Diary of a Carbon Farmer

I started this blog to chart my journey - both inside myself and in the world around me - towards discovering the meaning of this ancient Hasidic saying:

"When you walk across the fields
with your mind pure and holy,
then from all the stones,
and all growing things,
and all animals,
the sparks of their soul come out
and cling to you,
and then they are purified
and become a holy fire in you."

Along the way we have encountered many like-minded farmers and thinkers, people dedicated to proving that farming can be profitable while, at the same time, conserving and regenrating the natural environment. Next to Allan Savory, who gave us Holistic Resource Management, time-controlled grazing, and 100% ground cover, we have been blessed by discovering Dr Christine Jones and the mysterious stuff called CARBON. Regular readers of this blog will have seen the change towards Carbon since September last year when we first met Christine in Armidale. (We also met David Marsh, Rick Maurice and Colin Seis, carbon farmers.)

Christine has revealed that Carbon in the soil takes many forms, all of which play an active role in building and replenishing soil, aerating and strengthening soil structure, feeding and housing microbe, fungi and insect populations, holding and giving plants access to water, preventing erosion and silting of waterways, and fighting against salination by governing water dynamics in the environment. Carbon is the platform on which the food chain rests.

Whatever we do to encourage Carbon to grow in our soils, we are paying our huge debt to Nature for its forebearance.

Agricultural psychic Rudolf Steiner has something interesting to say about Carbon which I don't completely understand:

"Carbon is the carrier of all of nature's formative processes. No matter what is being formed, be it the relatively short-lived form of a plant or the constantly changing figure of an animal, carbon is at work as the great sculptor."

"The human spirit - what we know as the 'I' - moves through our blood along paths... laid down by the weaving and working, shaping and dissolving activity of carbon. And just as the human ego, the true human spirit, lives in carbon, so too does the universal ego in the spirit of the universe live...in the ever forming and dissolving carbon."

"All living things have an underlying carbon framework... and as the spirit moves through the world, it moves along the lines of this framework."

"Whenever we consider a human being or any other living being, we must realise that this living being is permeated by something etheric which is the actual bearer of life... The carbon framework of a living being has to be permeated by this etheric principle..."

I can't say it's right, but I'm not prepared to dismiss it, either. But even if we stick to what science can demonstrate, Carbon is amazing stuff.

That's why we have changed the name of this blog to 'Diary of a Carbon Farmer'.