Poem: Tenth Rune

Tenth Rune

Dawn will bring none but
another cold morning.
Gray cast bears little light to
shine on trees, naked,
in search of lost leaves.

North winds comes, he blows
the white breath from heaving horses
until it disappears through
moss-covered branches.

Thorns of berriless brambles
snag your gown, twist below
and ensnare your footfall.
Blood drips from pin pricks
around your ankles,
pain not felt for want of warmth.

No bird seeks fire in December’s
dark days. Shiver of furry beast
raises heart’s heat
when to drink there is only ice water
from a frozen pond.

Many men marching, held captive
by the sound of their own footsteps.
Sound of footsteps spelling out
demise, counting out a row of
graves, winter’s sleeping dirt disturbed.
Their anxious breath exhaling fear.

Cold is cold when rain turns to ice
as it catches on boughs,
reaching down with such sharp tines
growing heavier with nightfall.

Closed eyes in warm bowery
hear only crystal clear snaps
as innocent limbs are felled
whose strength is no match
for winter’s weighted cloak.

—Christy Korrow

Garden Insects Used in University Class

Last night, we received a call from a professor who teaches the organic farming course at Oklahoma State University. She received a copy of the Garden Insects DVD through a donation made possible by the grant we received from RSF Social Finance. The grant made it possible for us to donate over 200 copies of Garden Insects to public schools and libraries. The women called to tell Chris how much she appreciated the film, how much her students benefited from it, and that she will be using it each semester as part of her University curriculum. She closed the conversation by saying, “Tell him to keep making films!”

The funny part is that while we were on the phone, Chris was in the other room, his face buried in the manual for his new camera, a still camera capable of recording images at pre-set intervals (every three seconds, etc..). This will allow him to document natural events that occur over time (time laspe) such as seeds sprouting or ice forming overnight on plants.

5 (Visual) Reasons To Grow a Fall Garden

A recent harvest.

Chinese cabbage ... we make kim chee using a recipe from the Los Angeles Times. LA has the largest population of Koreans outside of Korea.

Escarole is so beautiful, and slightly bitter. Eat it shredded in salads, or lightly steamed with Parmesan and finely chopped garlic, Italian style.

Haven't harvested these yet, but aren't they gorgeous?? Our friend Laurie picked us up a flat of plants in late August from a local nursery. These Brussels sprouts have thrived in the cool fall, with only light frosts.

I hardly ever go a day without eating several cups of lettuce ... I love it!!!!

(Photos by Chris Korrow)

Thanksgiving dinner additions: Kale/Grape Salad and Raw Key Lime Pie

We love curly kale, isn't it pretty?

Thought I'd share what I’ve decided to bring to the Thanksgiving potluck we will be attending. Angela Leeds has a delicious kale and grape salad, it is drizzled with lime and garlic, and of course the kale is thriving in the garden this time of year. Angela has a website called The Live Green Smoothie Diet, where she posts lots of recipes, some are free and there is small cost to access the recipe a day section of the site (only $5 for one month access) but it is worth it, and a great way to support the work of someone who is developing healthy alternatives and original creative new ways to eat healthier (get in those five serving of fruits and veggies folks!), especially for parents trying to think of creative of ways to get kids to eat vegetables.

I am also going to make a raw, vegan Key Lime Pie from the book Sweet Gratitude (North Atlantic), my favorite recipe book of late. I’ve already made a trial run with the pie, and it is soooo good. We can use our home grown pecans in the nut-based crust. The recipes are entirely raw, packed with nourishment, with no compromise in flavor, texture or beauty (no whole wheat cakes, please!). Co-author, Tiziana Alipo Tambora, recently spoke at Café Gratitude's Monday Night Live, where she was a pastry chef (many of the recipes in the book were developed there). Her talk is online, and will inspire you to explore the realm of raw deserts if you haven’t already!

Give thanks!

Photo by Chris Korrow

Time to Prepare Your Garden for Spring

This is the perfect time to prepare a garden bed for spring, and Chris has written out easy instructions in his booklet, the 30 Square Foot Garden. The booklet is printed on 100% recycled paper, and costs only $5. It shows how easy it can be to get started in organic vegetable gardening.

We have sold a few hundred of these so far, which makes us feel wonderful knowing that there will be a few hundred new gardens around the US! It would make a perfect and inexpensive Christmas gift! Don’t forget the Garden Insects dvd as another gift idea for gardeners or children!

(Lettuce photo by Chris Korrow)

Cosmic Cabbage, Conscious Cauliflower

Give thanks for the beautiful cabbages and cauliflower in the fall garden. So much more than just vegetables, these are substantial foods. According to Rudolf Steiner, cabbages and cauliflower, the head of crowded flower buds, will support our lungs and heart. He bases this on the role that sun forces play in plant growth. Leaves grow up toward the sun, or rather, are drawn up by the forces of the sun, and the sun has a strong connection to our heart.

Cauliflower has developed past the leaf stage, to the blossom stage, although still closer to leaf than to fruit. Research done by Dr. Rudolf Hauschka using capillary-dynamic patterns shows that cauliflower, and also plants in the blossom stage, have been energetically “cooked” by the sun to their state of blossoming, or more eloquently put, ripening and warmth forces are infused into the plant at this stage from the cosmos, and thus needs only light steaming, or can even be eaten raw. Where as cabbage, still in the leaf stage, also affected by the heating affects of the sun’s warmth, can be brought to the state of raw cauliflower also with light steaming, or eaten raw. Cooked beyond light steaming, both foods tested as being “dead,” void of nutrients and enzymes, in other words, carried too far over into realms that equate to overripeness or rot in nature.

If left in the garden, and allowed to continue to grow own, the cabbage would eventually shoot up a stalk from out of its packed round layers of leaves, and the cauliflower, would unfurl itself into a million blossoms. Yet, even though they will never reach their potential, it does still exist, as Goethe described, in the archetypal plant, existing in completion, as an imprint, in “space” or the akashic realm. Each plant has its guiding spirit, and star to coax it toward its fulfillment.

So much we take for granted when we go out to the garden or to the shop and buy produce, often hurrying up with our chores, ready to rush home, pressured to make supper, worried about spending so much on groceries. For all of that “important” mind clutter, we miss out on the richness of participating in the experience of the life of a vegetable, which is so much more interesting, rhythmic, filled with contributions of fairies, gnomes, sylphs and undines, the beings of the four elements, who embody the elements, the “clay” who make these nourishing manifestations come about, grow in the dirt, sprout, blossom and even sometimes rot. A vegetative state of mind can be more enlightening than the cliché would lead us to believe.

Coleslaw and creamed cauliflower never tasted to good.

Drinking sunshine

I make juice with kale, carrot, apple, celery and parsley. I will drink it and a mysterious process will take place inside of me that neither science nor mystics can explain. I taking something foreign, break it down and assimilate it into my own body, with a wish for health for my own thoughts, creativity and activity. Sun, soil, water, millions of microorganisms, gnomes and fairies, acting together, to create an amazing natural something: vegetables. I can’t leave out our beautiful horses who contribute their manure to our compost piles. A domestication of a process long known to to this planet—animals graze, stride past, dropping their dung or manure, leaving the ground more fertile than when they arrived—sustainability. Someday maybe we will no longer need to eat them.

Rudolf Steiner described two “streams” of nutrition that flow into us. One is the earthly nutritional stream, it comes into us from our food, and builds our thoughts, while the cosmic nutritional stream is what we take in through our senses and builds the substance of our physical body. It seems impossible at first that we might be able to absorb actual substance through our eyes nose and mouth, and that food is primarily building thoughts, but I like to imagine this to be true.

What kinds of thoughts will be supported by this colorful vegetable juice?

Five ways to add living protein to your salads

An up-and-coming patch of fall greens

Lettuces and salad greens grow ever so happily in cool fall weather, so take full advantage of their generosity! Instead of having a salad before your meal, add a few of the high-protein ingredients below, double the size of your salad and make it your meal! When I eat only salad for dinner, I notice that I need less sleep, dream more vividly, and wake up feeling alert. Protein from raw food is easy to absorb since the food still has all of the enzymes intact needed to break down the protein into amino acids. (These enzymes are destroyed when food is heated over approx. 105 degrees.)

• Kale Many people don’t realize that nutrient dense, dark, leafy greens have high quality, easily to assimilate protein (22% of the calories in kale are from protein). Chop them small and bruise them up a bit (rub with fingers).

• Sprouted Lentils We prefer the small French lentils, soak overnight, drain and let them sprout for a day or two, just until a small ‘tail’ forms.

• Avocado Provides protein, enzymes and healthy unsaturated fats.

• Nuts Walnuts, almonds, pecans (soak overnight to neutralize enzyme inhibitors).

• Raw Milk Goat Cheese

• Hemp Seed Delicious nutty taste, contains valuable essential fatty acids.

Chris checking on the cabbage and broccoli

There is an important book called The China Study that presents research that causes us to question whether we do indeed need the high levels of protein commonly prescribed by “government experts,” and that in fact, high levels of protein may correlate with cancer and other diseases. The research in this book also points to the benefits of plant-based proteins.

Have a great day! —Christy Korrow

Gardens and Prayer

Biodynamic horn manure (BD #500) to bring earthly 

and cosmic life forces to the plants via the soil.

The French philosopher, mystic and activist, Simone Weil 

(1909–1943) once wrote, “Absolute unmixed attention is 

prayer.” Her statement holds meaning for those who en- 

gage in biodynamic work. While practical and scientific in- 

formation about biodynamics is widely available through 

hundreds of books, websites, classes and conferences, the 

spiritual aspects of our movement cannot be so neatly 

packaged and sold. 

Though it is important to share “how-to” information, 

and encourage friends and fellow farmers to use the prep- 

arations, it is equally essential for practitioners to adopt 

a devotional mood while working with the land. Rudolf 

Steiner describes an attitude of reverence as a fundamental 

prerequisite for the human soul to gain access to supersen- 

sible worlds. After all, emphasis on how the spiritual world 

is active in nature and agriculture is what sets biodynamics 

apart from organic agriculture. 

Mindfully stirring the preparations, or really being on 

our farms and in our gardens can become opportunities for 

the development of spiritual capacities. This is the juncture 

where we go beyond a biodynamic practice that is more 

or less, one of following instructions or guidelines, to one 

where the gardener or farmer participates with the whole 

of nature; through this higher sense of awareness, spiritual 

scientific research takes place. We become capable of phe- 

nomenological research, “reading the book of nature,” and 

can come to our own understanding of what, for example, 

a healthy plant, field, or landscape truly looks like. From 

the basis of this understanding, we can problem-solve and 

discern what can be done to restore balance. 

—Christy Korrow 

Letter to readers of the fall 2009 issue of Applied Biodynamics, the newsletter of the Josephine Porter Institute, Christy is managing editor. 

Rosie and Wind

Gabe asked me to spend some time with Rosie while she was away in Cookeville, cleaning for my parents and taking a Saturday workshop in contemporary dance. Rosie is her two-and-a-half year old filly, and is now in a separate pasture from our two other horses, her mom, Lucy and our gelding, Ollie. Gabe said it was time to wean Rosie (short for Rosie Cotton, named after Samwise Gamgee’s wife). So, now, separated from her horse family only by a fence line and our driveway, Rosie is anxious and lonesome. I walked down to give her a carrot.

From the far end of the field she whinnied and came walking over to take it from my hand. The wind was blowing her mane and banging the loose piece of tin on our stable. She took the carrot, gladly, and stayed with me at the fence while I brushed flies from her face, scratched the side of her neck, and told her that this separation was only temporary. I think she understood.

Rosie understands a lot more than most of us. She was born in the field just down from our well. We call it the Well Pasture. She was born on Gabe’s 13th birthday, March 21st, just a hair before midnight.

Gabe has a special touch with horses, communicates with them using few gestures, and even fewer words. She calls their names and they come running, like in a Walt Disney movie. There is an empty chair in the bamboo where she goes to meditate. Large Chinese poll bamboo, not native, an almost twenty-year-old patch, now a small forest. Inside of it you feel clean, still and orderly. I walked through on my way to give Rosie her carrot.

Near the pasture gate there is a puddle, shallow, filled with last night’s rain. I walk around it, and wonder if it is clean enough to drink from. Probably two-hundred years ago my body would have had the correct bacterial balance to tolerate such fresh water as this. Now I only avoid it, and wonder how long it will take to soak into the ground.

The same wind that blows Rosie’s mane is drying the clothes on the line. The best kind of weather for laundry day. Each tee-shirt, panty and pair of jeans becomes a Kentucky prayer flag, carrying our gratitude and wishes across the treetops, and northeast to the Appalachians. I hope they make it over those mountains, all the way to the ocean.

Two Poems

These were conceived at a recent poetry workshop Gabe and I took with the most awesome Rachel McKibbens. –Christy Korrow

She Lived There

In the town of rejection
the old maid is buried in the garden
with weeds for a headstone.

Family stories were wiped clean
with a bloodstained handkerchief.

Cars drive backwards,
and anyone with secrets has
been cut out of the portrait.

Sign reads: No Trust Allowed




The Attic

Ghosts leave no footprints on stairways.
Air doesn’t move and neither does the dust.
Windows locked tight with dried paint,
any sunlight that tries to enter is
blotted out by the unwashed glass.

Boxes behave, unaware of their own contents.
Stacked silent, cardboard makes equal
old treasures and junk that should have been
sold at yard sales.

Letter to Joseph-Beth Booksellers about store placement of Glenn Beck book

Hello friends,
If any of you live on Lexington, or shop here, and share my sentiments, please do write to them!


Joseph-Beth Booksellers
161 Lexington Green Cir # B
Lexington, KY 40503

Dear Mr and Mrs Van Uum,

While visiting Lexington recently, to attend the Kentucky Women’s Writer’s Conference, I stopped in to do some shopping at your bookstore. Joseph Beth is filled with interesting, inspiring and intellectually stimulating books. As such, I was surprised to see Glen Beck’s book, Common Sense: The Case Against an Out-of-Control Government, prominently displayed on one of the podiums lining the customer line to the cash registers. Out of all the book titles in your store, surely there are titles which represent constructive ideas of political conservatives that are more deserving of this store placement. And, if you do insist on offering Beck’s book a prominent position, maybe you should consider also placing a book selection that offers a differing political viewpoint.

I would like to close with a quote from Glen Beck, taken from his own radio show:

"This is horrible to say, and I wonder if I'm alone in this you know it took me about a year to start hating the 9/11 victims' families? I don't hate all of them. I hate probably about 10 of them. But when I see a 9-11 victim family on television, or whatever, I'm just like, 'Oh, shut up!' I'm so sick of them because they're always complaining.”

This quotes speaks to the kind of mentality Beck spreads and why I am concerned about the prominent high-visibility placement you have given his book, given his sociopathic television broadcasts, which perpetuate fear, falsities and fantastical notions that our country’s President is leading us down a road to Fascism and Socialism. His work offers no contribution to real intellectual debate which is so essential to our Democracy.

Christy Korrow
Burkesville, KY

Suggest places for us to donate Garden Insects DVDs

Breathe Deep Productions has received a generous grant from RSF Social Finance allowing us to donate DVDs of Garden Insects to public schools and libraries located in the central US: Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Alabama to the East, and Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico to the West, and all the states in between. If you have a personal contact with a library or public school that you feel would use and appreciate a copy, please let us know.

We are particularly interested in sending multiple copies to an entire district or main library who can then pass it on to each branch.

Email christy@accessky.net with suggestions.

Special Offer/ Garden Insects DVD and Gardening Booklet

Until October 1st, buy a copy of Garden Insects DVD and receive a free copy of Chris's booklet, 30 Square Foot Garden. When you go to order the video via paypal, just mention this blog post in the 'comments' section of your paypal form, and we will include the booklet with your order!

Kaysha's Dolls

Kaysha added new dolls to her website, and she has also added the affirmation fairies.

Christy Korrow's Facebook Page

Spiritual development, life forces in foods and will forces

Posted by Christy Korrow

My favorite breakfast lately has been a blueberry smoothie:

1 cup blueberries
High in antioxidants

1 cup brazil nut milk (we make our own)

1 TBS. hemp seeds (we buy Nutiva through our co-op)
Hemp seeds are high in omega three fatty acids and protein

1 TBS. raw cocoa powder (from Love Street Living Foods)
Raw cocoa contains all kind of antioxidants , read Naked Chocolate by David Wolfe and Shazzi to learn all about the health benefits of raw cocoa

2 tsp. maple syrup

For supper lately, I will have a Giant cucumber salad, since we grow our own cucumbers, I leave the skin on, I go pick parsley (lots of trace minerals), basil and sometimes rosemary, chop lots of garlic and onion, and a couple of tomatoes. Drizzled with umboshi plum vinegar, olive oil and some salt and pepper, I will live on this for the rest of the summer. I can eat as much of this as I want, and be very full and satisfied.

I am the kind of person who can eat the same things over and over again, everyday for days, sometimes weeks at a time. So each morning, for the last several weeks, I’ve made the same smoothie. And each afternoon and evening for the last month, I’ve eaten the cucumber salad. (Disclaimer: I’ve eaten out a few times, and splurged on ice cream and other goodies). An extreme form of repeatedly eating the same food or foods is called mono-dieting, and has been used as a medicinal treatment for centuries, although controversial, there is documentation of results. (Read The Detox Mono Diet to learn more.)

Author and nutritional counselor Natalia Rose describes a breakfast/lunch of a nutrient-dense smoothie as modified fasting. As a routine way to maintain optimum health, it can be followed further in the day by what she calls a diet dominate in “Quick Exit Foods,” those that don’t bog down the body, or the mind. I eat what I eat because it feels good. I can gage my body’s reaction to a food when I notice things like: Do I have energy spikes and crashes? Do I feel sluggish? Am I craving sweets and breads? Or, Do I have sustained energy throughout the day? Do I feel light, and clear headed? What kinds of ideas am I having, are they original, interesting, and do I have easy access to my own creativity?

And, here is, to me, the most important question of all: Am I able to keep my thoughts aligned with my highest spiritual self, or am I quick to resort to annoyance, impatience, judgment, criticism, anxiety? This is what I find so interesting—to compare what I eat, with how I feel, physically and spiritually. Rudolf Steiner said to his colleague that our inability to maintain spiritual thoughts was a question of nutrition, and that foods no longer contain the nutrients and life forces required to support the will forces needed for spiritual development (Agriculture).

He suggested that eating foods with high levels of life-force energy activates and strengthens the will forces we need to develop the new habits of thought that he describes in so many of his lectures, so that we can actively and consciously move forward on our path of spirituality. For example, when a thought surfaces that doesn’t feel so good, there is that golden moment when we can notice this, and then have the will to shift to a new thought. Whether it be to look out at nature, to turn toward our mantra, to center ourselves through breath, or to shift from, for example, a critical or stressful thought, to a solution-oriented thought or one of reverence or appreciation—in that moment, it takes a great deal of discipline and effort to make the subtle shift. But with repeated practice we ultimately aquire new thought habits and we affect reality through consciousness, actively co-creating as we move through life.

By drinking nutrient dense smoothies each day, and eating nutrient rich meals, I am flooding my body with nutrients, not to mention continually detoxifying my cells, which, I believe correlates with detoxifying my thoughts also. Thus, eating light raw foods supports my mediative life.

Rudolf Steiner described in his lectures on nutrition (Nutrition and Stimulants) that a vegetarian diet supports spiritual development, and that he himself was a vegetarian for this reason. He went on to specifically describe how a raw, plant-based diet activates formerly latent forces which can be used specifically for development of our higher self (more than that, it is important that they be used, otherwise we might become egotistical). He also tempered the information he gave on nutrition with a cautionary instruction not to become fanatical about diet, and also that there was not one singular set of dietary instructions that could be recommended for everyone. I am not a vegetarian, but simply do what I feel is best for my body most of the time.

Eating Meat or Not

I do believe we will eventually evolve out of the need to eat meat, I was once told by Hugh Courtney, who runs the Josephine Porter Institute for Applied Biodynamics that “biodynamic farmers will be the last people to stop eating meat,” because their lives are so intertwined with the cow. But, our soils are now so depleted of both nutrients and life forces that it is utterly impossible to rebuild them without animal manures, therefore it seems natural that a sector of our population will continue to eat meat, making an immediate conversion to widespread vegetarianism unlikely. (Building soil through only cover-cropping would take 15 -20 years).

Ostensibly, as people evolve, we will eat less and less meat, and more of that meat will be raised on small scale farms, where animals and vegetable crops are once again integrated, so that there are only enough animals raised needed to produce compost to raise the vegetables on that farm. In time, more and more people will decrease their meat consumption, and perhaps eat only eggs and raw milk, still maintaining a domestic animal population.

My own experience is that when we were farming full time for over 15 years, I expended a lot of energy, and ate a lot more meat. Now that I am in publishing full-time, I notice my body does not require as much meat, and I am eating a much lighter, raw food based diet. So, there are not only the environmental impacts to keep in mind, but we can also ask how what we eat affects our consciousness, and does it support what are we trying to create in the world? And also, in the realm of consciousness studies, there is much judgment towards our food choices, judgment against ourselves and others. Rudolf Steiner emphasized that is was important not to become fanatical when it came to diet. He said that he was a vegetarian, that indeed he needed to be in order to do his spiritual research, but was once reputed to order a steak in a restaurant to make this point. He gave many teachings on the results of dietary choices, but was clear that what one eats is an individual choice, depending on where that person was in their own evolution, and he said he could not prescribe a “diet” that is right for everyone. —Christy Korrow

The Bees

Interview with Biodynamic Beekeeper

This was an interview I did this spring for LILIPOH.

Honoring the Bien; For the Love of Honeybees

Author: Interview with Michael Thiele
Issue: Summer 2008: Honeybees as wise messengers - Issue #52, Vol. 13

Michael Thiele grew up on a farm in a tiny village in central Germany. He has been deeply influenced by the German biodynamic beekeeping movement and now teaches classes on natural and holistic beekeeping in the United States. He worked for seven years as the beekeeper at Green Gulch Farm, a Zen center just north of San Francisco. He takes care of the hives at The Melissa Garden, a honeybee sanctuary––including several “alternative” hives. Melissa Garden utilizes biodynamic methods and will seek Demeter certification. By extension, their beekeeper, Michael Thiele, is practicing biodynamic beekeeping methods according to the standards put forth by the international Demeter Association. Michael was interviewed over the phone by LILIPOH editor, Christy Korrow.

LILIPOH: Please introduce us to the concept of the bien. What does it mean, and how is it related to beekeeping?

M. Thiele: It’s interesting that, let’s say, maybe 150 years ago, before the introduction of modern beekeeping, beekeeping was not something special and not performed for any agro-industrial production. The crops, so-called crops, were not really the focus of beekeeping. It was just part of agriculture. Part of regular life. Culturally, the bees have always been important to humans. But it was not about the crop itself.

Then, at a very interesting time, when modern beekeeping emerged, meaning the Langstroth hives (square boxes), some people started raising their voice and said “wait a moment.” The tendency of the modern human mind is to approach the world through reduction and to look only at certain aspects of the bee hive. Due to this, the notion of the one-being was created ( Einwesen, in German) also called the Bien (bee in German is: Biene)

The concept of the bien reveals itself as an undividable entity. As something which is beyond the sum of its small and many parts. The modern equivalent to bien could be called super-organism. More like the biological term for this. A super-organism is something which goes beyond individual organisms, so this is what the beehive is. It’s something which goes far beyond its individual parts. So that is the basic understanding of bien.

LILIPOH: If we are to approach the hive with this in mind, then it affects the choices we make on how to prepare their home, where to place them, and in general how we treat our bees.

M. Thiele: Once you approach the honeybees with this kind of understanding, everything gets turned upside down, beginning with how we name the individual parts. For example, “worker bees.” Calling them this is so limiting to the female bees, and I always feel it doesn’t do them justice. These names we have for bees were derived from our own intention...Read the entire interview

New Top Bar Hive

Our daughter Gabbi stenciled our new hive body, and Chris built the shed ... it can hold two more hive bodies. The hive was designed by Gunther Hauk, a well-known biodynamic beekeeper who has recently established a honeybee sanctuary called Spikenard Farm.

Eagles in Washington

Eagles glide
On a regular basis
Just over my cabin

Maybe the residents
Of this sleepy little coastal town
Get used to them

But I never could
Think of them as just being
An ordinary fixture
Of the landscape

There was a pair today
In a tree
And then they were gone

Had things to do I suppose
But no particular time frame
In which to do it

I'm suppose to be recording music
For my next nature documentary
But I haven't been very productive

I feel a strong urge
To have something to show
For my time and reason
For being here

But all I want to do
Is sit on the bluff

And soar with the Eagles

Photo and poem by Chris Korrow

Crane Migration

Chris will be visiting the Platte River in Central Nebraska to experience the annual crane migration. Over 500,000 sandhill cranes visit the river on their way north.

Chris on the Job

Chris is working out glitches in some new recording software. He'll take his guitars and gear when he heads to Centrum next month.

Kaysha's Affirmation Fairies

Kaysha's fairies are finally on the site, they are adorable!

Chris Receives Residency

Chris was accepted for a two-week artist residency in April at Centrum, on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State. Located at Fort Worden State Park, he will have a comfortable house right near the water and use the time to work on editing, and recording and narration for Dancing with Thoreau. Of course he is bringing his cameras also, this is such a beautiful area and he will surely get some more footage for the film.

(Photo: Chris and Gabe with their beach art last summer, near Fort Worden.)

Traversing Chris's New Guide for Observing Nature

I wanted to explain a little bit about Chris’s new Guide for Observing Nature. I feel it is almost more of a guide to meditation. This explains why observation nature can help us regain peace in our lives, balance, and so forth. Nature is constantly, naturally, in this state, and therefore, purposefully putting ourselves on the same wave length with the natural world places us in a direct line of access with creation, pure and unaldarterated by judgment, complaining, and even to a great extent fear. It’s almost as if we allow ourselves to be influenced by how nature unfolds, expose ourselves to her, so to speak, and then when we resume our “regular lives” we carry within us a consciousness of calm, heightened awareness, and rhythmic living. It’s quite practical actually!

I have read the Guide many times, and was recently inspired to apply the nine practices in the book, one by one, to my own life, beginning with the first...

SLOW DOWN
I have just completed about two weeks of “slowing down.” The first couple of days, I was only able to remember to slow down for about five minutes each day! Pretty pathetic! And as I became more determined, I was able to meet face to face with my various alter-egos. One is the woman who says, “Keep busy busy all day long, and you will never be faced with boredom, or have to face the fear of being with yourself during an empty moment!” Another warns, “You are driven by a ‘super woman’ mentality that says you have to do it all, there is no TIME to slow down—things won’t get done!” But I finally did it, I was able to take a couple of days, and went through my tasks with presence and deliberation, only setting a couple of small goals for myself. I found myself with long stretches of time, with nothing to do, wondering around the house looking dazed. One day I even turned the TV on, and in comes Chris to find me watching Ellen and Oprah. He looked perplexed. “I am slowing down,” I said. “Slowing down does not mean reclining on the couch on the middle of the afternoon watching television. That’s not what I meant!”

Needless to say as the next couple of days went by a sort of miracle happened. I have worked with enough spiritual practices over many years to the point where I can clearly identify a “shift” in energy. Spiritual results always come in the back door, and according to the timing of the universe, not our own narrow expectations. Just when you think “nothing is happening,” it’s as if the gears in our universal psyche shift and we are on to another frequency, or into another state of perception.

And this is what happened for me, after a few bumpy, and a bit awkward moments, I settled into this Slow Down rhythm. My anxiety that if I wasn’t moving a mile a minute, that things would not get done dissipated. It sounds paradoxical, but even though I was slowing down, it seemed as if I was getting more accomplished. My motivation was coming from a quieter, less frantic place. Tasks seemed to go unusually smoothly. The universe seemed to be meeting me half way—people who I was waiting to hear from suddenly called, work based solutions were at my finger tips, ideas flowed. And yet, I had extra time. I was inspired resume a writing project, read two books, got back into a new meditation routine, decluttered my house, and reconnected very strongly with my creative impulse, leading to new ideas and possibilities for current and future projects.

A key to successful spiritual development is the understanding that we have many other way of accomplishing tasks besides sheer will. Once again we turn to the effortlessness of nature, how much she accomplishes and how much abundance she has to share with us. It certainly belittles us as we flounder to get though each day and our seemingly important tasks. The beauty of it is that we can tap into this generous energy of nature, we are woven from the same cloth, it is inherent in it, so all we have to do is become aware of it, and this is what Chris has set out to do in this little Guide. Thank you Chris!

A New Juicer

We used our new Green Star juicer for the third time yesterday. Apples, celery, cucumber -- green and delish. It uses the twin gear system, so it is almost chewing the vegetables to bits. It is much slower than the Champion, I guess it takes its time. The pulp comes out very dry. We finally retired our old Champion after we could no longer find a replacement part for a cracked screen holder. We decided to purchase the Green Star juicer since it also juices wheat grass. We drink juice for sustained health, high nutrition, increased stamina, and mental clarity.

New Booklet on Nature Observation

A Guide for Observing Nature
Breathe Deep 2008, 24-page booklet
By Chris Korrow

$5.00 includes shipping

Creator of the award-winning documentary, seen on PBS, Garden Insects
Nine easy ways to improve your relationship with nature. Chris Korrow shares nature based practices that awaken our senses, expand our understanding, inform our choices, give us a new vantage point so we can make life decisions in new and creative ways. Section include, "Slow Down," "Silence," "Walking," "Sound," "Color," "Touch," "Not Doing," and more....

From the Introduction:
"So I understand how being more connected to nature can help reduce stress and bring me a little more peace, but what good is it to my everyday material life? There is something I’ve seen in each person who has an intimate relationship with nature, and it increases exponentially with the strength of their connection — they are more adaptable. A person who is connected with nature can draw inspiration from both realms, natural and manmade. I’m not just talking about the availability of raw materials, but also an understanding of the way each system works. In short, a person that is not connected to nature is only working with 50 percent of their potential. It’s kind of like trying to balance a budget, when all you know how to do mathematically is add."

Winter Eating Fresh and In Season

Winter Eating Fresh and In Season
Six ways to eat raw in the winter
—Christy Korrow
(Previously published in LILIPOH magazine)

During winter when our diets turn to cooked foods, it is even more important to partake in fresh living foods with meals. Fresh living foods provide us with dosages of vitamins, nutrients, and enzymes essential to digestion and nutrient assimilation.

1. Sprouts: A variety of sprouting seeds are readily available through the mail or at your local health food store. Favorites are broccoli, radish and clover. A delicious salad can be made from sprouted French lentils, add some parsley, lemon, salt and ginger.

2. Grow your own greens: Most climates support at least some production of fresh cold weather tolerant crops. Here in Kentucky, at zone six, we are able to grow lettuce mix, kale, parsley, carrots and spinach with very little protection, and only occasional additional heat from the wood burning stove in our small green house.

3. Dried fruits: Another form of concentrated nourishment, and a healthy way to curb a sweet tooth. Be sure to select organic and non-sulfured varieties. Apricots are especially high in fiber and beta-carotene.

4. Cabbage: A wonderful winter crop, always readily available at local grocery stores, and has strong detoxifying properties. Get creative with cole slaw, varying away from traditional mayonnaise versions, by creating an Asian version with sesame oil, soy sauce, sesame seeds and a light drizzle of agave for sweetness.

5. Carrots: Another cold weather crop, delicious raw. Grate carrots for textural interest and easier digestibility. Create a salad with carrots, walnuts, a few raisins, a light drizzle of your favorite vinegar and oil, and salt.

6. Potted Parsley: If you don’t have an in-ground garden, keep several large pots of parsley near a suny wondow, or outside if temeratures allow. Sprinkled fresh on almost any dish, the bright green color is cheerful, and parsley is high in vitamins and antioxidents.

Upcoming Event with Chris

Where: Steele Creek Nature Center and Park

Chris Korrow will present a program on Friday evening, May 29th 2009 (this will include a screening of "Garden Insects,") followed by an outdoor night walk. Activities will continue on Saturday morning, May 30th, and run well into the afternoon. This would include another presentation, a day time walk and a photo workshop.

Steele Creek Park is a 2200+ acre municipal park owned and operated by the City of Bristol, Tennessee.

Dancing with Thoreau in Progress

Chris recently passed through northern Kentucky where the severe ice storm hit. Luckily, we are in the southern part of the state, so we received only hard rain. Chris was on his way to Spikenard Farm, a 600-acre biodynamic farm and honey bee sanctuary in central Illinois, to interview Gunther Hauk. Gunther is a well-known biodynamic beekeeper, and author of the book, “Toward Saving the Honey Bee.” Excerpts from the interview will appear in Chris’s upcoming film, “Dancing with Thoreau.”

Garden Insects to Air on PBS

Chris’s bug movie “Garden Insects” will once again air on PBS this spring. If you haven’t yet seen it, check it out March 18th and March 22nd at 9:30pm EST here in Kentucky on KET. Check your local listings nation-wide. PBS airs a 26-minute version, the DVD available on this site is 52 minutes. After watching the film, a recent viewer told Chris, “You are definitely a multi-media artist—from dirt to film.”

Welcome!

Dear friends,

We are excited to welcome you to our new website www.breathedeepproductions.com. The site features all of the products available through Breathe Deep Productions, and this active blog with musings, product news and events listings.

Peace and blessings, Chris Korrow

PS We are proud to note that Chris Korrow received professional development funding through the Kentucky Arts Council, the state arts agency, supported by state tax dollars and federal funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.www.artscouncil.ky.gov.

Dancing with Thoreau

Chris’s new documentary Dancing with Thoreau is underway. Much high definition footage was shot on a cross country family trip that took us through Yellowstone, the Grand Tetons, Olympic and Rainier National Parks. The film will be a compilation of meditative imagery and interviews with notable folks who bring insights into the connections between nature and human consciousness.

As Chris puts it:
“My new film helps us to increase our awareness of our place on this planet and points out methods we can use to reconnect with the world. Being more in touch with nature we become more in touch with ourselves and most importantly how we fit in—and fit in we must. There is a reason why Buddha sat under a bodhi tree and Jesus went into the dessert for forty days.

Nature is the greatest untapped educational tool we have, we intimately study how it works from a mechanical point of view, but the true lesson to be learned from nature is how we work, how the laws that govern this planet work, and how these two concepts must eventually work in unison. When we increase our understanding and relationship to the laws that govern life on this planet, we double our ability for growth, adaptability and harmony, for we are then working from the perspective of, for example, not just how to keep money flowing, but how it can keep flowing within the constraints of sustainability, balance and harmony.”

Most recently Chris interviewed the 89-year-old Dominican nun, Sister Adrian Hofstetter, author of "Earth-Friendly Re-Visioning Science and Spirituality through Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, and Rudolf Steiner" (SteinerBooks 2006) for the the film.