THE FARM IN MARCH

This last month was a fun one. Despite all the mud, we actually accomplished a ton of spring cleaning! We are expecting new baby cows to join the farm family in a few weeks, so we dug right in and did a much-needed deep clean in their future home. We also built some individual stalls to ensure the little ones are safe and cozy at night and that feeding time is easy.

Another important project was completed in March – we created a whole new pasture! A field that was previously only used for hay can now be used as a pasture for animals to graze. Rotational grazing is a huge step towards our sustainability goals and ensuring we keep our soil fertile and healthy. With new fields for grazing, we can rotate and give other pastures a chance to recuperate. The OG fences – aka rock walls – have served dutifully for well over a century holding in animals, but not without some crumbling here and there. It is really important to us that we maintain these gorgeous walls and we were able to mend some along the way.

The abundance of beautiful March days helped us finish pruning and start tying our grapes. Emily learned how to drive the tractor so she and Abby could do most of the work on the grape posts. We dug new holes and began replacing those posts that had seen better days. The locust posts look beautiful but dang, are they hard to get a nail into – something to look forward to avoiding with our newer posts.

Following in our grandfather Poppy Howard’s footsteps, we planted some awesome new (to us) New York Heritage grape varieties! Thanks to the amazing Steve Casscles, we planted a few hundred different cuttings and vines. Check out hudsonheritagewines.com to see the interesting and important work he has done with NY Heritage grapes. We planted everything from Jefferson, Leon Millot, and Baco Noir to Black Eagles, Dutchess, and Valerian.