Oak bark preparation 505

What is the oak bark preparation (505)?

The oak bark preparation (505) is the fourth of the six compost preparations. Made from the crumbled bark of the English oak (Quercus robur), matured in the skull of a domestic animal in running water, it is added to compost in the smallest amounts. It is the "calcium preparation" of the series: in the biodynamic understanding it is meant to enable the manure to counter plant diseases preventively, by guiding an excessive, rampant vitality into orderly paths.

While chamomile (503) processes calcium in one, "building up" way, oak bark brings calcium in an especially ideal structure which, according to Steiner, has an ordering and damping effect, precisely when diseases appear.

The oak as a plant

The oak is seen as a symbol of the struggle for life and of strength, and its form shows this struggle: even the young seedling has to overcome fungal diseases (such as mildew) and insect damage; the tender, yellowish-red young leaf is often attacked, whereupon the oak grows on through new side shoots and becomes gnarled. The tender young leaf contrasts with the firm, hard, resistant wood. With age, the bark cracks into rough plates and forms a protection towards the outside.

This bark itself holds opposites: on the one hand a great deal of calcium (about 75 % of the ash as calcium oxide), on the other hand tannic acid, which used to be used for tanning leather. Tannic acid has an insecticidal effect; calcium inhibits fungal growth. Biodynamically, the bark is read as "an intermediate product between the plant and the living earthy".

Steiner's description in the Agriculture Course

In the fifth lecture of the Agriculture Course, Steiner introduced the oak bark preparation as a remedy against plant diseases. A "large number of plant diseases in particular" can "really be remedied through a rational approach to manuring". For this, calcium has to be given to the soil, but "within the realm of the living", not as ordinary lime. The oak contains plenty of calcium "in a fine combination", and "it is especially the bark of the oak" in which the calcium structure is "the most ideal of all".

Steiner's picture of the effect: calcium "creates order when the etheric body works too strongly"; it damps the etheric body and so frees the effects of the astral body. In oak bark, the calcium is structured so that "a rampant etheric contracts", and "quite regularly", without "shocks" in the organic. From the matured mass, what is added to the manure is what "really gives it the forces to combat and hold back harmful plant diseases preventively".

Why a skull, and which one?

The casing is the bony skull cavity of a domestic animal. Steiner: "Then we take, and it is almost immaterial from which of our domestic animals, a skull, a cranium." This sets an important boundary: it is a domestic animal's skull (cattle, sheep, goat, pig or horse), not a wild animal's. In the picture of biodynamic tradition, the calcareous vault of the skull encloses a space of strong opposites: the most intense life processes alongside brain cells that cannot regenerate. Under the protection of this calcareous cover, the crumbled oak bark is taken through a controlled process of decay.

Making it step by step

Obtaining the bark. From mid-August to September, take the outer bark from English oaks more than 30 years old, preferably still living (trunk diameter 30 to 50 cm). Steiner meant "the outermost layer of bark, which crumbles when you remove it", that is, the rough outer bark. In practice, the outer bark and bark down to the bast (but without it) are taken. Remove it with a drawknife, hatchet or rasp and collect it on a cloth spread out on the ground; if you need larger amounts, talk to the forester about trees due to be felled.

Crumbling. Break the bark down with a fruit mill, hammer mill, chopper or mortar and sieve into a crumbly texture, so that the coarsest pieces are about the size of a wheat grain to a pea.

Preparing and filling the skull. From late August to late September, stuff the cleaned skulls, emptied of the brain, with the dry or slightly moistened oak bark through the opening at the back of the head. Split skulls are filled in both halves, the edges sealed with kneaded clay and tied together with wire; all cracks are sealed with bone fragments and clay.

Maturing in water. Keep the skull where fresh rain or snow water flows periodically through a layer of sludge made from decaying plant material, for example in a wooden or clay barrel under a downpipe, in which plant material has turned into "plant sludge" over summer. Steiner expressly asked for running snow and rain water; the formerly common practice of burying skulls in public waters (pond or stream mud) does not match this and is also problematic under water law. The skull spends autumn and winter this way.

Recovering it. At the end of April or beginning of May, take the skulls out of the sludge, scrape out the oak bark carefully and store it like the other preparations. The skulls are usually used only once.

Quantities

Wistinghausen reckons about 50 g of fresh or 25 to 50 g of dried oak bark per hectare. For a farm of 20 to 30 ha, about 1 to 2 kg of fresh or ½ to 1 kg of dried bark and about three skulls are enough. A finished portion measures only 1 to 2 cm³. As with all compost preparations, this is an impulse of forces, not a quantity of substance.

Effect in the compost

According to Steiner, the oak bark preparation gives the manure the power "to combat and hold back" plant diseases "preventively"; it works in a preventive and ordering way, not by killing. In the biodynamic tradition, 505 is regarded as the preparation that damps excessive vitality prone to disease and structures the calcium balance. Ehrenfried Pfeiffer assigned the compost preparations as a whole to strengthening growth. The functional assignment (calcium, disease prevention) is a biodynamic view, not a pharmacological analysis of effects.

Use

The oak bark preparation is placed as a small lump in the compost heap or manure pile together with the other compost preparations. The five solid preparations (502 to 506) and the liquid valerian (507) form a series that works together; one portion is enough for about ten cubic metres of manure.

In context

Steiner's reasoning (calcium "within the living", the effect on the "etheric body", the skull as casing) comes from his spiritual-scientific world view and is presented here as the original concept, not as a scientific description of effects. The functional assignment (disease prevention) is biodynamic tradition. An important point of fact: it is a domestic animal's skull, not a farm animal's skull in the narrower sense and not a wild animal's; Steiner expressly said "from which of our domestic animals". For Demeter farms, using the compost preparations is compulsory (see Demeter certification).