In 2019 we planted a 3-acre grove of Spanish olive oil trees on Lyon Vineyard. The varietals include Picual, a sweet, buttery flavor; Picudo, a highly aromatic oil; and Hojiblanca, sweet with a peppery finish. Our first harvest will be in December 2021 and then we’ll press our own Eco Terreno estate-grown extra virgin olive oil. We hope to have enough supply for our members to dip and drizzle.

In 2018 we created an edible garden, a 1-acre patch of herbs, vegetables, and fruits. All produce is enjoyed by our team or our farm friends, especially the chickens and geese. The leftovers are added to our compost, converting into nutrient-rich humus, then applied to the vines. Each season has its own schedule. In Summer we have cabbages ready for harvest, basil flourishing, and a variety of lettuces to pick. The watermelons mature soon after, much to the delight of our chickens. Broccoli blossoms in the Fall, yellow beans are ripe, and of course, it’s hard not to notice the pumpkins. The lacinato kale thrives in our mild Winters, as does cauliflower, producing the most beautiful, snowy white heads. Spring is bustling, as the garden awakens from the winter, primed and ready for its new crop of seedlings.

Home to many of our littlest friends is the bee garden and insectary. With an array of native flowering plants hundreds of bees make our garden their home. Our hives placed throughout the vineyard, provide and a cool spot to rest. Mingling with the native bees is a thriving ecosystem of insects and birds, including European honeybees, dragonflies, monarchs, lacewings, hummingbirds, and many more. Our insects conduct an important service to the farm, keeping harmful pests such as mites and mealybugs, away from our vines. Central to our garden is a figure 8 water feature, known as Lemniscate. The flowform pattern is designed to gently fold oxygen into moving water and assists organisms in breaking down unwanted pollutants. In movement, it evokes a sense of peace and calm to all living beings.

Our gaggle of geese are the protective gardeners on our farm. They roam free as a bird, eating the young weeds as quickly as they appear. Cleaning up the vineyard is what they do best, able to pick out the weeds growing too close to the vines for us humans to get to.

In 2020 we added a brood of Indian Running ducks, a fast-jogging but flightless duck, to our farm team. Standing tall like a penguin, they run around the vineyard gobbling up all kinds of pests, such as mosquito larvae, snails, and slugs. With agile bodies, long necks, and sharp beaks, they’re able to wriggle between the rows of plants, plucking their targets straight off our vines. And as a bonus, their nutrient-rich manure enriches the soil, helping our vines grow naturally.

From January to March, we invite nearly 300 sheep to help us weed and fertilize the vineyard, in preparation for the spring growing season. It’s a perfect win-win situation. They roam the vineyards, munching on the biodynamic and organic covercrops, fertilizing with their manure, lightly breaking up the soil with their cloven hooves, finding those pesky deep-rooted invasive weeds, and helping us reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. No need to use toxic sprays, fuel-powered machinery, or synthetic fertilizers when we have our wooly friends and their adorable baby lambs visiting us.

Biodynamic® farming is often associated with cow horns, and for good reason. They are used as the vessel to contain the important Biodynamic preparation, ‘500’, the first on the list of nine essentials. Placed inside the horn is a compost mixture of cow manure and six different plants - stingy nettle, yarrow, chamomile, dandelion, valerian, and oak bark. We create around 500 of these horn packages by hand and bury them in our vineyard in late September. Over the next 6 months, the organic matter ferments into a nutrient-rich natural fertilizer. Unearthed in late March, this microbe concentrate is swirled with lukewarm water and converted into a spray, so rich that a single drop can cover a yard of soil. We typically apply it to the vineyard twice a year - in Spring, to wake up the soil, energizing it for the growing season, and in Fall, to prepare it for the winter hibernation ahead.

At Eco Terreno, we don’t use any synthetic fertilizer. Our estate-made compost is the most nutrient-dense, natural fertilizer available. We make over 500 tons a year, from organic cow manure, organic straw, pomace (leftover grape skins, seeds and stems), and organic plant waste from our edible garden. We further enhance its quality, multiplying its microbial diversity, by applying six biodynamic preparations. It truly is the gift that keeps on giving, feeding our vines, cover crops and soil critters, with natural, organic matter they love.

We have two imposing walls of prickly pear cactus growing tall and proud. One is between the Russian River and the vineyard blocks of Malbec and Cabernet Sauvignon. The other, as you enter our farm, alongside the River Road. Original to our site, they were planted long ago, as protection against soil and wine erosion. Despite their inbuilt armor, the plant is enjoyed by many of our staff. The wide, flat cactus pads, or nopales, are great in salads, and the red cactus fruit, the ‘prickly pears’, are sweet, eaten straight off the plant.

Chickens have been roaming our vineyards, happily foraging, since 2018. We have New Hampshire Reds, Barred Plymouth Rocks, Ameraucana and others. As one of nature’s best pest controllers, they are capable of devouring between 20-30 harmful insects per day. Moving from block to block in their mobile coop, the nutrient-rich manure, keeps our soil happy and healthy.

Our quaint red barn has a serious responsibility. It is where we lay out and dry all the herbs and plants to make our Biodynamic preparations. Chamomile, yarrow, dandelion, valerian, and stingy nettle are the important ingredients that bring health to our farm. Once created, all the Biodynamic preparations are stored in our red barn, waiting for their time to be applied.

Our wine farm, located at the northernmost reaches of Sonoma County’s famous Alexander Valley, is bordered to the west by nearly ¾ of a mile of the pristine Russian River and our specially designated riparian area. A precious piece of natural habitat, its home to a thriving ecosystem including osprey, bald eagles, quail, wood ducks, foxes, bobcat, coyote, river otters, steelhead trout, and others. To maintain nature’s balance, we actively restore this area by removing non-native plants and promoting native vegetation. Fortunately, we are on the banks of the Russian River. Not only providing exceptional beauty to our farm, but it feeds our aquifers, and nourishes our vines, edible garden, and olive trees.

Encouraging a healthy bird life is important to the ecosystem of our farm. They keep gophers, voles, and other damaging critters in check. With the placement of around 60 bird boxes throughout the vineyard, we attract a variety of feathered friends including bluebirds, barn owls, hawks, falcons, kestrels, and others. Every March our bird boxes are put out and within a week, the new occupants have moved in. At the end of the nesting season, around mid-June, the boxes are vacated, and the new owners move in, the wasps. We encourage these new tenants because they also are predatory, keeping less desirable insects in balance.

Our orchard, over 2 acres in size, is planted on Cisne Vineyard, between blocks of Cabernet Franc and Sauvignon Blanc. Mainly fruit trees, the orchard includes Oranges, Lemons, Pluots, Apples, Nectarines, Figs, Pomegranates, Pears, Persimmons, Quince, and Mulberry. The delicious, home-grown fruits are enjoyed by our staff, with any organic waste added to our compost or fed to our ever-hungry flock of chickens.

Located at Cisne Vineyard is our irrigation pond. Filled seasonally by the natural run-off from the winter rains, it is the only water source for the grapes and orchard on this 27-acre site.

For our nocturnal friends, we suspend several bat boxes in trees around the farm. With a flat construction, these boxes provide lots of dark nooks and crannies for our big brown bats, little brown bats, Townsend big-eared bats, and others, to hang in safety, sheltering from the wind, rain, and predators. In return they dine on our pests, eating about one half of their body weight in insects per night. Another way we maintain the health of our farm without the need for chemicals and synthetic pesticides.