About this desk
What The Stirring Rod is, who writes it, how a note is put together.
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The Stirring Rod is an independent editorial reference on biodynamic agriculture: the soil and its humus, the preparations, the compost, the holding kept as one organism, and the seasonal work that joins them. It is written for the person who grows food or keeps land, and for the reader who wants to know what a preparation is before deciding whether to make one.
How a note is written
Each note takes one question and answers it. The answer comes first, in the opening paragraphs, before any background. What follows is arranged so a reader can jump to the part they need: what the preparation is, what it does and does not do, how it is made and stored, when it is used, and what a grower should watch for.
The sources are named at the end. They are published research, growers' manuals, trial reports and the standards a certification body publishes. Where a source does not settle a question, the note says so instead of guessing. Nothing here is a guarantee of yield, of soil analysis or of health, and no note is written as advice for a particular property.
What this domain carried before
The domain cdarbiodynamic.org carried the C-Dar Biodynamic Society, a non-profit that studied, made and applied biodynamic preparations and composts, and ran courses and apprenticeships at C-Dar Lodge Farm in Paradise Valley, British Columbia. Its pages ran from about 2010 to 2012. A later WordPress on the same domain, in 2019, mixed a biodynamics section with an unrelated art gallery.
Neither the society nor that WordPress publishes this site, and this desk is not their successor. They are named here because a reader who follows an old link deserves to know what used to stand at this address. Their course lists, application forms and gallery pages are not reproduced, and the addresses that carried them either point to the closest section of this desk or are retired.