North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[<dmnorton@royaloakfarmorchard.com>]

"Chemical agriculture is where superstition
abounds. Every chemist worth his or her salt KNOWS how
delicate and subtle the chemical equilibria
of biological reactions is, and yet there is the
superstition that you can pour nitrogen, phosphate and
chloride salts on the land and burn its
organic matter up, wreck its microbiology, dump toxic
chemicals on crops and then the food will be healthy
to eat. It takes mountains of faith - or
superstition - to believe such utter bilge."

Well, since we tried to grow 10,000 apples trees organically for 3 years and 
almost lost over half of them to pests and disease, we came to the 
conclusion that we would have to "believe such utter bilge", burn organic 
matter up, wreck its microbiology and dump toxic chemicals on crops.  Sorry 
folks, some of us grow fruit for a living!

Dennis Norton
Royal Oak Farm Orchard
http://www.royaloakfarmorchard.com
http://www.theorchardkeeper.blogspot.com
http://www.revivalhymn.com

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Michael Nave" <jmichaelnave@yahoo.com>
To: "North American Fruit Explorers" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Wednesday, April 04, 2007 12:47 AM
Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Boron and other things


> Great post, especially this paragraph:
>
>
>     "Chemical agriculture is where superstition
> abounds. Every chemist worth his or her salt KNOWS how
> delicate and subtle the chemical equilibria
> of biological reactions is, and yet there is the
> superstition that you can pour nitrogen, phosphate and
> chloride salts on the land and burn its
> organic matter up, wreck its microbiology, dump toxic
> chemicals on crops and then the food will be healthy
> to eat. It takes mountains of faith - or
> superstition - to believe such utter bilge."
>
>
> --- Dylan Ford <dford@suffolk.lib.ny.us> wrote:
>
> > Dear NAFEX Folks,
> >
> >
> >
> > Last year I began writing an article I hoped to
> > place in Pomona regarding
> > four major new concepts I have learned in recent
> > years about growing things.
> > I thought all four were important enough to share
> > with this group (and
> > possibly others), but unfortunately I only got
> > halfway through the writing
> > when other things came up that took precedence on my
> > time. I do not know
> > when I will get a chance to finish this, but I
> > thought I would post the
> > first half now (since it deals in part with Boron, a
> > subject that has come
> > up recently), and when I am able to write the second
> > half, I'll try to
> > publish the whole thing in Pomona in the future. I
> > hope others will find
> > this info as interesting and helpful as I did. It is
> > fairly long.
> >
> >
> >
> > dylan
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > I will remember 2005 as a year of great learning for
> > me. I am only in the
> > beginner-stage of taking full advantage of some of
> > these new understandings,
> > but I am already convinced of their importance to
> > growing non-toxic food
> > that resonates with life energy, to revitalizing our
> > soils, and to restoring
> > a sane approach to agriculture and environment.
> >
> > To avoid antagonizing any of my fruit-growing
> > brethren or wasting their
> > valuable time, I will provide a friendly warning
> > here: Conventional chemical
> > growers who think the Organic approach is
> > sentimental Luddite nonsense
> > probably would be better off reading no further, as
> > this material may tend
> > to irritate them, and I have no desire to do that.
> >
> > I have been gardening organically for 35 years,
> > enduring many
> > disappointments and failures in that time, but
> > always getting nearer the
> > goal of growing vital, unblemished fruits and
> > vegetables without the crutch
> > of chemical fertilizers or pesticides of any kind.
> > When I began trying to
> > grow fruit I discovered that the difficulties I had
> > experienced in the
> > garden (insects, critters, fungi) were "small
> > potatoes" compared to what I
> > was letting myself in for now. At this time I also
> > began to have a troubling
> > intuition that something fundamental was missing
> > from my overall wisdom,
> > something that wasn't to be gleaned in poring over
> > standard paint-by-numbers
> > organic texts.
> >
> > For much of the time that I have gardened I was
> > aware that preceding the
> > Organic movement in the US of A, there was a more
> > eccentric philosophy
> > espoused in Europe by a scholar named Rudolf
> > Steiner, who put forth the
> > notion that what went lacking in modern agriculture
> > was the spirituality,
> > and the focussed power of the farmer's intent. He
> > acknowledged the existence
> > and active connivance in the cycles of Nature of a
> > range of incorporeal
> > entities (elementals, devas, sylphs, etc.,) and
> > forms of vital energy not
> > (yet) recognized by official science (etheric,
> > astral, etc.,).
> >
> > snip
>
>
>
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