Context is everything when developing regenerative farming systems - soils, climate, people, infrastructure, finances, markets, etc. Understanding context helps us understand another farmer/grower actions and the underlying principles behind their actions, and how to adapt them to our own context.
Video description: At Greystone Wines the aim is to produce high quality wine using a health farm ecosystem that requires minimal intervention.
Video description: The Holdaway team employ an innovative approach to grape growing focused on improving soil quality and vine health.
More on context, goals and mindset
Exploring the context - both are practical and inspiring - of Greystone Wines and the Holdaways, one thing that stands out is the ‘regenerative mindsets’. Open, curious and observant minds that see the farms and vineyards as complex natural ecosystems, seeking to work with these natural systems and reserving more aggressive interventions to only where needed.
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Greystone Wines: Focus on regenerative principles
The Greystone team seek to produce healthy, balanced grapes and wine that reflects the character of the vineyard with minimal intervention. Healthy soils and a healthy farm ecosystem are central to this goal and the team are on a journey combining organic and regenerative principles and practices to find a new balance.
After a few years under organic certification, cultivation had replaced herbicides for managing under vine weed pressure. Regular cultivation was creating erosion issues among other downsides, so the team started looking for alternatives and came across regenerative agriculture.
This has sparked a renewed emphasis on soil health, scaling up the use of cover crops, stopping under vine cultivation, shifting to sub-surface irrigation and using sheep for leaf plucking.
The team are currently raising the height of the vines to enable sheep to graze in the vineyard all year and eliminate the need for under vine weeding and interrow mowing.
The team follow regenerative principles as much as possible:
maintain cover on the soil
increase plant diversity
maintain living roots year round
minimise cultivation
integrate animals
Holdaway vineyard: Working with natural systems
The Holdaway team aim to work with natural systems and processes where possible, employing an innovative and biologically regenerative approach to grape growing that focuses on improving the quality of the soil and health of the vines. Experience has shown them that this results in optimal flavour production and balance in their Sauvignon Blanc wines.
Over the last five years, the team have introduced diverse cover crops to the whole vineyard, started rotationally grazing sheep in the winter (as opposed to set stocking), developed a target foliar trace element program, introduced biological soil drenches, and conducted multiple trials.
One trial is using biological disease controls instead of conventional or organic fungicides. Another trial is looking at under vine herbicides buffered with biological products vs under vine weeding vs under vine cultivation.
Richard and Robbie place a lot of emphasis on developing a ‘regenerative mindset’ that thinks holistically, appreciates that natural systems are complex, seeks biological solutions to biological challenges, understands that healthy plants require healthy soils, values observation, and invests in proper long term trials.
“We've been working towards [regen] for a long time in our farming system, trying to leave it better than it was and appreciating that the healthier and better the soil, and the healthier the vines, the better they do and the better quality we get off it.”
Robert Holdaway, Holdaway vineyard
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