When Mehmet asked me in 2015 where and how he could deepen his knowledge of Biodynamic work, the impulse to work with interested people in Turkey on the Agricultural Course was born. In the meantime we have reached the 5th lecture!
The RUMI Centre on the farm of Azu Duran has become the place where we have been working for four years now on the understanding and deepening of Rudolf Steiner’s Agricultural Impulse.
Arzu has built a charming hall for over 100 people on her small gardener’s farm, which has now become a biodynamic hotspot throughout Turkey. It is almost as if a hidden bud has blossomed and is now blooming and smelling, attracting and fascinating people.
Now, after two years of Corona interruption, we could meet again physically and work and celebrate together. Over 60 people came! It was a real celebration that touched everyone. Everyone experienced a special atmosphere, warmth and enthusiasm that I myself have never experienced with such intensity.
It was the prelude to a kind of triad. Our topics were so big that we could not even cover them in one conference. We divided it into three, one now with Michael Straub for the topics soil, compost, biodynamic preparations, medicinal herbs and fruit trees, then in November with Georg Meissner on wine and in April with Michael Weiler and Anet Spengler on bees and cows. My part is always to work on the Agricultural Course and on the topics of preparations and compost.
Michael Straub’s contributions, borne of deep experiences, knowledge of nature and surprising observations, entirely in the goetheanistic sense, were very exciting and stimulated people extraordinarily. Many questions and openings came. It will certainly lead to valuable support for Arzu’s work on the farm!
In the fifth lecture of Rudolf Steiner’s Agricultural Course, the compost preparations are introduced and described for the first time in terms of their effectiveness and how they are prepared. This breaks new territory that we have hardly been able to fully grasp in terms of its potential depth and significance, even after 100 years. It still holds many secrets and challenges that we can work on spiritually-practically.
And this is what we tried to do in the RUMI Centre, theoretically with the contents and statements of Rudolf Steiner in the 5th lecture and practically on the following Monday.
But the programme was also co-designed and supported by Turkish friends, and that turned out to be extraordinarily fortunate.
Arzu opened the participants’ eyes to the essence of Anthroposophy, which was very courageous and committed.
Hande Başaran and her Sufi group made an elementary Sufi Dance Therapy with their traditional instruments, full of life, movement, intimacy and joy. Hande is a teacher at the Waldorf School in Alanya. Everybody danced, everybody sang!
Mehmet Çetin presented the ISIK project “Happy Village”, where a holistic concept of good village development based on biodynamic agriculture is being worked on with the support of ISIK.
Kenan Aydin from Aydin Gülyagi, who runs an intensive biodynamic project on their exceptionally beautiful DEMETER rose farm, reported about their roses and the people there, especially about a school initiative for the children of the harvest workers in the campaign! An urgently needed pioneering project leading into the future! I would like to note that Mert and Ömer, employees of Aydin Gülyagi, also attended the meeting!!! This is so important, this is how it should be!
A group of young sponsored students “Sponsored Young Agronomists” introduced themselves! I didn’t understand anything, everything was in Turkish. But their mission, their enthusiasm came across. They carry the future!
I would like to emphasise that we looked back on the day in the evening and on the night in the morning. In a short but intense exercise based on the seven life processes, we processed the day’s work “What did we do?” – “What warmed me up?” – What does it mean to me? What does it do to me?” – “What impulse can I find for myself from this?”
This work was so intense and effective that on the second day people asked: “Are we doing this review again today?” This is so important for any work to “breathe it in – warm up to it – digest it well and then individualise it!” To really make the content of the joint work your own, that is essential!
Because the topics were so extensive, filling the days from Friday to Sunday, we invited to make up the practical preparation work on the following Monday. Maybe some of the participants could make it possible to add another day.
And then this: there were still about 50 people there when we made and dug in the preparations with great joy and enthusiasm. The most impressive moment was when we filled the horns with cow dung. The cows of the farm gave us wonderfully shaped patties. There were over 100 horns waiting to be filled. And people did it with their bare hands, without gloves or spoons, no with their hands! And they filled the horns with their extraordinary energy and devotion: what a wonderful preparation was created!
The horns were then passed from hand to hand in a long chain until they were placed in the soil in a beautiful rosette and buried by Neris.
With equal devotion, dedication and joy, the other preparations were made and buried.
And together we stirred horn manure preparation!
So this Monday became a special highlight of the days at the RUMI Centre.
Istanbul, 12 October 2022
Neris, Arzu, Michael, Hans
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