Biodynamic cow pat pit

Apologies to regulars for the time lapse. Since my last blog a duvet of oak leaves has floated down, a handful at a time, to blanket the ornamental garden, obscuring paths and border edges, making the cottage look as if it had sprouted naturally like a giant, misshapen mushroom.

One of the fortnight’s most memorable afternoons was spent preparing Bertie’s Cottage’s first biodynamic Cow Pat Pit (sometimes known as barrel preparation). My friend Hannah arrived with her son, Charlie, for Sunday lunch, bearing cider, chocolates and three buckets of best quality organic cow muck (Fortunately Charlie bonded instantly with my girls, united by embarrassment at their freakish mothers!)

With lots of news to catch up on, the sky was already darkening by the time we finished coffee. But undaunted, Hannah and I traipsed up to the veg garden, tipped the sloppery muck into a wheelbarrow and, adding the recommended dressings of finely crushed eggshells and basalt flour, we stirred it for an hour. The end result was much lighter in colour and fluffed up like an egg white half way to the peaky stage. The tonic or ‘preparation’ we were making is said to aid the breakdown of organic matter into stable humus (gardener’s treasure) by stimulating the energies of beneficial bacteria and microrganisms. These both require plentiful oxygen, so it felt like whipping up cowpat mousse.

After the hour’s stirring, we poured a third of the mixture into its mould - an enormous, bottomless clay pot, sunk under the soil surface almost to its brim. The six compost preparations Rudolf Steiner prescribed eighty-odd years ago were pushed in like booze-soaked amaretti into a trifle, then the process was repeated with a second layer and then a third. To finish we covered the pit with a hessian sack and a board to repel the rain, and left it to slow cook.

In six weeks time I’ll give it a stir to help maintain good oxygen levels, and by the end of winter, with luck, we’ll dig it up, dilute it extensively and apply it as a tonic to the soil of both Hannah’s new garden and our plot.