YANKTON, S.D. -- Greg Stach has been growing fruit on his land, Lewis and Clark Lake Vineyard, near Yankton, South Dakota, since 1985. He grows a wide variety of grapes.

One year, Stach almost lost his entire vineyard to dicamba spray.

"It was a pretty traumatic event. We didn't have any wine sales for three years basically," Stach said. "So, you do a lot of soul searching just then."

He had used a technique called biodynamic farming in 2010 and 2011, but this spraying event led him back to biodynamic farming in 2020. Biodynamic farming is a holistic and spiritual approach to organic farming.

"I used biodynamics and it really made outstanding wine and the grape growth was perfect," he said.

This farming method was started by philosopher and scientist Rudolf Steiner in 1924, as farmers looked for ways to improve soil fertility.

"What he proposed was what we would call modern day regenerative farming. No tilling, set aside some land for wildlife and habitat for butterflies and bees," Stach explained.

There is also a spiritual side to biodynamic farming, Stach says.

"Then there's the spiritual side of understanding the cosmos, the stars. The moon especially has some influence on human beings and especially plants, on the earth, because we know what effect the moon has on the tides," he said. "So there's been a lot of experiments done, not all of them successful, about using biodynamic preparations in planning according to the flow of the moon and the influence the moon has on the earth. That's not a huge part of my concept. I'm too big."

The final proposition of biodynamic farming is that you must use the preparations, which are things Stach makes himself. Those include horn manure and horn silica, both of which are meant to stimulate plant growth and response to sunlight.

"That has special biological attributes and that adds to the vineyard or soil wherever you're putting it," Stach said.

Then, there are other preparations, which are chamomile, yarrow, stinging nettle, oak bark, dandelion and valerian. These help to enhance the biodynamic compost.

"Most of these are the flowers that you're using. They're dried and then they are used and fermented in various animal parts and buried in the soil or held over," Stach said. "But everything is fermented and then they're used to make compost."

Fermentation is a key component of biodynamic farming methods.

"I can't use manure directly on the land. I can't use hay as mulch directly on the land. I should make everything into compost, which is what I do," Stach said. "Then, you inoculate these composts with these products."

It's a self-sustaining, natural way to grow crops.

"Biodynamics has always been about what I know as natural farming, it's making all the ingredients you can from the products you grow on your vineyard and on your farm," Stach said.

He also incorporates practices from Korean Natural Farming, Japanese Natural Farming, JADAM organic farming and traditional organic farming on the vineyard, all with one major key ingredient being vermicompost, a nutrient-rich soil amendment created through the use of worms.

"It all funnels through my vermicompost. That is so important," Stach said. "It just shows beautiful results."

Producing the compost and indigenous microorganisms from the vineyard is a process that many people were able to learn about at a field day hosted by Stach on October 13 in partnership with the South Dakota Specialty Producers Association.

During this field day, the goal was to help producers understand how to transition their vineyards to organic farming methods and also provide some education on the biodynamic farming methods.

The first part of the day they spent at the vineyard and the second half was spent in an educational session with the South Dakota Specialty Producers Association Organic Transition Adviser, Angela Jackson.

"The first part of the day we are out here in the vineyard just understanding plant health and all of that and how you do that in an organic and natural system," Jackson said. "The second part of the day will be walking through the certification process and what does that look like to actually be able to carry the USDA national organic program claim on your fruit or your grapes or your vegetables whatever that may be."

Stach hopes this field day helps people to "just do it."

"There's the confusion that a lot of people have, 'how do I get started?' So I showed people how to create your own IMO, indigenous microorganism, from start, how to collect that and how to make a product from it," Stach said.