I began to fall into a trance as I swirled the “Preparation 500” around in the blue bucket of water with a five-foot stick. The morning was magical; the sun peaked through the clouds over the peaks, the aspens on the hills were just starting to turn green, and the garlic planted last fall was one foot high. The smooth, glassy, chocolate vortex was one of my best ones of the morning. We had been stirring for almost an hour- could it be that the water was becoming “trained” as Jed said?

No, this wasn’t a new way to brew coffee. The BD 500 or “horn-manure” was a biodynamic preparation made from cow dung fermented in a cow horn that had been buried in the ground all winter. The vortex we created as we mixed it with water was meant to funnel cosmic energy into the preparation. When exactly one hour was up we walked up and down the organic paddocks with 5-gallon pickle buckets and flung it around with a whisk broom.

Jed is a biodynamic, organic farmer and propriotor of Cosmic Apple Farms, a 20-acre Community Supported Agriculture farm with 200 members in Teton Valley, Idaho. Jed hopes to enhance the “life energy” of his farm by following the advice of Austrian mystic and scientist, Rudolph Steiner, who founded Biodynamics in the 1920’s as an alternative to conventional farming. In a nutshell, biodynamics combines “biological” practices like organic farming techniques that improve soil health, and “dynamic” practices that are intended to influence biological and metaphysical aspects of the farm by aligning to energetic forces and adapting to the natural astrological rhythms of the universe. All I know is the Cosmic Apple veggies are amazing, the animals are thriving, and Jed’s energy is contagious.

“We” were “the Friday work shares” who had committed to laboring five hours a week for six months in exchange for our share of the weekly harvest. We were a writer, a computer programmer, a waitress, a social worker, and a 42-year old mother of six who suffers from MS. She had driven an unbelievable two hours through over 100 miles of rural Idaho’s potato farms to arrive by 7 am to learn about organic farming. I assume (because 80% of Eastern Idaho is) that she is Mormon and can only imagine what she must be thinking…but she seems to be the most open-minded of all of us.

Thoughts that I might, along with Jed, have gone crazy along entered my mind periodically. They were quickly brushed away by a firm belief that modern chemical agriculture is destroying the planet and there has to be a better way. While we took turns stirring we read from Jed’s tattered copy of Secrets of the Soil: New Solutions for Restoring Our Planet. The factual information it provides about mankind’s stupidity can break you heart, but it offers practical ways for each of us to help heal the soil and ourselves.

Jed tells us his neighbors- traditional farmers with deep roots in chemical agriculture- told him for the first time this year that the Cosmic Apple fields turned green much earlier than theirs. “No one know how it works, but it definitely works,” says Jed with a big smile. His wide eyes, wild curly hair, and funky laugh bring to mind Gene Wilder as the mad scientist in Frankenstein.

I had bought a share of Cosmic Apple’s harvest for two years but this spring we were broke and it was time for me to “walk the talk” and see for myself what farming was all about. Many of us who preach sustainable agriculture talk about our loss of connection with our foodand the land. I have an idealistic, fuzzy bunny view of farmers and in the back of my mind fantasize about giving it all up and moving to the New Zealand countryside. I’m sure the reality of farming is very different. Five hours a week will be a good start. My friend Jade says she’s doing it to get in touch with her “labor” side. Hmmm…

What I know for sure is my 4-year old daughter, Mariela, was filled with joy when she and my husband came to pick me up. Jed’s partner Dale let her go into the chicken coop and gather two dozen warm, fresh, bloody, poopy eggs. They were so big we couldn’t close the egg cartons. To my great relief Mariela asked for eggs the next morning (she had been eating Quaker Instant “Dinosaur Egg” oatmeal packets left by a house guest for two straight weeks). Scrammbling the eggs I noticed my arms were sore. My face is tanned, my mind is calm and today I’m inspired to weed my backyard strawberry patch. Life is good.

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