Farming

“This farm runs on good ecology.”

Our farming is organic, undogmatic, and responsive to our land and the people who work it. We are low-input as a matter of both ethics and economy. Most of our work is done by hand, but we use machines when we think it’s right to do so.

We look as far into the future as we are able. To plan with a hundred-year view you must, to some extent, accept the innate order of things, so we work with the tendencies of our ecology. An organic farm is a complex natural system, contrary to the rationalizations of so-called“conventional” farms in the last half+ century, which tend to self-conceive and operate more like open air factories than ecosystems.

Our ecological relationships include those among people, principally those who labor here. We rely on a group of dedicated employees who have lived significant portions of their lives on this land. Everything made here has come out of collective work and hard-won, specialized know-how.

We grow wine grapes, cherries, and pears on a commercial scale, but there are more than one hundred varieties of fruiting trees and vines at Idiot’s Grace. The oldest cherry trees have been here for about a century. Those blocks are outmoded by present standards, yet full of character, and they still produce good fruit. It is important to us that the fruit be accessible, so we run a u-pick stand every summer, typically in the last two weeks of June.

More important than what we plant is the wild ecosystem here. Its character is also harder to summarize, but you can visit us, walk around, and get a sense for the countryside here.

We are certified organic. The language around agriculture changes much more quickly than the practices; we've been farming with the same ethic for a quarter century, shaping our practices to the character of this place. We like to talk about farming and encourage you to ask us if you’re interested in specific practices.