Translations:Manfred Klett: Von der Agrartechnologie zur Landbaukunst/1154/en

What decides this is the conscience, into which all thoughts, feelings, and will-impulses ultimately flow, and from which all actions receive their particular moral-ethical imprint. Among the farmers of old, the saying was held: «The farmer's footstep is the best manure». One walked behind the plough holding the reins, or across the field as a sower, or on a Sunday walk through the fields. As true as this saying was then, so true is it today in a metamorphosed form. Once, direct, instinctive experience still arose from the common folk-consciousness—an experience of what the earth says to the one walking over it, of what speaks from the moods of the surroundings, of what the soil breathes in and what it breathes out. One then knew what logically needed to be done next. Today, the certainty of «doing the right thing in the right way at the right moment» must be newly acquired from the power of the consciousness soul. When walking across the field, perhaps after the day's work is done—one is filled with the many impressions of the day—one feels a certainty emerging from unknown depths of the soul, a certainty that does not spring from sense-bound thinking. From the feeling for the wholeness of the farm and all its current life-relationships, one suddenly knows what must be done the next day—be it to direct attention to areas of the farm that have been overlooked, or that this or that crop urgently requires a treatment, such as harrowing with a tine weeder or a preparation spraying. Intuitions arise, shining up into consciousness from the sphere of the will as a dim premonition. One knows oneself to be standing in a stream alive with spirit, flowing from yesterday to today and from today to tomorrow. Letting ideas, through thinking, flow into the work in such a way that, in the work, they take hold of the will through feeling—this clears the way for intuitions that lead to a new art of manuring born of the spirit, to an art of enlivening substance, of «the solid, earthy element itself».