All of us at Rancho Almasomos want to wish you a happy 4th of July on this historic 250 year anniversary of the United States of America. Just like the firework shows happening tonight, the Rancho Roundup is bursting with the latest news and happenings at our biodynamic farm. A lot has happened since the last edition of the newsletter and we’re excited to catch you up on everything. | | |
Welcome Burt and Ernie!
There's a lot of new energy on the ranch this quarter, and no small part of it has four legs. We're thrilled to welcome Burt, our alpaca, and Ernie, our llama, who have joined us as guardian animals for the chickens and ducks. The flock's new home in the North Field has come together nicely, and Burt and Ernie are already keeping a steady eye on things now that the transition has been completed.
Speaking of the flock, it's growing fast. We welcomed 25 new baby chicks, 30 ducklings and four baby geese this quarter, and they've already outgrown the "baby" part of that description. Believe it or not, goose adolescence comes with all the awkward energy you'd expect from a teenager — gangly, a little too loud, and fully convinced they don't need supervision anymore. Frankly, if Ernie could talk, he’d tell you little honkers like these are the reason llamas spit. As they all transition into their home in the North Field alongside their new guardians, there's no shortage of clucking and quacking around the property these days.
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The pastures themselves have also gotten some attention. We've reseeded across the property, building on the cover crop work from the spring and continuing to restore the kind of resilient, living groundcover that supports both our animals and the soil beneath them.
Out in the orchard, summer is delivering on its promise. We're already bringing in apples, peaches, and apricots, with more to come as the season continues. Seeing fruits on the trees is the kind of thing that makes all the patient work of soil restoration worth it.
We've also put some new plantings for the Ranch in the ground this quarter: Olallie berries and heirloom table grapes. The grapes are a particularly meaningful addition, grown from historic seed varieties dating back to the 1800s, carrying with them over a century of agricultural history in this region. The neighboring area of Page Springs has long been known as wine country, and these vines tie Rancho Almasomos into that same lineage, deepening our connection to the local wineries that have helped shape this area's identity as a place where grapes thrive. It's a reminder that the work we're doing here, while new in some ways, is also part of something much older.
| And of course, the agave march continues. The first 500 plants of our 2,000-plant goal for the year are now in the ground, a major milestone in the long-term relationship we're building with this crop that will take 10 years of care before it can be harvested. | | |
Stirring Things Up
On a traditional biodynamic farm, you will often find a farmer leaning over a copper barrel, stirring the water inside with a stick, or even by hand. Though not as well known as the application of biodynamic preparations themselves, this stirring is actually one of the most distinctive practices in biodynamic agriculture, and perhaps the most intimate of those connections between the farmer and the farm.
The ritual is called dynamizing, or dynamisation. It is the process by which the concentrated fermented substances in the biodynamic preparations are activated and transferred to water before being applied to the fields. The best known of these is Preparation 500, made from cow manure fermented inside a cow horn over winter, producing an intensely transformed material rich in microbial life and biological activity. However, to be most effective it must be bonded to the water in a very specific way. Not just mixed. Not just dissolved. Stirred.
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Here is how it works. A small amount of the preparation is dissolved into several gallons of warm water. Then the stirring begins. The farmer works in one direction, building a deep spiraling vortex that pulls all the way down to the bottom of the bucket/vessel. When the vortex reaches its full depth and has become a funnel of ordered motion, the direction is abruptly reversed. The water collapses into a seething, turbulent, formless chaos until the vortex builds again in the opposite direction. Order to chaos to order, the rhythm continues, back and forth between states, for a full hour.
Rudolf Steiner, the father of biodynamic agriculture, described the method explicitly in Lecture 4 of his 1924 Agriculture lectures: "You have to start stirring it quickly around the edge of the bucket, on the periphery, until a crater forms that reaches nearly to the bottom, so that everything is rotating rapidly. Then you reverse direction quickly, so that everything seethes and starts to swirl in the opposite direction. If you continue doing this for an hour, you will get it thoroughly mixed."
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 | | This alternation between order and chaos mirrors something fundamental about how the universe itself works. Something nature has been doing for billions of years, and ancient observers noticed in the patterns around them. Something that Steiner built into his methods, half a century before modern physics caught up and Prigogine’s work explained it scientifically. This rhythmic pulsing between form and formlessness, contraction and expansion, can be seen everywhere from the spiral of a galaxy to the double helix of DNA. Each time the stirring generates a vortex, it creates what is called laminar flow, in which the water molecules move in organized layers. This allows the biological properties of the preparation to fully penetrate the water instead of simply floating within it. The chaos that follows when the direction reverses then pulls in oxygen and the micro-turbulence increases the dissolved oxygen content of water by as much as 75 percent. This oxygenated, dynamized water then feeds the microbial life in the preparation that has been introduced to it and amplifies its effect when it is then applied to the soil.
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The preferred material for the vessel/bucket in biodynamics is copper. Copper has been valued across cultures for thousands of years for its positive effect on water. Ancient Egyptians documented it as far back as 2400 BC and modern science has since confirmed those empirical observations. Copper is antimicrobial, and its smooth, non-reactive surface creates minimal friction, allowing the vortex to form cleanly and completely. In biodynamic thinking, copper is also understood as having a particular affinity with water and with living processes. It is a conductor, in the deepest sense of the word.
While there are stirring machines in use on some modern biodynamic farms, Steiner held that hand stirring carries the intention and attention of the farmer in a way that a machine cannot replicate. In the direct contact between the farmer's hand and the preparation-activated water the farmer's own vitality, intentions and connections enter the preparation via the stirring too. In a farming methodology centered around the interconnectedness of living systems, this is a key component of the metaphysical connection between farm and farmer.
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Beating the Heat and Dates to Remember
The momentum at Rancho Almasomos isn't slowing down anytime soon — here's what's coming up next.
Barn building continues, with the two new structures in the East Field steadily taking shape. We're also breaking ground on something a little different this time: a subterranean grow house, designed to work with the intensity of the Arizona sun rather than against it, giving us a cooler, more controlled space to grow through the hottest stretches of the year.
The agave planting will keep going too, with the another round of planting happening later this month. Plus the restoration of the original farmhouses on the property has officially begun, breathing new life into the foundations that have been part of this land's story for generations.
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In the saga for county approval, we finally have dates. On September 17th, 2026, Rancho Almasomos will go before the Planning and Zoning Committee, and on October 21st, 2026, we'll appear before the Yavapai County Board for final plan approval. If you're able to, please come out and show your support. These hearings literally determine what Rancho Almasomos will and won’t be allowed to do in the future. Guidance on how to show your support will be posted to our website in August.
Kat's beautiful vision for this land is no small feat, and it won't be realized without the support of our incredible community of friends and neighbors. We hope you'll stand with us through these next steps of finalizing what Rancho Almasomos will become.
| | | | "The fundamental maxim of free men is to live in love towards our actions, and to let live in understanding of the other person's will." | | |
May your Independence day celebrations this year be safe, fun and act as a reminder that the growth and greatness of both our nation and ourselves comes from getting one’s hands dirty in the soil cultivating the equality and freedoms we all too often take for granted.
For more ranch updates, follow us on Instagram at @almasomos and look for the next edition of the Rancho Round-Up newsletter this Fall.
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