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160 chapter twelve Laly Ahnkuttie No great thing is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer you, that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen. —Epictetus (A.D. c. 50–c. 138), Discourses What does paradise look like? Picture a rolling green field dotted with sheep, goats, and Highland cattle, those russet-colored shaggy beauties with their big, brown, limpid eyes. The green pasture is punctuated by a few white oaks; overhead is a blue sky, evocative with billowy clouds. There is a creek lined with horsetail at the bottom of the slope, a henhouse on a trailer parked next to the craftsman house at the top of the hill. It’s spring, so white trilliums, wild onions, and various wildflowers are just beginning to poke out of the ground. Native grasses, barley, wheat, and rye are sprouting up between the rows of knobby grapevines. A light breeze stirs up birdsong and causes the leaves to rustle in the trees. And then, the quiet is broken by a buzzing that becomes a roar as a four-wheeled Honda ATV comes tearing down the hill at a terrifying clip. Just when I think I might become roadkill, the vehicle comes screeching to a halt. Brian O’Donnell hops off and ambles toward me. Bearded, bespectacled, soft-spoken, and thoughtful, O’Donnell could pass as a New England college professor. That anomalous performance on the ATV was a head-scratcher, the only hint he offers that, living here on this piece of paradise, he feels like a kid in a candy store. Along with his wife, Jill, and daughter, Riona, Brian lives on seventy acres just outside of the picturesque village of Carlton. They call their estate Belle Pente, French for “beautiful slope.” The property includes sixteen acres of vineyard, planted on gently rising hillsides that range from two hundred forty to five hundred feet, with mostly southern exposures. Here in the United States, it’s tempting to deem a picturesque vineyard property stocked with a menagerie of animals a “gentleman’s farm.” But in other parts of the world, farmsteads that Laly Ahnkuttie 161 integrateawidevarietyoflivestockandplantspecies—fruitandolive trees, a vegetable garden, a cow, a horse, a pig, chickens, cats, dogs, a few rows of grapevines—are the sole source of subsistence for their owners. Whether it’s in an Italian hilltown or a village in the shadow of the Andes, this is a long-established, but fast-disappearing, model of sustainable agriculture. Which begs the question: Is such a thing a farm or a vineyard? Which begs another question: Why do we consider the two to be separate entities? At Belle Pente, the vines finance the animals, and the animals nourish and manage the vines. Most of the year, sheep graze in the meadow, keeping the grass down and preventing it from going to seed; the free-range lambs are sold for meat. But in late winter and early spring, the wooly quadrupeds amble down the vine rows, gobbling up the grasses and weeds that sprout up between the vine trunks. A contingent of chickens follows, feasting on the pernicious cutworms that threaten to damage tender buds and shoots. A couple of times a year, Brian O’Donnell cleans out his barns and combines straw, animal manure, and winery waste (grape skins, stems, and seeds) to make a compost pile. He lets each pile sit a year and decompose; then he spreads it over his vineyard. He also makes biodynamic barrel compost, mixing his cows’ manure with eggshells from his henhouse. Lately, the O’Donnells have been using whey from Tillamook Dairy as a fungicide and have found it to be effective. Their Highland cattle are a meat breed, a bit too wild to be handled and milked, so the O’Donnells are considering purchasing an Irish Kerry cow or two, for milk, cheese, and whey production. Brian and Jill originally planted the vineyard in 1994; they began farming organically in 2000, when the birth of their daughter caused them to question why they were dispersing chemicals so close to their home. In 2002, when they decided to pursue organic certification, they attended a meeting at Cooper Mountain Vineyards with representatives from Oregon Tilth, the organic certification organization, and Demeter. “Oregon Tilth had sort of a Ten Commandments view of the world: thou shalt not do this, thou shalt not...

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