http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/environment/article312087.ece
Extreme organic


Seeding by star-chart, burying stuffed cows' horns... Witchcraft? Or
farming? Adharanand Finn finds out



Published: 12 September 2005



Hapstead Farm looks like any other smallholding. Franky van der Stok is
cleaning up after milking the cows, sheep can be heard across the rolling
Devon fields and there is a strong smell of hay and manure. Everything
appears normal. But, below the surface, strange things are happening.

In one corner of the vegetable garden, a cow's horn has just been dug up. It
had been filled with manure and buried there by van der Stok at the start of
the winter. Later, a single handful of the manure from the horn, turned hard
and odourless over the cold months underground, will be added to a large
barrel of water and stirred for exactly one hour. Then, on a night when the
stars are aligned, the finished mixture will be sprayed over the land.

This process, which even van der Stok admits is "a bit off the wall", is
integral to the way Hapstead Farm runs. It's part of the biodynamic ethos
that governs his farming practices, a form of extreme organic farming, or
gardening, that combines astrology and philosophy.

Biodynamics was invented back in the 1920s by the Austrian philosopher
Rudolf Steiner, and it has recently seen a surge of interest in this
country. There are currently 120 commercial biodynamic farms registered in
the UK.

The notion works by treating each farm as a self-contained unit, where
nothing is brought in from the outside and the animals that live there both
fertilise the land and eat from it. "The interrelation between the animals
and the land is key," says van der Stok. Other soil preparations include
stuffing the small intestines of slaughtered cows full of herbs, and burying
stags' bladders. Van der Stok, who has been doing this for over 30 years,
says he is still trying to fathom why these preparations work, but he is
convinced that they do.

The right balance of animals on the farm is also important, he explains. "If
you have too many sheep, for example, the land becomes sheep-sick." At
Hapstead, a small farm of just 60 acres, there are 30 cows and 60 sheep, as
well as pigs, chickens and a horse. Van der Stok says that, because of the
way the land is shared by the animals, and because they all use it in
different ways, he has never had to dip or worm his sheep, as conventional
farmers do. He rarely has problems with pests. "If a plant forms itself
properly, it has less problems," he says.

Conventional farmers are usually impressed with his results. But, he says,
they always feel that they couldn't do it themselves. "After all, there's no
scientific proof that it works," he says. So, there is an element of belief
required? I ask him. "Yes," he says, nodding certainly.

Astrology also plays an important role in biodynamics. Seeds are planted
according to a star calendar, which gives the exact time for different
plants to be sown, according to the alignment of the planets. Van der Stok
thinks this goes a bit far, specifying the exact minute, but he does use the
calendar as a guide.

This may all sound a bit fantastic, but, as van der Stok points out, if the
Moon can move the oceans, then maybe it can affect the soil. Certainly, the
growth of biodynamics in recent years suggests that there is method amid the
apparent madness. And it's not only in the UK that biodynamics is popular.
The heart of the movement is in Germany, where there are more than 1,400
biodynamic products available. And in Egypt, a huge biodynamic farm has
grown up out of the desert just outside Cairo, producing everything from
fruit and vegetables, to cotton, herbs and spices. The success of the farm
has led to more than 800 other Egyptian farmers turning to biodynamics.

Van der Stok is adamant that biodynamic food tastes better. "We once had a
bad beetroot crop so we bought some from the supermarket," he says. "It
tasted shit," he says.

He is not alone in appreciating the taste of biodynamic produce. It may be
some time, however, before the shelves of Tesco are laden with biodynamic
produce. Unlike conventional, or even organic, farming, success in
biodynamics is not measured in terms of profits, or even by the quality of
the food, but by the health of the farm.

"The idea that the land can be overworked to make money is a falsity and can
lead to problems," says van der Stok. In fact, one of the problems arising
from over-extensive farming is now threatening the very existence of
biodynamics, at least in Europe. Restrictions on how dead animals are
disposed of, brought in to combat the spread of BSE, make many of the
practices used in biodynamic farming virtually impossible to follow. This is
ironic considering that as long ago as 1919, Rudolf Steiner wrote: "If we
feed animals to animals, it will make them mad."

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