Henning Sehmsdorf has stag bladders stuffed with rotting chamomile flowers hanging from the laden apple trees in his orchard. Innocuous garden stakes in the dirt indicate where similar concoctions ferment in hollow cow horns. After a year of curing, these potions will be greatly diluted in water and sprayed on the fruits and vegetables that sustain Henning, his family, and their livestock throughout the year. The methods on S & S Homestead Farm may seem outlandish, but the results are decidedly not.

Take the fact that Henning, who is approaching 70, has had virtually no health expenses, except for regular check-ups, in the thirty-plus years that he has grown his own food. Neither have his wife or his kids. No cavities either. Even the livestock – cows, sheep, pigs, and chickens – who are fed homegrown and homemade feed, require no veterinary care, no medication.

“We don’t have any disease,” says Henning definitively. “Our pest management regime is basically healthy soils. Healthy soils grow healthy plants, grow healthy animals, grow healthy people. We do no monocropping of any kind; biodiversity attracts beneficial insects and pollinators and drives away the organisms that will be disease carriers. We don’t introduce any beneficial insects either; the microorganisms in the soil are so lively that they take care of things.”

Biodynamic farming is relatively unknown in the United States, but in Europe, where Henning grew up, it is the primary form of organic farming. Henning’s years as a humanities professor at the University of Washington are evidenced in his cogent summary of the history of Biodynamics. “In some ways this is old news,” he explains. “Farmers have known this for centuries, they have just forgotten about it since Justus Liebig came along and invented chemical farming. In 1860 he found all we needed to do was put N, P and K (nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus) on the ground and we’d get these enormous crops.

“What he hadn’t thought about is that these chemicals, because they are highly soluble, kill the microorganisms and create toxic conditions that are inimical to earthworms. So by the 1920s, the soils in central Europe were showing stress: falling fertility rates, falling productivity, increase in disease. Rudolf Steiner, who was a natural scientist and also a philosopher, was asked to help. Basically what he did was systematize natural knowledge about building the micro-organic life in the soil through these methods. He developed the system that is now known as Biodynamics.”

Henning and his family have been growing their own food and practicing Biodynamics since he bought ten acres on Lopez Island in 1969. Henning describes their motivation succinctly: loving good food. There was also another factor. He explains, “As an undergraduate trying to work my way through school, I worked in a meat factory for a year. I learned everything I did not want to know about how animals were treated and the low quality of the product that came out of there. So I decided I either stop eating meat or I do it right. When I got my PhD, I immediately started looking for land so I could grow my own food.”

Henning and his wife, Elizabeth, now own 15 acres and lease another 35. Striding purposefully through the fields, he describes what is growing this year on S & S Homestead Farm: a dozen sheep, two dozen beef cattle, a milk cow, three pigs, forty chickens. He reports, “We have about every fruit you can think of that will grow in the Northwest: apples, pears, cherries, peaches, four kinds of plums, raspberries, strawberries, gooseberries, red currants, black currants, blueberries – partly because we like good food and partly because it makes for biodiversity.” About half of the food raised is consumed on the farm and the other half is sold, which is enough to make the farm economically viable.

Henning and his family wisely use all their resources. Building materials come from the farm whenever possible. Henning built the farm’s first structure 30 years ago: a small windowless shack with a plastic roof to let in light. That’s where he and his family spent their first years on the land, though the shack seems better suited to its current use as a very serviceable storage shed. The construction of on-farm living quarters has evolved considerably, but the materials are still close at hand. A pleasing straw bale bunkhouse for farm interns was built in 2001 from straw, clay, sand, and timbers harvested from the land. A pretty little Norwegian wood stove rests on white and blue tiles Henning’s 90-year-old mother made and painted before she died.

Electricity is one of the few off-farm purchases, but here too, the farm is moving toward self-sufficiency. A cistern captures 2000 gallons of rainwater from the barn roof; the overflow is stored in a pond, and from there the fields, gardens and orchard are irrigated using a solar power pump. Animal and even human waste is carefully composted and spread back on the ground. “It’s a very complex system that takes a lot of management, but we have been doing it for 35 years now, so it’s a well-oiled machine,” says Henning.

Henning is committed to passing on what he has learned living on the land. He serves as an adjunct professor for Washington State University’s sustainable agriculture program. Most of the instruction and research happens on his farm, though he also lectures around the state. Henning and Elizabeth also teach a course in ecological food production to local high school students; students help grow, harvest, and prepare greens that are served in the school cafeteria. Students are also involved in a research project evaluating 21 varieties of heirloom beans to determine which grow best in the Lopez soils and climate. “If we can find the strains that are best suited,” he reports, “we can develop niche markets. You get 89 cents a pound for beans on the commodity market, but you can get $2.89 a pound at a farmers’ market.”

About 40 percent of the family’s income is from education; the rest is from custom meats, vegetables, and dairy. The farm has ten CSA subscribers for vegetables right now, and plans are in the works to bump that up to 50 with the help of a farm manager/education coordinator. “People always ask me, can you make a living doing this?” Henning says. “The way we think about it is this: not only what are our receipts, but also what did we produce internally, what don’t we have to buy? The fact that our transportation costs are one-seventh of the national average is a significant saving. The fact that we have not been sick in 30 years is an important saving. The fact that we don’t have any chemical or veterinary expenses is an important saving.  “Our cash income is relatively low,” explains Henning, “but when you actually internalize the benefits, it is easily equivalent to what the Department of Labor considers an average family income.”

There is much more to Henning's food system than the economics. He explains, "A lot of people are so used to commercial food they can’t taste anything that is subtle or complex. They ask, 'Is it sweet, is it greasy, is it salty?' And that is all they taste.” The vegetables and the fruit here have a whole symphony of flavors. I think that is a result of the way we manage the farm and the soils. If you buy an apple in the store it is either sweet or not, but it doesn’t have this range of taste." Henning concludes, "The diversity of this place is reflected in the flavor, the aroma and the texture of the food we produce here - in the apple, the carrot, the potato, and the meat and milk."

Contact
S & S Homestead
Henning Sehmsdorf
2143 Lopez Sound Road
Lopez Island, WA 98261
Tel: 360-468-3335
sshomestead@rockisland.com
http://csanr.wsu.edu/educationopps/internships.htm