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Subtle Agroecologies
GOODBYE TASMANIA … HELLO ORGANIC FARMING CONSULTANCY
We sold the farm, and for a year, we travelled with our four children in a caravan on a glorious
adventure. Settling temporarily in the Bellingen Valley in NSW, I spent the next several years as an
organic farming consultant. I named my business Soil Sense Associates. My practical approach was
to have the farmer-clients’ soil tested in a laboratory, and the results I would then reconfgure away
from the chemical recommendations into organic fertiliser terms. To fertilise means ‘to enrich’, not
to chemically stimulate; a true fertiliser flls the soil pantry, rather than emptying it.
My all-important metaphysical focus was to be conscious of the Spirit of the Land and to communicate with it. In this way, I had a double-barrelled approach, with one foot in the physical and
the other in the metaphysical, which proved to be very effective. It all really took off when, in the
early 1980s, I gave a public talk in the Darling Downs grain growing area of Queensland. Billed in
the local newspaper as the ‘Prophet of Natural Farming’, the local farmers were shocked to fnd their
meeting hall full with 90 or so people, instead of the regular10–15 farmers. I was no longer a joke.
It so happened that the Darling Downs was an area of very complex soils. Magnesium levels
in the soil were higher than the calcium, which caused conditions of concrete-hard soil as it dried
out, and clinging mud when wet. Local farming techniques were compounding the problem, which
worsened each year. In the talk, I expanded on their problem using terminology that they understood, and even managed to get across some of the metaphysics of the situation.
I won a small number of clients from my talk. A few days later, I was with one of these clients,
walking across a fallow feld. He was a good farmer, progressive and open to change. He was also
very talkative. I had tested his soil, but now I wanted to communicate with the Spirit of the Land.
For that, I needed silence and preferably to be alone. Just as I was wondering how I could achieve
this, his wife appeared in the distance ahead of us and waved. ‘I’m wanted on the phone. I’ll be back
in about an hour’, he said as he walked off. No cell phones in those days!
I smiled, I could now make the connection while he chatted and sipped his coffee.
As I continued across the loose fallow soil, it very strongly came to me that the pH was changing almost with each of my footsteps. I stopped, puzzled, but all I got was a stronger affrmation of
this. I had with me a very sophisticated pH meter, worth about $400, not your local store $10 type.
I knew it was very reliable. My footsteps were very obvious in the loose dry soil, so I retraced my
path taking samples from the soil in my footprints. Sceptical and rather disbelieving, I also took
samples 5 metres away from my footprints, and at 10 m away.
The results gave me a considerable shock. The overall soil in this feld was pH 9.5, very alkaline.
In my footsteps, it dropped to pH 8.3, an absolutely huge and almost impossible drop. At 5 m out, it
was pH 8.9 and at 10 m pH 9.4. I rechecked this twice, it seemed unreal, but the results remained.
From this, I learned much. Today, I know that the farmer is the very matrix of the farm. What
affects the farmer, male or female, affects all the land. There is no exception to this. You may not
see, or realise this, but it will be there. The farmers’ mood, their anger or inner peace, their depression or happiness, their thinking, their positive or negative energy, their stress, their greed or generosity and their love of farming affected the whole farm. The farmer who truly loves their land and
their farming, whether it be horticulture, arable or livestock, is the farmer who is leading the way
in consciousness. To these people come the insights and intuitive leaps that most of them have the
courage to follow. If you are in the most menial of work, and love what you are doing, love who you
are with, and love where you are in life … then you are a giant in consciousness among humanity.
If you love your farm and the act of farming, you affect the whole because you are the whole.
This includes the billions of micro and macro soil life, the livestock, the pastures, the crops, all of
it. Just as you are the One, so you are the All. Love reveals this.
I can assure you that no matter how this may not ft in with the rather restrictive beliefs of our
current agricultural science … it remains true. It is also true for a real gardener. By ‘real’, I mean this
does not necessarily apply to the landowner who lets or leases his or her house and garden, or farm
and farmland; it applies to the gardener or farmer who is intimately involved with the land itself.
Subtle Agroecologies
GOODBYE TASMANIA … HELLO ORGANIC FARMING CONSULTANCY
We sold the farm, and for a year, we travelled with our four children in a caravan on a glorious
adventure. Settling temporarily in the Bellingen Valley in NSW, I spent the next several years as an
organic farming consultant. I named my business Soil Sense Associates. My practical approach was
to have the farmer-clients’ soil tested in a laboratory, and the results I would then reconfgure away
from the chemical recommendations into organic fertiliser terms. To fertilise means ‘to enrich’, not
to chemically stimulate; a true fertiliser flls the soil pantry, rather than emptying it.
My all-important metaphysical focus was to be conscious of the Spirit of the Land and to communicate with it. In this way, I had a double-barrelled approach, with one foot in the physical and
the other in the metaphysical, which proved to be very effective. It all really took off when, in the
early 1980s, I gave a public talk in the Darling Downs grain growing area of Queensland. Billed in
the local newspaper as the ‘Prophet of Natural Farming’, the local farmers were shocked to fnd their
meeting hall full with 90 or so people, instead of the regular10–15 farmers. I was no longer a joke.
It so happened that the Darling Downs was an area of very complex soils. Magnesium levels
in the soil were higher than the calcium, which caused conditions of concrete-hard soil as it dried
out, and clinging mud when wet. Local farming techniques were compounding the problem, which
worsened each year. In the talk, I expanded on their problem using terminology that they understood, and even managed to get across some of the metaphysics of the situation.
I won a small number of clients from my talk. A few days later, I was with one of these clients,
walking across a fallow feld. He was a good farmer, progressive and open to change. He was also
very talkative. I had tested his soil, but now I wanted to communicate with the Spirit of the Land.
For that, I needed silence and preferably to be alone. Just as I was wondering how I could achieve
this, his wife appeared in the distance ahead of us and waved. ‘I’m wanted on the phone. I’ll be back
in about an hour’, he said as he walked off. No cell phones in those days!
I smiled, I could now make the connection while he chatted and sipped his coffee.
As I continued across the loose fallow soil, it very strongly came to me that the pH was changing almost with each of my footsteps. I stopped, puzzled, but all I got was a stronger affrmation of
this. I had with me a very sophisticated pH meter, worth about $400, not your local store $10 type.
I knew it was very reliable. My footsteps were very obvious in the loose dry soil, so I retraced my
path taking samples from the soil in my footprints. Sceptical and rather disbelieving, I also took
samples 5 metres away from my footprints, and at 10 m away.
The results gave me a considerable shock. The overall soil in this feld was pH 9.5, very alkaline.
In my footsteps, it dropped to pH 8.3, an absolutely huge and almost impossible drop. At 5 m out, it
was pH 8.9 and at 10 m pH 9.4. I rechecked this twice, it seemed unreal, but the results remained.
From this, I learned much. Today, I know that the farmer is the very matrix of the farm. What
affects the farmer, male or female, affects all the land. There is no exception to this. You may not
see, or realise this, but it will be there. The farmers’ mood, their anger or inner peace, their depression or happiness, their thinking, their positive or negative energy, their stress, their greed or generosity and their love of farming affected the whole farm. The farmer who truly loves their land and
their farming, whether it be horticulture, arable or livestock, is the farmer who is leading the way
in consciousness. To these people come the insights and intuitive leaps that most of them have the
courage to follow. If you are in the most menial of work, and love what you are doing, love who you
are with, and love where you are in life … then you are a giant in consciousness among humanity.
If you love your farm and the act of farming, you affect the whole because you are the whole.
This includes the billions of micro and macro soil life, the livestock, the pastures, the crops, all of
it. Just as you are the One, so you are the All. Love reveals this.
I can assure you that no matter how this may not ft in with the rather restrictive beliefs of our
current agricultural science … it remains true. It is also true for a real gardener. By ‘real’, I mean this
does not necessarily apply to the landowner who lets or leases his or her house and garden, or farm
and farmland; it applies to the gardener or farmer who is intimately involved with the land itself.