast" Amanda picks up a tiny glass bottle, the kind you see with perfume samples in the stores - but this one has a green label with a number code - there are lots of these on the desk in little boxes and a slab of new clean ones. "Thats BD500 potentised D6" he says " part of a set for one of the field broadcaster pipes, I'm treating against weeds for a couple of days so I've taken the preps out." She takes a seat on a stool near the second desk and slowly says "I dont think I could figure all this out, it looks so complicated" "Well I guess all the stuff I have here makes it look that way, but like anything else, we can make it as simple or as complicated as we like. Rudolph Steiner laid the foundations many years ago for much of what I do, biodynamic remedies for the soil and atmosphere, peppering of weeds insect and animal pests, its all there in the Agriculture lectures and he urged the Koliskos to experiment with homeopathic dilution - they did an amazing amount of work. Anybody can make up potencies by hand (dilution and succussion) but a MM takes hours that way - three minutes on this little machine. Same with the preps applied by broadcaster - it takes me about half a day every three months and costs almost nothing to treat this whole farm - stirring and spraying manually on 2000 acres is a big job and costs considerable - with the broadcaster it gets done!" Lets leave this for a while and go look at some plants! They do a circuit past the vegie patch on the way out to the car, no sign of insect damage here,"the most important paddock on the farm" he says "and dont let anybody tell you different, we soil test it every year to make sure the minerals are in our food, and it gets special treatment, If I want rubbish food I can buy it in town cheap any time.
