“Throw Yourself Like Seed”

by Tess Parker

This year’s Biodynamic Conference took place on beautiful Lake George in upstate New York. Around 650 bright souls gathered to find common ground and meaning in today’s social, spiritual, and agricultural contexts. We touched on how we can continue to learn what the earth is asking of us, work together from different streams and backgrounds, and rise to meet today’s challenges.

The organizers took care to set up a list of “Community Guidelines” to practice at the conference. This was particularly helpful to shape and form the experience.

Keynotes ranged from exploring and transforming one’s “eco-grief,” to exploring the elemental nature of the landscape living within us, to the spiritual ecology of African agrarianism. Poetry, singing, and dancing also wove through the space to bring people together and find common languages to connect. Through seed-sharing, an open mic, participant-lead “open space” sessions, fireside chats, and more, participants were encouraged to cocreate the experience.

Donovan Riley, a garden educator and farmer, was able to bring three of his middle school students from New York City. He writes:

The workshops provided comfortable space for me to learn and interact with people with a like mind, but that of a different background. The In Living Color BIPOC safe space (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) stood out, as well as Leah Penniman’s awesome explanation of indigenous agriculture... The community is becoming more inclusive,... more ideas are being shared, and the steps towards a sustainable future become more refined and unique. There’s a growth in numbers as well... I’m excited to see what the future holds in terms of science and biodynamics.

With the BDA as leader, the North American biodynamic movement has been taking great strides to make room for voices of different backgrounds. In this work, many deep traumas can surface. Addressing the wounds at the heart and foundation of society and agriculture in the United States is no small order. Yet if we do not begin to address them, however clumsily, however humbly, we cannot truly stand in the integrity of the movement.

Keynoter Çaca Yvaire finished with a poem; we can allow it to resonate as we turn to face the coming year.

Throw Yourself Like Seed

by Miguel de Unamuno

Shake off this sadness, and recover your spirit;

Sluggish you will never see the wheel of fate

That brushes your heel as it turns going by,

The man who wants to live is the man in whom life is abundant.

Now you are only giving food to that final pain

which is slowly winding you in the nets of death,

but to live is to work, and the only thing which lasts

is the work; start there, turn to the work.

Throw yourself like seed as you walk, and into your own field,

don’t turn your face for that would be to turn it to death,

and do not let the past weigh down your motion.

Leave what’s alive in the furrow, what’s dead in yourself,

for life does not move in the same way as a group of clouds;

From your work you will be able one day to gather yourself.

Find out more about the 2019 Conference as well as the next conference this November 11-15, 2020 outside of Boulder, Colorado at biodynamics.com/conference

Tess Parker is the ASA Programs Assistant. She co-founded and managed Common Hands Farm in upstate NY where she hosted both a biodynamic CSA and an educational apprentice program.