Hi Barney,
My posting was in reply to Richard's response and obviously lime is used in Somerset and especially in the more hilly parts of the county where leaching will occur. The terrain here is similar to the Mendip Hills and leaching from the ground does occur.
To me this is just a natural process and because liming is only carried out on productive farmland to maintain fertility attention is drawn to this and
those who a worried by erosion are too quick to draw their conclusions.
They will have it that it is because of farming that the lime is needed well this is true but it is as the result of rainfall and not the actual farming itself that the lime is needed.
JB.

“The plant gathers the secrets of the universe, sinks them into the ground, and the gnomes take these secrets into themselves from what seeps down spiritually to them through the plants. And because the gnomes, particularly from autumn on and through the winter, in their wanderings through ore and rock bear with them what has filtered down to them through the plants, they become those beings within the earth which, as they wander, carry the ideas of the whole universe streaming throughout the earth. We look forth into the wide world. The world is built from universal spirit; it is an embodiment of universal ideas, of universal spirit. The gnomes receive through the plants, which to them are the same as rays of light are to us, the ideas of the universe, and within the earth carry them in full consciousness from metal to metal, from rock to rock.” (Steiner, Agriculture)

The most moderate thing I can say about such statements/beliefs is that this sort of thing is nonsense.

. Does it matter that those who garden biodynamically might feel affronted when told that what they do is claptrap?


If they feel affronted, they should grow up and have the courage of their beliefs.

Being precious is something you cannot afford when you are viewed as eccentic or an outsider..


And if their beliefs are unprovable by experiment, then they are clearly just beliefs with no foundation in fact..


Most of these loony ideas strongly object to scientific methods being applied to them. I wonder why?

Thought for today.

Steiner gets rid of weeds:

You see the weeds growing rampant in a given year. You must accept the fact. Do not be alarmed; say to yourself: Something must now be done. So now you gather a number of seeds of the weed in question. For in the seed the force of which I have just spoken has reached its final culmination. Now light a flame — a simple wood flame is best — and burn the seeds. Carefully gather all the resulting ash. You get comparatively little ash, but that does not matter. Quite literally, for the plants thus treated by letting their seeds pass through the fire and turn to ash, you will have concentrated in the ash the very opposite force to that which is developed in attracting the Moon-forces.
Now use the tiny amount of substance you have thus prepared from a variety of weeds, and scatter it over your fields. You need not take especial care in doing so, for these things work in a wide circumference. Already in the second year you will see, there is far less of the kind of weed you have thus treated. It no longer grows as rampantly. Moreover, many things in Nature being subject to a cycle of four years, after the fourth year you will see, if you continue sprinkling the pepper year by year, the weed will have ceased to exist an the field in question. Here, in fact, you will make fruitful the “effects of smallest entities,” which have now been scientifically proven in our Biological Institute.

It is so easy to mock what people thought in the past, but they were doing their best with the knowledge that they had available at the time, we have had time to build on what our ancestors learned and should be grateful to them for making progress, and maybe as JW says be a little more respectful. In 200 years time someone may ridicule our ideas, in the light of new knowledge. Respect is learned by following a good example. Many of the trailblazers in the past were in fact deeply spiritual, while it takes no skill to sneer and be judgemental, it takes a big man or woman to trailbaze and go against common knowledge or current thinking. We do progress sometimes by turning current thinking on its head - the world was flat once,
and the sun went round our world once, and we could never escape gravity
to enter space because we didn't have the power. Never say never, and keep an open mind.

Johnboy in the interests of peace on this forum I will ignore this remark
others will draw heir own conclusions, as I had not even opened my mouth on the subject when you wrote this/

Just a few pertinent points, NB:



Steiner was saying this nonsense in 1924, not 200 years ago. I think you will find that the agricultural revolution happened well before 1924.

You will, no doubt, not have forgotten this thread.
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=8924



I can't make much sense of this - maybe my fault, or maybe you just made it up.



Can you name some in the fields of animal husbadry, agriculture or horticulture whose ideas are still widely respected and followed?



To which I can only reply: No it wasn't and no it didn't. And those who changed our mistaken perceptions were scientists and assuredly not "deeply spiritual".

He was probably the same age as my Gran Alan and they did not have the kind of education that you enjoyed. My Gran was prejudiced because she was poorly educated, ignorant and frankly frightened of people a different colour, she didn't have the same opportunities we have today, but I loved her for her finer points. He was probably of the same generation, though at the moment with a sick mother to care for and other priorities I don't have the time to answer all your other questions or look up his date of birth
frankly today, the future and loved ones are more important than this discussion about the past and your opinion of someone who is no longer here to defend himself.
Oh and common sense should have told you I know the earth is not flat, but then you are an academic so I will forgive you that one
I once had a friend whose husband was a nuclear scientist, and when he mended her coffee table he nailed it to the floor.

Not sure about your gran's education, NB, but I know my grandmother had very little. But back to Rudolph Steiner. As you seem to know so little about him, here is some biography:

He was born in 1861 and, to quote Wikipedia:

From 1879 to 1883, Steiner attended and then graduated from the Vienna Institute of Technology (Technische Hochschule), where he studied mathematics, physics, and philosophy. In 1882, one of Steiner's teachers at the university in Vienna, Karl Julius Schröer, suggested Steiner's name to Joseph Kürschner, editor of a new edition of Goethe's works. Steiner was then asked to become the edition's scientific editor.
In his autobiography, Steiner related that at 21, on the train between his home village and Vienna, he met a simple herb gatherer, Felix Koguzki, who spoke about the spiritual world "as one who had his own experience therein..." This herb gatherer introduced Steiner to a person that Steiner only identified as a “master”, and who had a great influence on Steiner's subsequent development, in particular directing him to study Fichte's philosophy.
In 1891, Steiner earned a doctorate in philosophy at the University of Rostock in Germany with a thesis based upon Fichte's concept of the ego, later published in expanded form as Truth and Knowledge.

The 1880s and 1890s were hardly the dark ages, and Steiner can hardly be said to have been uneducated!

Hi Alan,
I suspect those who listened to, and believed, RS were the uneducated ones and it was a case of "The Emporers New Clothes" syndrome!
Lets face it he was simply a hustler!
JB.