Cody Wood wanted to be a sheep rancher but found the career hard to break into without money or land, two things the Junction City native didn't have. Then an idea came to him when he saw a California business called Wooly Weeders at a conference of lamb producers. For years, Wooly Weeders has charged Napa Valley winemakers to graze sheep on the cover crops and weeds found between vineyard rows. Wood figured he could replicate the venture in Oregon. Last year his Green Grazers mowed King Estate Winery south of Eugene. Wood hoped the idea would especially appeal to the state's vintners and appears to have called it right. While it may seem a return to old ways, the idea of using nature to keep nature in check is catching on. Oregonians in recent years have used goats to mow down invasive species of English ivy and Himalayan blackberries in areas as urban as Corvallis and Wilsonville. Now comes Wood's sheep business, which has grown in a year from one vineyard to five. Sheep fill a void, since goats prefer shrublike plants and sheep favor smaller broadleaf pests. The contemporary term for the practice is "targeted grazing," says Claudia Ingham, an Oregon State University ethics instructor who owns Ecological & Agricultural Consulting and studied targeted grazing for her doctorate...more
Friday, April 16, 2010
Green wineries experiment with age-old concept: sheep as mowers
Cody Wood wanted to be a sheep rancher but found the career hard to break into without money or land, two things the Junction City native didn't have. Then an idea came to him when he saw a California business called Wooly Weeders at a conference of lamb producers. For years, Wooly Weeders has charged Napa Valley winemakers to graze sheep on the cover crops and weeds found between vineyard rows. Wood figured he could replicate the venture in Oregon. Last year his Green Grazers mowed King Estate Winery south of Eugene. Wood hoped the idea would especially appeal to the state's vintners and appears to have called it right. While it may seem a return to old ways, the idea of using nature to keep nature in check is catching on. Oregonians in recent years have used goats to mow down invasive species of English ivy and Himalayan blackberries in areas as urban as Corvallis and Wilsonville. Now comes Wood's sheep business, which has grown in a year from one vineyard to five. Sheep fill a void, since goats prefer shrublike plants and sheep favor smaller broadleaf pests. The contemporary term for the practice is "targeted grazing," says Claudia Ingham, an Oregon State University ethics instructor who owns Ecological & Agricultural Consulting and studied targeted grazing for her doctorate...more
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Actually, using sheep in vineyards has always been in style in most of California. In my experience, we even got to the point of matching sheep size with a particular vineyard need. In all cases, the sheep had to monitored closely. Leaving them too long they would start "barking" the vines and crawling right up into the crown of the vine. Taking them out too soon and the job that was being pursured (cleaning the vineyard up and exposing the crown of the berm) was not satisfactory. My board was made up of a bunch of guys who were very adverse to feathers and sheep (and maybe moreso sheepherders). I will always remembger a board meeting and we visited one of our vineyards in Earlimart, California. The sheepherder had promised he would be gone by the date of the visit and he wasn't. We had sheep everywhere and finally one of our members asked about why all the damn fleece was there . . . He had to repaeat the question several times because the sheep were bleating so loud we couldn't hear. My response was something like, "What are you talking about? What sheep?"
Thanks for taking the time to comment and sharing your experiences.
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