by Hugh Lovel | Dec 22, 2016 

How certain notions arise and become entrenched is a bit of a mystery, especially when they are wrong. Yet they do get started and entrenched. One of these is the belief that when things dry up and little moisture is available we cannot put out biodynamic preparations—as if these were delicate microbial cultures that must have moist conditions to establish and thrive. This is so far from true it seems impossible it ever got started. Yet it did.

When things dry up with rain months away is when we most need to apply our field sprays. When the organization of moisture in the atmosphere is at its lowest is when we need to enliven both atmosphere and soil to get them working together. In a drought nothing else does so much good for so little effort.

During summer, evaporation is high. Moisture rises up into the troposphere and as it cools it glides downward toward the polar vortex, flowing like a river in the sky to the pole. Variations in the jet stream determine where and when this river feeds moisture into storm fronts that drop—or fail to drop—summer rainfall. And yet, what organizes things in general, but particularly moisture, is life—and life activities is what biodynamics is about.

Organization is the basis of life, and life defies the rules for inanimate objects. Life draws organization out of chaos into more life. Biodynamic preparations are so rich in life they draw organization into wherever they are applied. The very reason we can impart life by stirring up tiny doses of preparations in water and sprinkling them over large areas is because life energy flows from lower to higher concentration. When we spray an area and enrich its vitality, more life energy, i.e. organization, flows to the area sprayed.  The more we spray an area, the more strongly that area draws in organization from the surrounding universe.

Back in 1988 a small group of biodynamic farmers held the first Southeast US Biodynamic Conference at my farm in Blairsville, Georgia. Hugh Courtney, who founded the Josephine Porter Institute of Applied Biodynamics (JPI), came from Virginia to lead workshops on making and applying biodynamic preparations. The attendees all stirred and applied every preparation to my farm despite the whole southeast being in summer drought. Out of the blue a summer thunderstorm drenched us thoroughly. Courtney went back home and did the same thing at JPI and the summer drought was history. The next summer the same thing happened at our second conference, also breaking a summer drought. By then Hugh Courtney had given preparation workshops at various widespread locations. In every case, rain—or at least technical precipitation—occurred when all the preparations were applied in a back-to-back sequence. Courtney explained to me, Harvey Lisle and others that he believed the preparations could draw to themselves whatever was needed to make life thrive, including moisture.

This was the beginning of what Courtney later called Sequential Spraying. At first we didn’t know that preparations could break droughts, but experience demonstrated applying all the preparations in sequence gave us the most gratifying results.

I have applied this technique with favorable outcomes on many occasions since. It seems to work best if launched when the moon is in a water or earth constellation at the approach to full moon, so use the Astro calendar and plan ahead to get the right amount of rain (rather than a flood).