Cow Horns

Chapter excerpt from The Best of the Barefoot Farmer, Chapter VII: Cow Horns and Crystals

In Dr. Steiner's Agriculture course, he spoke out against the use of artificial fertilizers and promoted compost instead. He also gave us the recipes for horn manure and horn silica. Cow horns are vortexial-shaped

appendages on the cow's head that send back forces the cow does not use in its nervous system. The cow is a digestive animal, the supreme grass digest-er. She turns out the supreme plant food, manure. Since the cow does not fully use its head and nervous system, Steiner said oxygen and nitrogen forces were sent back to the manure via the horns.

So we take this wonderful manure and bury it in cow horns over the winter in good garden soil when the earth is most alive. Why is the earth more alive in winter than in summer? Think about all the potential growth, invisible until summer, stored underground during winter in roots and seeds. Crystallizing forces are strong then, too, as the snow and ice remind us. During this burial process, an actual homeopathic potentizing of the manure takes place, and the change it undergoes is undeniable. It turns into a rich, black substance. I have buried cow manure in a goat horn and in a glass jar right next to the cow horns, and when I dug them up, the manure in them was still green and stinky. Only in the cow horns did it change into a humus-like substance, and scientific analysis reveals it to be teeming with enzymes.

What are enzymes? Enzymes are bio-catalysts of the processes that build up amino acids in proteins. Although small and invisible, they are mighty workers in the bodies of plants and animals. Raw foods are good for you because they contain enzymes. Enzymes are in the soil, too, and their presence insures that certain life processes can occur.

The ratio is a quarter cup to three gallons per acre, so to treat eight acres I take two cups of horn manure and put it into a 50 gallon crock half full of slightly warmed, clear spring water. Because of the negative effects that trace amounts of chemicals may have on these forces, only clean buckets and crocks are used. Now I stir it up, and this is done with great enthusiasm. I stir at the edge of the crock and develop a deep uniform vortex all the way to the bottom. A vortex is a wonderful thing, a common form in plant growth, running water, the movement of galaxies and atoms, and weather phenomena. Once I get a deep whirlpool going, I switch hands and begin stirring in the other direction. Now, instead of this nice orderly vortex, I have chaos, with the seething and foaming water trying to continue one way while I'm trying to make it go the other way.

Of course my human will wins out, and the vortex is soon spinning nice and neatly in the other direction. Then I switch hands again and reverse it, creating another chaos. I stir clockwise with my left hand and counter clockwise with my right. I repeat this vortex, chaos, vortex, chaos potentizing process for one hour. Now the potentized manure has potentized the water, so the next step is to potentize the falling dew. Did you ever think about how the earth breathes every day? As the dew settles at night, the earth is breathing in.

I dip the stirred horn manure water out of the crock and strain it through an old T-shirt into the spray rig behind my tractor. I stir late in the day so I can spray the land right after I finish stirring, just at dusk when you can feel moisture in the air. The potentized dew then carries the forces of the horn manure into the soil. I try to get it on 10 acres of pasture at least once a year, with the garden getting it two or three times.

In the morning, as the fog lifts with the sun, the earth is breathing out, and this is when we stir and spray horn silica, which balances the horn manure. Instead of a dark humus made from manure, horn silica is white and made from beautiful quartz crystal, and instead of spending the winter months underground it is buried in the spring.

Rainbow sparkling crystals, either from local geodes or Arkansas mines, are hammered on an anvil into small chunks and dropped into an inverted steel fence post driver. A tamper bar and a good bit of zeal further crush the crystals, and then they are poured thru a strainer. A spoonful at a time is rubbed between two windowpanes until it is ground to the consistency of cornmeal. Water is added to make a paste and then it gets packed into the cow horns and buried about a foot deep. After it is dug up in the late fall we empty it into a glass jar and store it on a sunny windowsill. The stirring procedure is the same as for the horn manure but you only need a half teaspoon per acre with the three gallons of water and it is done at the crack of dawn.

When I first learned about this, I thought, 'This is the most foolish hogwash I've ever heard,' but I kept discovering that it was done on wonderfully fertile farms. I thought, 'Well, if a farmer pays that much attention to details, they are bound to be good farmers, and it's not the preparation at all.' Faith may be sufficient to move mountains, but it is not necessary. The mountains move on their own. I was encouraged to try this weird ordeal, on the premise that it would work even if I did not believe it. Being the experimental skeptic that I am, and deep into learning about how to build soil humus, I accepted the challenge and have been stirring ever since. I started by stirring in a five-gallon plastic bucket and sprinkling an acre with a whisk broom, feeling like a (somewhat embarrassed) priest in some ancient ritual. I hoped my neighbors didn't see me and ask me to explain.

But seemingly magical transformations started happening in our soils. Yellow land turned brown, and brown soils turned black, much more than the amount of compost, manure or cover crops could account for. And, as I suspected, I became more attuned to details and observations as to what the farm was doing as a whole. It has taken me 10 years to finally make a real good quality horn manure preparation, and I'm still learning how to stir and spray it properly. Very few people have taken up this work, and there is a huge amount to learn.

It was last fall when I got a real insight into the value of this procedure, oddly enough from a soil scientist who sincerely believes in chemical agriculture. He was impressed with the fertility in our garden and cropland, which he attributed to compost, manure and cover crops. Even the most ardent chemical agriculture teacher still believes these are good ideas. But what struck home were his comments about our pasture soils.

'This is unlike 95% of the land I've seen in Tennessee,' he said. The softness experienced while walking on it spoke of organic matter and life, and the color implied fertility. This land had received very little, if any, compost ' only the manure from the cows that lived there and the horn manure preparation. It wasn't until later, when we walked on the new land I'd just bought, that he said, 'Now, this is more typical of Tennessee soils, hard and lighter in color.' I hope he can come back in a few years after we've been applying the cow horn preparations.