Last Saturday, we had the privilege of hosting Awakin Call with Laura Riccardi Lyvers.

Laura Riccardi Lyvers is a biodynamic preparation maker, gardener, and grazier. She runs the biodynamic program at Foxhollow Farm, a 1400-acre grass-fed beef farm in Crestwood, Kentucky. She also supports other gardens, vineyards and compost companies as one of the few regional makers of biodynamic preparations. Biodynamics is a holistic, ecological approach to farming, gardening, food, and nutrition (championed by scientist/philosopher Rudolf Steiner) that seeks to integrate science with a recognition of spirit in nature. For Laura, her work has been a healing path -- "a way of approaching agriculture that acknowledges the spiritual, or the non-physical, that stands behind this material world that we work with." The approach allows her to work with "the spirit in matter" -- "working with, not just believing in, a spirit-based reality" that helps bring humans "into the flow of the spiritual world.”

Below are some of the nuggets from the call that stood out for me ...

• Our cultural, social & economic realities do not let us live in connection with the earth. It shows up in every aspect of our lives. Living with the cycles of the earth has shown Laura that this opportunity does not exist for most people at large—to the extent that its not an opportunity for most.
• Our full potential is to be co-creators with the natural world. To choose to move towards earth, life with earth, and strive to understand what is behind the nature and spirit. We we can know spirit is through nature. We can learn to read “nature’s open secret”
• Rudolf Steiner calls this age the “consciousness-soul age” – where any pain we inflict to others is pain we feel ourselves. Thus we are moving toward a place where we’ll be unable to harm others.
• "The earth that we are on is an ensouled being. And this is really, for me, the foundation for how we can work with the spiritual forces as they come into the earth, and also how we can recognize that we are literally part of this earth. We are one, we are united with this spiritual ensouled being, the earth. And we can recognize how this is so, starting with the rhythms of the earth that we know, that we exist in, that we take for granted ... I think that we all can recognize that there's a place in us that feels a reverence for that sunrise. And this rhythm of the earth is the beginning of its daily out-breath of life. And we can also know that the sun is not just this physical burning ball of gases, but that there are great spiritual beings that are the sun and that are what keep this earth in relationship to the sun."
• We can recognize this through the rhythms and cycles in nature and how they relate to our inner experience, particularly the breath, waking, sleep, and eventually death.
• "The earth, as an ensouled being, has its most inner experience in winter. Steiner says the earth is the most inwardly alive in midwinter. So the earth, at midwinter, has taken its great yearly in-breath and is itself having its most spiritual experience as earth. And then as we know, in spring, this life begins to be breathed out into what we see around us in nature as everything is budding and turning green again."
• Our soil is actually different in minute ways across the seasons.
• Native people understood medicine by understanding & observing the cycles of nature. Every plant & animal is a signature and an archetype that is revealing the interconnection between life.
• "At the heart of my work, for me personally, is the question, How can I move closer to the cow to understand this being so that I can work with it and honor it in the highest way? That is how I want to contribute to solving the problems in agriculture. How can I understand the nature of this animal so that we can live with this animal ever more closely, in ever greater relationship -- not move away from it, but move closer to it?"
• From observing cows, she's observed that they are square, slow-moving, and calm. That gives us a lot of info about the nature of the animal. "How do I honor it in the highest way, in ever-closer relationship?"
• Cows creates a manure that is the most digested material on earth. Humans have never been able to come up with a system or technology that is more thorough that cow digestion. You can determine the health of a cow by how it chews its cud. While they are breaking it down, they are also in a state that is like deep-sleep, though they are not sleeping. Their eyes close and they enter into themselves. They are almost in a state of meditation. That is to say, the cow has an inner life. And it becomes part of what is excreted as manure. Its said that the manure given is a gift of the earth.
• A cow’s sensory system is linked to its metabolic system. The horn is part of the sensory system that contribute to the digestion of the animal. You can see that physically in the form of the horn.
• She strives to have 50 or 60 different species of plants for cows to forages. The cows know what they need, as per the changes of season and soil composition. The cow is doing that through a heightened ability to digest. It is in constant communication with plant, soil, and inner life. "Part of providing an excellent quality pasture is to be able to provide a great diversity of forages that the animal can choose from. I have watched this with the cows throughout the year. I don't want to just have two or three species of grass for them to eat. I want to have sixty different species of forages, grasses, legumes, forbs -- what people call weeds, some of them being incredibly medicinal. I have watched the cows select different things, different grasses, different forbs at different times of the year because she knows what she needs and what is streaming through that plant at that time."
• Cows imbuing the soil with subtle excesses or deficiencies through manure, provided we do our best to give the cows what they need.
• Cows are this way with their calves as well. Constantly smelling and licking her calf, and then offering the calf what it needs through its milk by choosing appropriate plants to forage.
• There are 9 biodynamic preparations that are produced in the Steiner system of thinking. They are something that is nature + our spirit striving to bring about a more rejuvenating space.
• You can recognize the difference in manure of cows with and without horns.
• Horn manure is made by putting manure in a horn and burying it during the winter. Earth is producing crystals in this time. Manure of lactating cows is used—not bull manure, or cattle manure. Lactating cow manure is a totally different product. It falls out as black, rich, humus that is total transformed. It’s a spiritual fertilizer that is added to physical fertilizer. Its sprayed onto the land at 3 gals / acre. They believe this puts back the forces of the cosmos into the earth in a way that nature does not do itself.