Rhythmic thuds echo through the still July air as you approach the Leda Organic Farm in Cherry Creek.
It’s composting time for the Swann family and their group of volunteers and friends as they rhythmically scoop and drop what’s soon to become compost.
“It’s cow manure mixed with a pound of powdered eggshells and a pound of ground basalt and it’s stirred and mixed for an hour,” explains farm owner Gary Swann.
It’s part of a farming system called biodynamic agriculture that Swann and his wife Jackie first heard about over a decade ago while looking for a way to make their farm more sustainable.
“In 2003 we started doing some research and there was a system of agriculture called biodynamic agriculture which was articulated by seer or clairvoyant of his day, Rudolf Steiner,” said Swann.
Steiner first came up with the idea of biodynamic agriculture in 1924, Swann said, after farmers who were using ammonium nitrate as a nitrogen source on their farms saw their crops go downhill.
“You can tell you’re doing something right when you can grow seeds generation to generation and that was failing for the farmers of the time. It was going downhill when they started using the chemicals on their land,” said Swann.
Aside from not using chemicals—something the Swanns were already doing—sustainability was a core part of Steiner’s teachings.
“One of the fundamental points of the biodynamic agriculture was that a farm should be a self contained unit,” said Swann.
“So you don’t have to bring in things necessarily off of the farm, you should be able to have it self reliant so it becomes and a farm organism unto itself.”
KATYA SLEPIAN/Alberni Valley News
Louis Swann shovels compost into a barrel as father Gary gets ready to add the biodynamic preparations.
That’s what makes this July composting session unique—for the first time, the Swann’s are using their own manure.
“We’ve made barrel compost a lot but this is the first time we made it with our first cow manure.”
It takes the farm one step closer to being entirely self-sufficient.
“The only food that we would buy off the property is some tropical stuff. We’re about 95 per cent self-sufficient,” said Swann.
“We started eating our first cucumber so we’re going to stop buying cucumbers. We don’t buy tomatoes other than what we grow.”
Biodynamic agriculture functions along a zodiac calendar system, where different vegetables are planted according to the phases of the moon.
“One of the fundamental tenets of it is that you should be doing your farming activities according to the phases of the moon and where the planets are according to the zodiac and the fixed stars and those sorts of things,” said Swann.
Seeing a significant improvement implementing the calendar system and staying organic, the Swanns decided to delve further into Steiner’s teachings.
“One of the main ingredients of the biodynamic process is what they call preparations,” said Swann.
Preparations, he said, are small amounts of substances such as valerian or yarrow blossoms added to the compost.
“One of the ways of getting the biodynamic preparations on your farm which is the barrel compost,” said Swann.
“It’ll be buried in half a barrel in the ground left until fall and lifted out around the end of September.”
As it’s buried, crushed and fermented valerian root is added.
“In the compost pile it brings stuff together but it also is a
defence against frost,” said Swann’s son Louis.
“It stops frost from killing off plants” when spread around the farm.
All that work brings it’s own reward when the composting process is complete—earthy, rather than foul, smelling compost.
The biodynamic composting process is responsible for the lack of smell, said Swann.
“Well part of the doing it is using the biodynamic preparations,” said Swann.
“They for some reason give an earthy smell within two or three days it seems.”
KATYA SLEPIAN/Alberni Valley News
One-year-old, wet compost still in the composting yard, left, compared to dry, finished compost, right.
Seeing his own success makes Swann hopeful that odourless compost can happen on a bigger scale.
His biggest compost pile is a sizeable 80 tones.
“It was to actually show our idea that you could make big time compost,” Swann said.
“I think we can make compost without odors in it.”
If his methods translate to bigger operations, it removes one of the roadblocks to the Alberni-Clayoquot Regional District implementing its own composting system.
“Say they’re 100 times bigger than us… alright so what, just have more room and you can do the same thing,” Swann said.
The struggle for the ACRD will be that unlike the Swanns, many residents use pesticides and herbicides on their land.
“The challenge of course is that we don’t put in anything that has poison in it. We don’t accept lawn clippings that have been sprayed,” he said.
“It’s just a matter of changing the approach and attitude and the way the community does things.”
Swann sees the self-sufficiency emphasized in biodynamic agriculture as key to food security in the region.
“I do know for a fact that we are going to have to grow more of our food local and that means we’re going to have to have some local production of fertility.”
The regional district will receive a report on the feasibility of compost at a solid waste committee meeting later in the year. Swann hopes that the report, plus his own experience, will show that composting is a viable alternative.
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