Filling cow horns with fresh manure and burying them for six months sounds bizarre, but the substance that is dug up becomes the basis of biodynamic farming.

Add to that a strict adherence to a cosmic calendar with fruit, root, flower and leaf days dictating when to pick, prune, and water plants, and it starts to sound like magic.

But biodynamic farming is practised across the board in Australian agriculture. In the wine industry in particular, some of the most successful brands swear by it with all its mystical connotations.

Award-winning winemaker Vanya Cullen sought biodynamic certification for her 50 hectares of vines at Margaret River as an extension of the philosophies learned from her late parents Dr Kevin John and Diana Madeline Cullen, who helped pioneer the wine region nearly 50 years ago.

"We were always [used] minimal chemical inputs with mum and dad and then when mum passed away [in 2003] it was feeling like there was something else we needed to do, the biodynamics came, it felt right," Ms Cullen said.

Harvest at Margaret River's Cullen vineyard is guided by a cosmic calendar. ( Landline: Sean Murphy )

She is now an internationally acclaimed winemaker and an Australian Businesswomen's Hall of Fame inductee.

Her best wines can sell for up to $350 a bottle and while she has relied on biodynamic farming methods since 2003, she was reluctant initially to publicly speak about it.

"They say it takes nine years for the biodynamics to really kick in so I really was a little bit reticent because you don't know," Ms Cullen said.

"Now we feel it's time, its just time, it just feels like the time to talk about how you can make great wine and grow great food and have a property which is about connecting to nature and being a sustainable business."

What's old is relevant again

Biodynamic farming was founded by German philosopher Rudolf Steiner in the 1920's to counter the emergence of synthetic fertilisers and pesticides.

Vanya Cullen said the emphasis on old-fashioned farming with natural inputs was even more relevant today.

A flow form trough, built to imitate a mountain stream and add energy to biodynamic preparations. ( Landline: Sean Murphy )

"We actually activate the soil, instead of killing things with chemicals, biodynamics is about making alive the land," she said.

At Cullen, they produce Preparation 500 by burying manure-filled cow horns on the Summer Solstice each year and digging them up on the Winter Solstice.

The substance is then diluted in a gravity-fed concrete trough known as a flow form, which replicates a mountain stream and is claimed to enhance the 500's power.

It is then used in sprays and compost to stimulate soil microbiology.

Ms Cullen said there was scientific evidence of the impact biodynamic farming had on soil health, but ultimately "you do also have to have faith, but I think people do anyway."

"I don't think we have anything to prove. I look at the quality of the wines that we make and that's the bottom line," she said.

"We do have science numbers in the vineyard of all the different minerals and PHs and micro-bacteria, fungi and that's important but it's only a guide.

"The most important thing is to look at the vine and see what quality of fruit is coming off and you know to taste it and to get a feeling for those plants which in a way they're like us, they're beings which are alive like the land is.

"You can take biodynamics however you want, you can look at it from a very practical to a biological way of thinking, that you're putting nutrients onto the vines and using vines and using plants or you can go wherever you want with it.

"But I think the most important thing is the connection to the land."

Family of scientists turn their hands to biodynamics

On the outskirts of Canberra, Sue and Dave Carpenter also rely on biodynamics to manage their Lark Hill vineyard.

Dave and Sue Carpenter at their Lark Hill vineyard near Canberra. ( Landline: Sean Murphy )

Every year they source fresh manure from a lactating cow that has just given birth to produce Preparation 500.

They bury their cow horns for six months over winter.

"It's not woogy, woogy crazy head stuff, it's much more pragmatic than that, it's using a system that's been shown to help agriculture," Mr Carpenter said.

Before establishing Lark Hill nearly 40 years ago, he was a visiting fellow in mathematics and physics at the Australian National University.

Mrs Carpenter was a consultant statistician with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO).

Their son Christopher left a degree in pure science to become their winemaker in 2003. This year he was a finalist in the industry's Young Gun of Wine Awards.

"The 500 preparation is really the cornerstone of biodynamics, beyond that point it's a bit of an a-la-carte system," Christopher Carpenter said.

"You can use what you find engaging out of the farming aspects of it and take and use the philosophy of it as much as you want.

"And I'm fairly pragmatic, I come from a pretty pure science background and so do my parents so what we take out of it really is the biological controls and sort of the positive influence we can have on our own ecosystem and form that biology perspective and the philosophy looks after itself.

"It just becomes a really lovely farm to work on."