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Subtle Agroecologies
And then, a client for whom I was doing other work told me her own story of her spring going
dry, being inspired to sing to it and then seeing it come back to life.
It turns out that there are many deep and old traditions everywhere of water blessings, especially
directed to springs, wells and rivers and which are typically renewed on at least an annual basis.
During a farm feld day in New South Wales for interested farmers in the area, we as a group
blessed the farm borehole, which supplied water to troughs for sheep in approximately half of the
120 paddocks, the other paddocks having ponds for stock water instead. In tasting the water directly
from the bore before and after blessing, we were amazed and delighted in the enhancement of palatability, sweetness and the sense of a refreshing, thirst-quenching drink.
I received a communication 2 weeks later from the hosting farmer letting me know that since the
water blessing, the sheep, who hitherto had shown a mild but not substantial preference for the trough
water over that in the ponds, now when released through rotation from a pond feld to a trough feld,
were galloping as a fock up to 1.4 km to the trough and staying there until all had drunk their fll.
I revisited the farm 6 months later, at which point the behaviour was still continuing, and extended
our work and experiment by blessing all of the ponds. The sheep immediately became equally
happy with both trough and pond water and stopped galloping uphill.
I have subsequently accrued many stories of water quality improving in both palatability and
even sometimes mineral and salt content with loving connection and a communicated request –
boreholes restoring their standing level and volume – on one occasion a creek that had been dry
for 8 years bringing its deep gravel-based water up to the surface after a blessing – but only on the
property in question and not upstream or downstream on their neighbours’ properties (Figures 26.3
and 26.4).
FIGURE 26.3 Dry creek before.
Subtle Agroecologies
And then, a client for whom I was doing other work told me her own story of her spring going
dry, being inspired to sing to it and then seeing it come back to life.
It turns out that there are many deep and old traditions everywhere of water blessings, especially
directed to springs, wells and rivers and which are typically renewed on at least an annual basis.
During a farm feld day in New South Wales for interested farmers in the area, we as a group
blessed the farm borehole, which supplied water to troughs for sheep in approximately half of the
120 paddocks, the other paddocks having ponds for stock water instead. In tasting the water directly
from the bore before and after blessing, we were amazed and delighted in the enhancement of palatability, sweetness and the sense of a refreshing, thirst-quenching drink.
I received a communication 2 weeks later from the hosting farmer letting me know that since the
water blessing, the sheep, who hitherto had shown a mild but not substantial preference for the trough
water over that in the ponds, now when released through rotation from a pond feld to a trough feld,
were galloping as a fock up to 1.4 km to the trough and staying there until all had drunk their fll.
I revisited the farm 6 months later, at which point the behaviour was still continuing, and extended
our work and experiment by blessing all of the ponds. The sheep immediately became equally
happy with both trough and pond water and stopped galloping uphill.
I have subsequently accrued many stories of water quality improving in both palatability and
even sometimes mineral and salt content with loving connection and a communicated request –
boreholes restoring their standing level and volume – on one occasion a creek that had been dry
for 8 years bringing its deep gravel-based water up to the surface after a blessing – but only on the
property in question and not upstream or downstream on their neighbours’ properties (Figures 26.3
and 26.4).
FIGURE 26.3 Dry creek before.