Excerpt No. 0002 - The Vineyard Is Always Talking

If you've never farmed before, it's easy to believe the vineyard is quiet.

Rows of vines.

A little breeze.

Birds in the distance.

Looks peaceful.

But spend enough time here, and you realize something.

The vineyard never stops talking.

It just doesn't use words.

It speaks through leaves.

Through soil.

Through the smell of the air before sunrise.

Through a vine that's growing just a little slower than the one beside it.

Through a cluster that doesn't quite look right.

Through birds landing in one corner of the vineyard and nowhere else.

The conversation never ends.

The question is whether you're paying attention.

When I first started farming, I thought experience meant knowing all the answers.

I couldn't have been more wrong.

Experience isn't having the answers.

Experience is learning which questions to ask.

Why is this row ahead of the others?

Why did these vines wake up first?

Why does frost always settle here?

Why did this block produce twenty more boxes than it did five years ago?

Nothing happens by accident.

Everything has a reason.

Nature leaves clues everywhere.

She whispers long before she screams.

If you're paying attention, you'll usually hear the whisper.

People think farming is hard because it's physical.

Some days it is.

But that's not the difficult part.

The difficult part is noticing.

Every morning you walk into the vineyard and begin collecting clues.

The wind changed overnight.

The soil is holding a little more moisture.

The birds are acting differently.

The vines are reaching.

The insects showed up early.

One clue means very little.

A hundred clues begin telling a story.

Good farmers don't force nature to behave.

They learn her language.

The longer I farm, the more I realize the vineyard has been teaching me about far more than grapes.

It's taught me patience.

Humility.

Consistency.

Responsibility.

It taught me that every shortcut eventually sends you back to where you should have started.

It taught me that problems are easier to solve when they're still small.

It taught me that showing up every day matters more than showing up perfectly once.

Funny enough, those lessons have helped me raise children better than they've helped me grow grapes.

That's what this Almanac is really about.

Yes, there will be pages about pruning.

Harvest.

Fermentation.

Weather.

Cattle.

Soils.

But underneath every one of those topics is a much bigger lesson.

Life.

The vineyard simply happens to be where I learned it.

As you read these pages, I hope you notice something.

I'm not trying to teach you how to farm exactly like me.

I'm trying to teach you how to observe.

Because once you learn to pay attention, the vineyard becomes your teacher too.

Mine has been teaching me for nearly thirty years.

I still walk out there most mornings expecting to learn something new.

So far, it hasn't disappointed me.

Filed Away

The vineyard is always talking.

The best farmers aren't the ones who know the most.

They're the ones who notice the most.