Holistically-designed vineyards to be able to function on 8 inches of rain/year. system. When the Paicines staff did a baseline monitoring they found no living organisms in the soil. The first year they planted cover crops and broadcast the seeds. The plants that grew had a relative feed value of 88. They then ran cattle and sheep and are working on planting perennial plants near the sprinklers in these fields. They have a total of 68 acres they are rehabilitating and have created 98 paddocks. Last winter they planted 20 species. This year they have planted 40 species. Their relative feed value was in the low 100s. In order to control the animals they have built electric fencing over top of the sprinkler system. They are now up to a relative feed value of 230 with their most recent cover crop. The new vineyard on Paicines which is still being developed in phases has been designed as a no-till system. A conventional vineyard often has 25 tractor passes per year. With previous vineyard trials that have incorporated sheep as a biological tool for the vineyard there has been a 90% reduction in irrigation use and a 1,260 pound/acre yield increase with superior quality of grape as well as a $450 reduction
of expenses because of reduced input needs. Kelly uses a Holistic Design process that looks at creating opportunities by increasing diversity and paying attention to management. The new vine support system in this vineyard works to get the vines out of the heat and frost zones that are closer to the ground while allowing the sheep to help with pruning the suckers. The vine supports were placed in the direction of the wind to make sure that vines were not blown across the supports. This system also creates more shade for the soil organisms and other wildlife. Kelly also plans to plant other plants among the grape vines to attract pollinators and also hummingbirds, which would protect the grapes against other birds that are more interested in the grapes. They have already seen more green growing plants throughout the summer and not just near the dripline. All the varieties of grapes have been selected for drought hardiness. While the cost of this system is $1,000– 1,200 more per acre than a VSP (vertical shoot position) system, Kelly believes that the extra cost of developing the vineyard this way will pay for itself in two years. Irrigation is raised up and the hope is that once the soil fertility is increased the vineyard can be farmed dryland on 8 inches of rain/year. There will be no need to run electric fencing to protect the vines from the sheep because of the design. The cover crops that have done well so far are mustards, horehound, dove weed, and milkweed. The new 25-acre vineyard was placed on a north facing slope as the best place to grow perennials on that landscape. When they planted the new vines they put an application of
compost and then ran 6 ADA (animal days per acre) of cattle and sheep. After they planted the cover crops, they were able to run 67 ADA. They were giving the sheep about ¼ acre paddocks. The biggest challenge at the vineyard has been ground squirrels attacking the young vines. However, they are working with attracting more raptors to the area by setting up kestrel boxes. Mel Preston from Point Blue Conservation Science also talked about all the birds that have been attracted by the farm management practices at Paicines. I continue to be inspired by this passionate community of innovators who come together to share ideas and encourage each other. I look forward to continuing that conversation at the REGENERATE Conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico on October 31–November 2nd (a collaboration with HMI, The Quivira Coalition, and the American Grassfed Association). Be sure to arrive on October 30th to attend the evening Holistic Management reception as a kick off to the conference. I look forward to seeing you there!
Ann Adams, Kathy Webster (TomKat Ranch Foundation), Abbey Smith (Jefferson Center for Holistic Management)
Holistic Thinking at the Scale of a Wolf BY SAM RYERSON
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hese are reflections on three years I spent managing ranches in wolf country in western New Mexico, and some ways in which our work involved holistic thinking in practice. Running ranches in the presence of large predators is really complicated—emotionally, practically, politically, and financially. For the last twelve years, I have worked on ranches across the West—most of them range-based ranches in big wild country, many of them holistically managed, all of them home to predators. Everywhere, sooner or later, we lost livestock to predation. Every loss like that was fraught. Usually, predators were not the
biggest practical challenges we faced. Predators are complex, we were mostly just lucky, and there’s a lot more to say than this. The Mexican gray wolf was introduced to the Blue Range Recovery Area in western New Mexico and eastern Arizona in 1998. The project brought great hope to some environmentalists, and dismay to many local residents and ranchers. I went to work there in 2010, to manage the ranches a new owner was putting together, between the Arizona state line near Springerville and the Gila Wilderness. It was conflicted country, even before the wolves. It was complicated. It looked like an opportunity.
Ranching in Harmony
One of the new owner’s goals in buying these ranches and hiring me to run them was building a model for profitable ranching in harmony with the ecology of the area. He said, “People are part of the ecology now.” This meant investing in the local economy, coexisting with predators, and rebuilding communities where the kids would want to stay. He brought on as consultants two long-time Holistic Management practitioners and educators, Jim Howell and Zachary Jones, to help him define a holistic context and begin his strategic, land and grazing planning, and who helped hire me. CONTINUED ON PAGE 4
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