Read on Twitter
A little thread about this tweet that I feel like might illuminate our broader approach at Tablas Creek. The philosophy behind Biodynamics can seem awfully touchy-feely at times. Cycles of the moon, micro-applications of infusions and minerals, cow horns, etc. 1/ https://twitter.com/tablascreek/status/1299382726223593473
If you do a Google search for “horn silica” you’ll end up on a lot of pages like this one, with phrases like “BD501 specifically works to release cosmic energies as the earth deeply ‘exhales’ in Spring.” Ugh. Do people really find that convincing? https://biologicwine.co.za/2015/02/12/what-and-why-biodynamic-preparation-bd501/ 2/
Horn silica is made by grinding quartz finely, nearly to a powder, then burying it in cow horns for several months, diluting it in water, and spraying it onto the leaves of our grapevines. There are (highly questionable, IMO) justifications for this in Biodynamic philosophy. 3/
And yet, if you speak to biodynamic farmers and winemakers, they say that this is one of the preparations that they say has the greatest real-world impact in improving the vigor of their grapevines. Is it, as some suggest, just a placebo effect because it’s used by believers? 4/
But instead if you do a Google search for “silica in photosynthesis” you end up with pages of results of scientific studies showing benefits of silica additions on farming, across a range of crops. It’s a critical nutrient for carbohydrate metabolism. https://www.google.com/search?q=silica+in+photosynthesis&oq=silica+in+photosynthesis 5/
What’s more, that nutrient is only accessible to the plants if it is powdered. You can’t, for example, apply sand to the vines or the soil and expect the silica it contains to be of any use. Does it need to be ground between panes of glass and buried in a cow horn? Maybe not. 6/
And I feel like a lot of Biodynamics is like this. People focus on the (bizarrely specific) preparation techniques. But their results, in almost every case, are micronutrients or additions to the microbiome that plants and soils need to be healthy. That’s what matters. 7/
That’s also why I don’t feel bad that our approach to biodynamics at @TablasCreek is fairly unorthodox. It’s a philosophy that, in our opinion, combines meaningful and meaningless interventions in the farm, and often works for reasons different than the ones in the literature. 8/
It’s also why we’re so excited about our new #regenerativeorganic certification, incorporating the soil health/biodiversity pieces of Biodynamics and discarding the mysticism. But silica is a good reminder that things can work in mysterious ways. https://tablascreek.typepad.com/tablas/2017/11/our-skeptics-path-into-biodynamics.html 9 & END/
