Brook LeVan and Lloyd Nelson, Sustainable Settings and Biodynamic Source, Carbondale CO
Recent Nightly work indicated that the biodynamic preparations were calling for attention. I put the word out to Lloyd Nelson and Megan Miller, my partners in Biodynamic Source, and we settled on today to gather to stir, maintain the preparations, to mix up our 2021 batch of Buffalo Soil Activator and Field Spray, and to visit and gift each of the preparation pits on the ranch.
As altruistic as this preparation making is, we do it whole-heartedly because we want them to be available for others to use and experience to heal as much land as possible, and mostly to fuel our — humanity’s — relationships with the Life in the Land. As we know the difference in flavor, nutrient density, and overall vitality that comes from using the preparations, we also have our selfish motives. One selfish motive is the euphoria that comes from doing the work. We three, and others who have assisted in the work, have witnessed the phenomenological, pure magic, that manifested in and through the systemic shifts in the land and all her cosmic and earthly dynamics as we have worked in this way to listen to the Wisdom, to the story of the land and the Life, and build a greater intimacy with all the unseen cosmic and earthly beings with whom we co-create. We know the magic that can only come from our part in the dynamic. So, when we honor these indications to maintain the quality of the preparations, we are also maintaining our relationships and deepening our intimacy with the realm of the living. In this we, in fact, are the ones who gain.
That said, the three of us greeted the preparations in storage and brought each one out of their respective crocks and stirred them, making contact and rehydrating if necessary. We then returned them to their respective crocks in their nests of peat-mossed wooden boxes in our root cellar. We thanked the flowering and other plant, animal and mineral entities that form the connection to the cosmic and earthly forces that each one fires, stimulating beneficial responses throughout the Whole Farm Organism. These preparations make up what can, in lay terms, best be called an apothecary for the Land and therapies for the living dynamic we work with in our farming/ ranching, in our stewardship. The three of us also visited the Crystal Lab, the windowed sunlit well house building where the more than 20 horn silicas we make are stored, to greet them all and to thank the ancient mineral ones who bring light and affect form for their part in the dynamic.
In this work we — those who are doing the work — gain. We, in effect, are “prepped.” These preparation substances loaded with their respective intentions cannot help but enter into us, affect us. This is typically manifest as an unusual high- not a cannabis stoned- or even slightly hot hemp or psychotropic mushroom high, but a heart-full and pineal gland/ third eye beaming through us and out into the world high. In being aware of it we compared sensations and agreed that it comes from deep in our beings, I am saying it is in and emanating from deep in my bone marrow, joints, organs, from my whole being. It is a trance of sorts. Not debilitating…. Words fail to communicate experience again.
Our final act today was to visit, acknowledge and gift each of the biodynamic preparation pits and brews on the ranch, from the Buffalo Barrel Compost Pits to each of the foundational preparations 500 to 508. As we wrapped up our mid-winter Holy Nights preparation labors we closed the gates of the Super Organism that hosts most of the preparation pits and headed back to the warmth of the ranch house hearth. The near setting sun shot his final rays of light for the day across the powder white snow brightening, the fields with crystalline sparkle. Lloyd heeding, his usual enthusiasm for the moment, turned to see the setting sun, calling our attention to the phenomenon in the late afternoon sky.
We turned to see two Suns! To the right of the shining near setting sun, which was trying its best to burn its final rays of the day through the partly clouded formations, there broke open a hole in the firmament firing light through refractions of all color — a second “Sun.” We stood in awe still “high” from our work with the preparations now taking in this beauty and affirming display of light and thanks. In time I said, “You are welcome.”
Two Suns! Here yet again is an affirmation that I never expect when engaging in this physical and metaphysical work but that more often than not occurs in some form or another. One might say it is all coincidence. I say it is co-incidence and I just take notes on the phenomenological experience to which we are treated. Remarkable sky events and other phenomenon are regular occurrences when we are out and doing this wholehearted work.
This magic, if you will, comes as we work from our hearts in genuine relationship. So, I ask, who is this work for? Why doesn’t everyone do it? These gains are so far above any concept of financial return or any materialistic bottom-line gains. This euphoria and this level of connectedness to our homelands and access to the clarity of our relationships to all things -— Cosmic and Earthly — that the three of us experienced today, is real compensation. A form of return one cannot buy.
I did photograph the Two Suns, though the three of us now have imbedded in us the day’s labors and indescribable whole sensory feel and knowing, the intimacy and felt experiential realness that a photographic image of this phenomenon is merely a reminder, a possible trigger for those who have done the work.
It is not me. It is not you. It is through us. Do the work.
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