Anecdotes and Antidotes - Biodynamics at Work

Thun Recipe Brings Earthworms

In Spring 2001, Mary Williams of Bradford, Pennsylvania wrote to Hugh Courtney of her experience with some spray applications to help her mountain soil:

In 1993 we moved to this mountain and found dense yellow clay, everywhere! The tiny meadow encompassing our cabin in the woods had patches of grass, buttercups and rocks, and clay showing through it. The soil was so poorly aerated that nary a worm could ever be found. Compared with the Elm Street Biodynamic garden in town three miles away, the earth quality was truly disheartening. Throughout the ensuing years we landscaped the edges of the clay drainage ditches into planting ovals for growing tomatoes, garlic and anything else the wild critters (chipmunks, raccoons, deer, etc.) didn't relish. Still, in spite of adding our composted material it just never could compare to the wonderful soils of our beloved Elm Street Biodynamic garden. Each year we kept up with a spraying of theThun Recipe [Biodynamic Compound Preparation, a.k.a. Barrel Compost] once or twice, whenever the mood hit us, and with your Milk and Honey spray, when there were drought/stressful conditions. Mostly we sprayed, for the love of the trees and the land, and because I love smelling the Thun Recipe and the Milk and Honey. Now for the definitive news!

In the winter we have to plow back the snow fifty feet into the lawn, because there is so much snow that we wouldn't be able to turn around and get up to our home and down again otherwise. With the plowing, gravel and sod (lots of it) are pushed into the "lawn" and I have to rake it all level again and clean the areas up so no one breaks an ankle. Today [April 11, 2001] I was delighted and ecstatic to find worms, hundreds of them squirming in the sod and gravel; big, fat, healthy worms everywhere I turned. Hurray! That's my story. It was definitely the Thun Recipe, because my consciousness is not that high enough to attract these wonderful beings.

We did start to make our own Thun Recipe two summers ago; but built it on a natural spring, so we had to move it to another area last summer, about 200 feet from the lawn area. After two years it has transformed itself beautifully. Thank you for your help and perseverance with us more unconscious ones, we want to be of help too!


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Reprinted by permission of Applied Biodynamics - News Letter of the Josephine Porter Institute - Woolwine, Virginia - Issue 43