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What is Biodynamic Wine?
Biodynamic wine is an all-natural approach to viticulture that emphasizes the unique character of each individual farm's soil and climate. In the wine world, the distinctness of each different soil is called terroir (related to the Latin word terra, "earth"). Often wines are Demeter Certified, guaranteeing that they not only meet an organic standard of avoiding synthetic fertilizers and avoiding synthetic pesticides but also including specific regenerative and biodynamic elements.
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Leavening Your Soil
The biodynamic preparations work a bit like specialized "yeasts" in compost and create a better final product. Are the biodynamic preparations absolutely necessary?
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Build Soil Rapidly
“In the early days we ran trials. Depleted soil was deep ripped. We sowed the right species and applied 500 and had the well known results. In six years we raised the organic matter levels from 0.9% in the top 4” to approximately 12% and, varyingly, to 2.4% at 40” depth. Ripping exactly the same way etc, but without 500, the soil biology developed to 20 cm depth, no further. In modern farming the right soil treatment and the Bio-Dynamic preparations must be applied together."
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Character of the Cosmos
As the Kyoto School philosopher Kitaro Nishida writes, when we discover a law of nature using the scientific method, this is actually the Universe, though us, discovering an element of its own character.
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Does Biodynamics Work?
Most scientific epiphanies precede data collection. A scientist without any imagination is not likely to make creative intuitive connections between the data they collect. Biodynamics is such a creative intuitive leap. The science must follow afterwards, but those who utilize biodynamics can attest to significant changes in plant health, disease resistance, pest resistance, and flavor improvements.
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Music of the Spheres
Everything relates to everything else, so to create holistic fertilizers, we should include "a bit of everything" in a way that mirrors the manifesting power of Creation itself.
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Reinventing the Wheel
Biodynamics does not seek to "reinvent the wheel" nor should it. Instead, biodynamics seeks to supply the necessary kinds of vitality necessary for each stage of plant growth.
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What is Biodynamics?
If you plug a lightbulb into a socket without enough energy, it doesn't shine very brightly. The same goes with putting plants into dead soil. We have to "recharge" tired soils with vitality from the cosmos.
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Conversion to Biodynamics
At the heart of it is this: life on earth depends on a constant supply of new energy from the cosmos. If the sun ever turn off, it would get pretty cold here on earth!
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