Babydoll
Sheep Integrate Wine Country
By Deb Kiger
Kiger Family
Vineyards is a producer of premium syrah grapes in the heart of Sonoma County
wine country. My husband, John, and I farm the vineyard ourselves and also
live on the property. It is
important to us to build farming practices that support our goals of a healthy
and environmentally sustainable vineyard. In
early 2007, we purchased a small flock of sheep, Olde English Babydoll Sheep, to
graze in the vineyard, providing a natural, organic way to manage the planted
cover crop, fertilize the soil, and eliminate the use of herbicides.
Our
“Going Green” is more than just in keeping with a growing popular trend.
It has provided a solution to real, ongoing challenges in managing our
small vineyard. The results over
these first few months have proved very promising; the experience of caring for
and observing these wooly animals has also changed our lives.
Challenges
Planted
in 2002, our 3.5 acres of grapevines are situated on a steep, rocky hillside,
with an average grade of nearly 17%. The
steepness of the slope promotes good drainage of our 33” of average annual
rainfall, nearly all of which falls in the winter while the vineyard is dormant.
The hillside is also prone to soil erosion and water pooling in some
low-lying areas of vine rows.
We
broadcast seed each year after the harvest to grow a winter cover of natural
grasses and other nutrient-rich materials.
These cover crops help to eliminate soil runoff, nourish the soil, and
hopefully crowd out many species of broadleaf weeds.
They also create a big challenge each spring: the grasses are at least
knee-high just as it’s time to start pruning the grapevines for the new
growing season.
Having
to slog through tall, wet grass during this physically demanding activity is
only part of the problem. The long
woody canes we prune from the grapevines are placed and bundled on the ground. They quickly get entangled with and overgrown by the still
growing grasses, making it nearly impossible to gather the bundles and move them
out of the vineyard.
Finally,
as the vines begin growing, and the winter rains end, grasses and weeds compete
with the grapevines for the available groundwater.
While grasses between the rows can be mowed, grasses under the vines
require expensive specialized equipment or time consuming hand mowing with the
gas powered string trimmers.
Solution
The
basic answer is clear. An efficient
start to the growing season requires removal of the grasses!
For conservation of labor, gas, water, and the electricity needed to
operate the pump-based irrigation system (we want to wait as long as possible
before starting irrigation), we turned to sheep to help manage the grasses and
weeds in the vineyard.
The
process of sheep “mowing” the vineyard offers a variety of benefits,
including:
We
selected babydoll sheep for the task over goats and other larger breeds of
sheep. While goats eat a lot more
grass for their size, they also eat everything they see, including grapevines.
They also eat down to the ground, whereas sheep leave stubble that will
continue to grow and eventually go to seed.
The babydoll sheep, compared to larger sheep, do eat less grass, but they
are small enough to walk underneath the lowest trellis wire.
Results
and Lessons Learned
With
only about ten weeks of having sheep in the vineyard, we observed a significant
reduction in the height of grass out in the vineyard compared to previous years.
We still have to extrapolate what the results could have been if
the right number of sheep had been living in the vineyard over the course of the
entire dormant period.
The
babydoll sheep have integrated very well into our healthy, sustainable farming
plans, and we are confident that with what we have learned so far, we will see
more positive progress in our grass elimination and soil management programs.
The sheep have also added diversity and new enjoyment to our work
routine. It has been at times
humorous, alarming, calming, and even miraculous as we’ve watched the sheep
become part of the landscape. For
more information and photos, or to contact us, please visit the Kiger Family
Vineyards website at http://www.kigerwine.com.