A Farewell to Bryce Stephens
and Welcome to Roxana Stephens-Namba
Hesiod's Homeric Hymn to Demeter explains the cyclical nature of life and death, and our seasons. The Greek goddess of harvest, Demeter's daughter Persephone, is abducted by Hades, the god of the underworld.
Demeter creates famine at Eleusis in her rage, searching for Persephone, “In the fields the oxen drew many a curved plough in vain, and much white barley was cast upon the land without avail.” Hesiod's Homeric Hymn - wikisource
Demeter’s story caused the Greeks to create a temple to practice the Eleusian Mysteries. The mysteries may be instructions for people to grow and store food for times when the season is dry or dormant, like winter. Eat This Podcast - Persephone
In human history, Gods were created as personifications to help us make sense of the world. This interpretation makes me think the Biodynamic standards are similar instructions. Hesiod instructs his brother Perses in his epic poem Works and Days, an Agrarian Calendar of Farming And Fishing, that Demeter would be happy if he plowed their fields as soon as he could in the season; he would not be able to plant later without plowing early.
I am at this point in our seasons when harvest ends and the seeds of next year's winter wheat crop must be planted. We usually plant September 15. I have never missed a wheat planting, since I started farming at 15 years old. I don't want to change that this year, but life and death are taking my September:
I'm announcing the birth of my daughter, Roxana Helena Stephens-Namba, and the death of my father Bryce Charles Stephens.
I have been excited to have my first child this year. I hoped my pregnancy would inspire more people to farm with me. However, my dad's health declined so much, he didn’t help me harvest the 2025 crop in July. He had not prepared the soil for planting wheat this fall. I believe the farm is an external expression of my dad's mind: his legacy.
My dad wore many hats in his life: those of a Vietnam war army veteran, a Red Bandana Doe of the Wounded Knee siege of 1973, a cattleman-style Stetson, a National Bison Association cap, a cap with our Stephens Land and Cattle farm logo that I made, and more….
Those who met my dad likely have a strong memory of him. Bryce met Fred Kirschenman at a farming meeting where Fred gave him the first copy of the Organic Crop Improvement Association's international certification standards (coincidentally, those private standards were written in my birth year.) My dad volunteered for a lot of committees and boards in the organic community since then.
He traveled to many different states and countries for meetings and even a lawsuit; Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association, et. al. v. Monsanto. Link - Lawsuit
My dad was on the OSGATA board, and an individual plaintiff who was abstaining from planting corn because of his risk assessment that pollen drift would trigger Monsanto Company's aggressive patent-infringement claims. I traveled with him to New York City for the district court hearing and many other meetings around that time.
That was 2012, when we achieved Biodynamic certification on our farm and when I joined committees and boards myself, but I found ways to get paid for my time and turn it into a career path. My dad kept saying in recent years he regretted volunteering so much because the farm suffered as his time was taken. I believe he can rest without regret because his work inspired me to grow the strongest parts of myself. His legacy continues in his children. It feels complete to me that he couldn’t plant next year’s wheat crop because it’s up to me, fully now, to do what comes next. I helped my dad complete his life and I’m starting my own legacy.
Hesiod’s myth explains that our seasons are the compromise of Hades keeping Persephone for half a year in the underworld and Demeter keeping her the other half, when crops grow. The Biodynamic standards instruct farmers at this time of year to dig up preparation 501 horn silica that is used for ripening, harvest, or bringing death, and bury 500 horn manure, which is used for fertility, planting, or bringing life. This September is the conjunction between higher and deeper worlds for me. Let’s make October better.
