Maison/Made Spring Farm Update 2020

Time to Exhale

2020 seems to be a year of adaptability and resilience. Due to the travel restrictions following the coronavirus outbreak in the US in March, we were unfortunately unable to make it to the farm before flights started getting canceled and France all but completely shut down. All things considered, we are lucky that some extended family members had the good sense to take refuge at the farm, AND have some free time on their hands! Just like everything else, we are gardening from a distance. Not the easiest thing to do, but thanks to their hard work (and patience taking directions from us via WhatsApp!) we have been able to get the garden prepared for potentially our best year yet.

Spring is a time where the sun arches higher in the sky, bringing more heat and light as the days get longer and the temperatures rise, encouraging plants to grow out and upward. It’s as if the living potential in the earth is being exhaled. Birds, bees, and insects become more active and the natural rhythm of the seasons appears to stir up life all around the farm.

In the fall of last year, as part of our Biodynamic practices, we filled two female cow horns with manure and buried them in our garden in order to create what is known as the Biodynamic Preparation 500, or “horn-manure”. This is considered probably the most classic of all the Biodynamic preparations (of which there are 9) as the horns of a cow, part of the animal’s sinus cavity, hold a beneficial certain life force that make them the ideal vessel to transform raw manure into something more special - concentrated fertilizer. Burying these manure-filled horns over the winter when the earth is most alive, makes the manure more dense and fertile.

Now, in the spring, our horn-manure is ready to be diluted (or, more appropriately said in Biodynamic terms, “dynamized” 😉), where the solution is sprayed onto the garden beds, orchards, and flower bushes giving back all the elements, salts and minerals the cow removed from the earth while grazing. The most important thing to remember about Biodynamic farming and gardening is its dedication to soil health, and this preparation is a vital piece to preparing the soil as it itself prepares to give new life to its plants.

This was our first year making this preparation ourselves from start to finish so needless to say we were disappointed not to be there for the dilution and spraying of our horn-manure. But that disappointment was easily outweighed by the fact that our family took the lead and made the spray for us! Not to mention all the weeding, mowing, and winter-crop harvesting they did before spraying.

At this point the garden is ready for this year's plants. In the fall we prepared new beds for the introduction of additional plant species, which are almost ready for transplantation from their seed beds. Soon we’ll be welcoming immortelle, geranium, sweet marjoram, additional lavenders, rosemary, thyme plants, and 3 new rose varietals. We’ll be learning to care for these new plants while greeting the return of our trusty friends of calendula, nettle, elder, oat, burdock, dandelion, linden, milk thistle, chamomile, and others!

While of course we would love to be there right now to do the work ourselves, we’re obviously grateful that we’re able to move forward despite our absence, particularly right now as the apple, pear, and cherry trees are blooming, sprinkling the orchards with hues of ivory, rose, and marigold. As spring itself, it’s time to exhale, be calm, and know that when we return, hopefully in early summer, we’ll be able to build upon and benefit from the generous work that has been done.

XO,

– Carolina