it takes a lot of sheep to make great wine!

Our vineyard practices are based on healthy and environmentally sustainable farming. One of the key elements of our program is a flock of Babydoll Southdown sheep that lives in the vineyard for 5-6 months from post-Harvest to post-Budbreak.

The sheep keep down unwanted vegetation by eating grass, cover crops, and weeds in the vineyard. This greatly reduces the need to mow, which then reduces compaction of the soil by heavy equipment and lessens use of fossil fuels.

And they help improve the health of the soil. With the sheep eating the grass and weeds, we've eliminated the need for herbicides to kill the unwanted vegetation that competes with grapevines. A bonus is the sheep manure, which looks like black jelly beans. Part of the makeup of the manure is the digested, nutrient-rich green plant matter, which becomes a natural fertilizer for the soil.

The sheep also add diversity to our agricultural ecosystem and they're really pleasant and amusing to have around! It's fun to watch them move through the vine rows. They're small enough that they can walk right under the lowest trellis wire. But not so small that they can't reach the tender young green shoots that burst through in late March/early April. As a result, they get booted out of the vineyard after budbreak, and move on to cleanup crew around our septic system, backyard, wooded creek area, and finally into the fenced-in livestock pasture behind our house.

Since November 2006, we've been raising a family of babydoll sheep that live and work at KFV. The primary job of the sheep is to eat grass and weeds in the vineyard and leave natural fertilizer behind. They excel on both counts! For most of the year, their pasture/vineyard diet is all they need. During the summer, as all of the natural grasses have either been eaten up or dried up, we do supplement their diet with grass hay.

Livestock Guardian Dog (LGD): Francesco (pronounced fran-CHESS-ko) is our 3-year old, 130 lb. Maremma; he is chartered with protecting the sheep from animal predation.

In addition to protecting the sheep, he watches over the chickens and also recognizes the cat as family (although Steffi clearly ignores his existence!)

The Maremma breed originated in Italy where they have been used for many centuries as guardians of flocks of sheep and goats. Francesco's parents, Paolo and Cima, were brought from Italy to Boulder Creek in the Santa Cruz, California, mountains in May 2004. Francesco was born to their second American litter.

Livestock guarding breeds originated in Europe and Asia, where they have been used for centuries to protect sheep from wolves and mountain lions. They are large animals (80-120 pounds) and are usually all white or fawn colored with dark muzzles. Some of the more common breeds are Great Pyrenees (France), Komondor (Hungary), Akbash and Anatolian Shepherd (Turkey), and Maremma.

Unlike sheep herding dogs, like border collies, LGD's do not usually herd sheep. Acting independently, LGD's stay with or near sheep most of the time and aggressively repel predators. Yes, Francesco lives outdoors with the sheep and has never been in the house. Unlike our cats, he has a real job! It's to reduce predation on the sheep (by the mountain lions and coyotes, for example, with which we co-exist), reduce our labor by lessening the need for night corralling, alert us to disturbances in the flock, protecting the ranch property, and allow for more efficient use of pastures.