Doing better in one area, and a question

Last week our fellow blogger friends Melinda and Matt had a terrible event happen – their cat was sprayed (like everything else in harm’s way) with pesticides while hanging out in the vineyard neighboring their home. Raisin lived to tell the tale, and Melinda wrote a really compelling post about pesticide and herbicide use (DON'T!!). The one recommendation she had that really struck me was the “let it be” idea. The idea that nature has a way of taking care of those things we think are out of whack, but are really in sync with natural timings. Coupled with some info from Gotta Garden in which Dr. Jeff Gilman, Associate Professor at University of Minnesota basically told us that aphids, while unsightly, aren't that bad really. Apparently, they don't do as much damage as one might think. Good to know!

It made me realize that I too can do better. That starts with finally disposing of the old fertilizers and grossness hanging out in my garage because we’ve been too lazy to get rid of them. And the horticultural oil spray that when I bought it didn’t realize it was 98% petroleum product. Haz mat will come and pick up the items. But that doesn’t mean my conscious is clean. But I can only make a choice to do better from this point in time.

Melinda’s right. When cucumber beetles infested her zucchini, she let them be, and she had plenty of zucchini for here and her family. The same happened with our tomatoes and eggplant last year. The bugs really got to things, but we still had plenty to eat, and birds were fat and happy.

Biodynamics
Thinking about the vineyard, and because we’re located in an awesome geographic region, we have the option of lots of different kinds of wine within 100-250 miles. So we try to make the choice of organic/biodynamic wine because it doesn’t contain the pesticides that almost killed Raisin. This has me thinking: what exactly is biodynamics, and how does it relate to a vineyard? After some initial research, I still don’t quite understand. Does it have to do with burying a cow horn with manure, or is it more modern than that nowadays? Can someone enlighten me? The websites about it out there (including Wikipedia) aren’t much help, and are pretty vague.

But I'm interested to learn more, as always.

The perpetual student.