Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
SHEPHERD STORY REVISITED
Organic: I'll Drink to That
F
ORTY YEARS AGO PHIL LAROCCA
started a 200-acre vine-
yard and winery in northern California. Phil ran his vineyard organi-
cally, and he incorporated a few sheep to help control vegetation among the
vines and so his family would have good meat that they'd raised themselves.
“At fi rst we'd purchase a small number of weaned lambs in the spring
and butcher them in the fall,” he said. “Then the kids showed sheep in 4-H,
and we started a small fl ock. We ate our lambs, traded some to neighbors,
and sold a few.”
From those auspicious beginnings Phil developed a fl ock of some 300
animals and paved a new path for selling certifi ed organic wool and lamb as
a side enterprise for a vineyard. That program was going quite well, but in
2003 he sold the stock to another rancher (though he maintains an owner-
ship interest in the fl ock) because of major replanting at the vineyard. “We
had to move them,” he explained. “With a major replanting, they will eat
the new shoots. In a mature vineyard it isn't an insurmountable problem,
but it would have been with the new plantings.”
Phil indicated that the family plans to get back into sheep in the future.
He said, “I think the market is really opening up. There is a new apprecia-
tion of lamb, thanks to the growing interest in food. But quality and market-
ing are the main things to think about.”
Phil explained that organic wool was an important part of their market:
“We really could move all our organic wool with no problem to commodity
buyers; they were begging us for it. But even with that part of our program,
we had begun focusing on value-added approaches. We have been building
our farmers' market trade, and in our tasting room we sell things like socks
prepared from our animals' wool.”
