Bay Leaf, Hot Water, Lemon, and Biodynamics

I’ve been sick—a cold (hence the online silence + I had been working on the website + I’m knitting Sam a “tractor” sweater)—the last week or so and someone suggested bay leaf, hot water, and lemon as relief, a Sicilian grandmother’s remedy from the old country. I was on it. After I made myself a cup, and put Sam to his nap, I settled in to try to catch up on some of the wine world’s goings on; my first (and only) stop: Stu Smith’s site, Biodynamics is a Hoax.

What a hullabaloo going on there, if you haven’t visited, and lots to digest, that is if you care about biodynamics and vineyard farming. Disclosure: I know very little about biodynamic farming, and at one time some years ago, when we were beginning the prep work to plant our vineyard, I felt a little pressured that we should be doing something like this, as it seemed to be all the rage, and obviously still is. In something like a fear-based state of mind that we do things right, and in an ignorant state (or innocent? hmmm, where to draw the line between the two?), I felt the draw of herd mentality. So, I got what was at that time the only copy of Nicolas Joly’s Wine from Sky to Earth: Growing and Appreciating Biodynamic Wine from the Multnomah County Library (five years later there are two copies) and set out to learn more. Fine enough. But somewhere between the dung-filled horn and crystals the skeptic in me took hold, and after months of renewals and collecting dust while I thought I might get around to it, I returned the book to the library. I should’ve skipped ahead to the moon planting bits, that’s what I was really interested in. My old-world Swiss Oma would plant to cosmos rhythms, and I romanticized about moonlight sowing (!). But I digress (as usual).

Back to the biodynamic hullabaloo, and about it being faith-based farming—that is the crux of the issue discussed —there is no scientific proof it works (at least none that anyone is sharing); yet people do tout it as a superior way of farming. With all the fanaticism of agri-ligious zealots, they herald their (vineyard’s) great transformation to the world and how it’s the best thing ever, or something like that. And for all we know the vineyard is great. Fine. The best? That’s the contentious point. But that’s the power of marketing. This is the world we live in. Ignoranti, beware.

But back to my tea, and where I started. As I’m sipping my hot drink, I started to think of how much I rely on faith in my life. Not religious faith, I wouldn’t call myself a religious person, spiritual is more like it. But here with this tea, I’m putting my faith into some little old Nonna’s remedy, and know what? It worked. I felt cleared up, soothed. Who knows how much it was because I felt content in knowing my cold remedy stemmed from a little Sicilian grandmother–her knowledge, I imagine, gleaned from her small, agricultural island, from her own mother and hers from her mother, and so on and so on. As if this little Nonna, there in her black dress (of course, her husband long gone), had put her slender, heavily veined hand around my shoulders, hugging me close, while I drank what was in my cup; very reassuring.

Or what about the faith we put into old Mother Nature when we farm? That she doesn’t throw us too long a chilly spring, or rain too early at the end of the growing year, or frost and freeze at the wrong time.

And how much is this faith, and how much is it simply simple optimism?  As a recovering pessimist, it’s now my turn to sound like a fanatic when I say, isn’t it better to be optimistic about whatever it is we choose to be optimistic about, instead of the opposite? Isn’t that what faith is anyway? Optimism?! My tea, biodynamics, whatever it is. I don’t know where I’m going with this—I guess I just feel that in the end, why can’t we all simply and quietly cultivate our gardens and leave the jostle behind. Good lord, the amount of jostle in this industry is mind-numbing. It’s so loud. And I admit, I let myself get sucked in. Sigh. Nonna, besides your stuffy nose remedy, might you have a cure for a tired head?!

Oh, and our vineyard… We never ended doing anything biodynamic-related on Rock Flour Hill, although we did do some kind of sea-algae-something-or-other dip. That was my job during the planting. All 17,000 plants, thank you very much. And did it make a difference? We’ll never know. We never had a control patch, so I guess we’ve just had faith that it did something….AND, we don’t talk about it that much.

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