Agricultural Philosophy

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Agricultural Philosophy

The discipline of agro-ecology recognizes the rules that govern living systems, the qualities that make them stable, persistent, and resilient, and serves as a framework for designing agricultural systems that achieve sustainablility by mimicking natural systems.

Based on the observation that the rules of man are at odds with the rules of life, with such conflict leading to mutual disintegration, we wish to shape our farming system in accordance with the rules of the latter variety.

One of the weaknesses of manmade systems is that they are overwhelmingly linear, moving from resource extraction, processing, sale, and eventually product consumption and disposal.

Too often, resources originate from a hole in the ground and are cast aside to end up in another hole-in-the ground. This dead-end process results in a distinctly human concept, known as waste, with additional waste produced throughout the entire line of extraction, manufacture, sale, and consumption. In the context of nature, "waste" is nonexistant; so-called "waste" is the stuff of life for a long chain of mutually-dependent creatures.

In contrast to man-made systems, living systems are dominated by cyclical processes of use and reuse. The energy which drives these systems, and the material resources of which they are composed are passed from organism to organism, with each organism extracting value.

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At FRV we try to look at everything as a resource, and shape our system of farming to extract value from our resources at multiple levels.

The image to the left is an illustration of how we manage one cycle of our operation to recycle nutrients and maximize value extraction. If we were an average vineyard which sold bulk grapes we would recieve a commodity price, which would lock us into a cycle of exploitation in which we seek to maximize our crop yield at the expense of the land. Rather, than export the energy and nutrients within our grapes in bulk we choose to squeeze flavor-enhanced water (juice) out of our grapes and add value to it by transforming it into wine. The export of wine from our farm removes minimal soil nutrients, and leaves us with a pile of grape stems, seeds, and pulp, which contain the bulk of the fruits fertilizer value. Many vineyard/wineries deposit these leftovers in a pile to compost, and eventually return the decayed fruit to the vineyard to enter another cycle of crop growth. In contrast to the norm, we choose to extract additional value from our grape pulp. Rather than feed our pulp to microbes, who convert it to compost, we feed our pulp to our cattle and sheep, who transform some of it into meat. Our animals ferment the pulp, with the help of their own specialized microbes, in their rumen, and speed the decomposition process, and free up the nutrients in a faster way than composting does. The animals deposit the undigestibles in our vineyards as they graze in the late fall.

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