Patricia Damery on Biodynamic Farming and Connecting with the Earth
We all are well aware that traditional farming can be less than sustainable. But once we embrace the land and treat it with respect, farming can help the environment, and nurture our souls. That’s why practicing Jungian analyst and author Patricia Damery wrote her book, “Farming Soul: A Tale of Initiation.”
“A few things stirred me to [write the book],” Damery says. First: her candidacy as a Jungian analyst. She entered the training program at a difficult time. “I expected to have a wonderful, nurturing experience and it wasn’t.” Second: she wanted readers to discover how biodynamic farming helped her personally, and how the practice can help the Earth overall.
Damery released the second edition of her book to spread the word that the things that negatively affect the earth (droughts, floods, etc.) are interconnected “with all of creation.” One way Damery reconnected with the earth was by learning about biodynamic farming, specifically in the fall of 1999.
Damery and Donald, her husband, were growing grapes on their land. After a lot of work, though, her grapes were not ripening like they were supposed to. In fact, her crop was so bad, Damery’s winemaker said he wouldn’t take the grapes.
Damery described this time as a farming crisis – she and her husband were in a place of despair. “We were open to almost anything,” she says. They eventually started working with a biodynamic farming consultant and within a few weeks, he got the grapes to where they needed to be. Overall, the grape production increased by 90 percent. “So, we hired him to teach us how to do it.”
While Damery only recently became acquainted with biodynamic farming, she’s no stranger to working with the Earth — she grew up in the rural Midwest. She even witnessed how her family’s farm was destroyed by aggressive agribusiness practices.
Overall, Damery believes that if humans reconnect with the earth, and realize our “wrongdoings,” than we can all be one with the earth once again.
Now, that’s the kind of message we can get behind.
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