Home > Farming Practices

A variety of species make up our farming workforce:
Ovine, Avian, Kiger, Guests

        It takes a lot of sheep to make great wine!    John prepares to spray stylet oil in April.

Ovine Workers
Our vineyard practices are based on healthy and environmentally sustainable farming. A flock of Olde English Babydoll Southdown sheep that lives in the vineyard from mid-November until April is one of the key elements of our program. The sheep:

• Keep down unwanted vegetation by eating grass, cover crops, and weeds in the vineyard. This greatly reduces the need to mow, which reduces compaction of the soil by heavy equipment and lessens use of fossil fuels.
• and 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 fertlizer 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 vinerows. 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. More sheep adventures and photos

Avian Workers
Chickens? Why? Or as John asked, why not? The bantam-size free-range chickens, currently 2 hens and a rooster, have made themselves quite at home. They eat bugs in the vineyard, do a mini-till on the soil as they scratch around for food, provide entertainment for us and our other animals, and lay us eggs on most days to boot!

Here's Lina, one of the hens, seeking shade and a rendezvous with Wally (our John Deere Gator.) After this photo was snapped, the other two chickens hopped up into the bed and one of the hens laid an egg there! More chicken stories and photos

Kiger Workers
Lots of people ask if we really do all the work in the vineyard with just the two of us: the answer is YES! We do bring in a crew for harvest, but the rest is performed -- with TLC -- by both of us. John manages the whole operation and Deb is the best manual laborer that John has. It is a lot of work, and is underway in earnest as we head towards harvest.

Guest Worker Program

In June, John's first-cousin-once-removed, 15 year old Sam Kiger, from Nashville, Tennessee, lived with us for 8 days. The able-bodied young man, here during the height of the smoke-filled days from the Mendocino County wildfires, did weed-whacking with both a hoe (above) and the Stihl machine, dug an irrigation trench, ripped out dead vines and prepped the holes for new vines, suckered, removed debris, and he even cooked for us one night! Best long-smoked ribs we've had in ages!

The informal program initiated by John's parents has grown in popularity. The concept is for family and friends who have two great desires -- working alongside of us in the vineyard and livestock areas, and feasting on great food and wine afterwards -- to come out to KFV and do both! We've had Cynthia and Chris spend a day tying down the cordons on newly-pruned vines, followed by a great meal and a blissful night's sleep. Deb's mom and Matt (okay, really it was just Matt!) helped move the sheep barn and assemble the shelter in the summer pasture as we get ready to move the sheep out. Deb's father (below) helped John get things in the temporary pasture ready to move our ewe, Lana, to her new home. Or was he just taking in the sights?