Tag: vine

Hiring Lambs as Landscapers

  • Louise Engel admits she and her husband were initially a little nervous about setting the lambs lose in their valuable vineyard. (Photo by Joyce Kryszak)

Wine makers are shaking things up in their vineyards. Some of them use natural and organic methods to control pests and weeds instead of using pesticides. Now, one winery has discovered a unique, natural way to prune their grape vines. Joyce Kryszak visited the winery to get a first hand look:

Transcript

Wine makers are shaking things up in their vineyards. Some of them use natural and organic methods to control pests and weeds instead of using pesticides. Now, one winery has discovered a unique, natural way to prune their grape vines. Joyce Kryszak visited the winery to get a first hand look:

At the Featherstone Winery in Southern Ontario there are 20 acres of perfectly manicured grape vines. They stretch out in neatly groomed rows across rolling green hills.

But no man or machine maintains this vineyard. There are 40 cute, little, wooly lambs on duty pruning the grape vines into tip-top shape.

David Johnson says he knows the idea of using lambs on his vineyard is a bit odd. Johnson thought so too when he first heard the idea. He found out about it visiting wineries in New Zealand.

“I didn’t believe them at the time. I thought they were having fun with a tourist and that this would be a big joke, some Canadian when he went back home, telling a story. So, yeah, I’ve taken a ribbing on the lamb thing, for sure.”

But Johnson ignored the jokes and decided to try it out.

His wife Louise Engel admits they were a little nervous at first setting the lambs lose in their valuable vineyard.

“We watched these lambs like hawks. I mean, all the staff were sitting out there and following them around – ‘did they eat any grapes, did they eat any grapes?’ But they didn’t. They’ve got very nimble little mouths and little teeths and little lips and they just eat around them.”

You see, pruning grape vines is delicate business. Only a targeted area of leaves is removed from the lower part of the vines to help the fruit grow better.

But Engel and Johnson say the lambs are perfectly designed to handle the job. The young, spring lambs aren’t tall enough and their necks can’t stretch up to reach the grapes. And, since they only weigh about 50 pounds, they don’t trample the soil. And, yes, their droppings do make excellent organic fertilizer.

(sound of lambs bleating)

Three years, and three flocks of sheep later, nobody’s laughing. Area vintners even have copied them; and for good reason. It would cost about $300 an acre to hire seasonal workers to come in for seven weeks in the summer to hand prune the vines. The lambs cost a fraction of that. And, when the pruning is done in August, off they go to the butcher.

Johnson says it turns out that free-range lambs fed a diet of grape leaves end up being pretty tasty.

“We sold them off last year to some caterers and some pretty nice restaurants, and they got back to us and said, ‘wow, these lambs are really special.’ They’re different; they’re almost veal-like in color and flavor and very, very lean. And they’re going to do lamb specials all month and pair it with our wines all month.”

But he admits there are some drawbacks.

They had a tough time finding enough lambs to do the job. There are about fifty million of them in New Zealand. But, it turns out, they’re kind of sparse in Ontario.

Johnson says there are some logistical problems, too. Even some organic pesticides are toxic to lambs. And, there’s all that fence building and moving around to limit the lambs’ access, so they don’t over-prune.

Still, they think it’s worth the hassle. Engel says the lambs fit in beautifully with their philosophy of sustainable farming and diversity in the vineyard.

“They’re lovely, tranquil, placid things, and there’s something almost biblical about having lambs roaming the place and wine here. And, it’s just, I don’t know, there’s just some itch that scratches that’s quite fulfilling.”

People visiting the vineyard enjoy watching the lambs too.

Customers enjoy lunch on the veranda as they look out on the pastoral scene. And, of course, they have a little wine. And one of the top selling wines is Black Sheep Reisling.

For The Environment Report, I’m Joyce Kryszak.

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Weevils vs. The Mile-A-Minute Weed

  • The mile-a-minute weed (Photo courtesy of the USDA)

Sometimes biologists fight foreign
pests with other foreign animals. But that
can be risky because it can create a bigger
problem than the one it’s supposed to solve.
Sabri Ben-Achour reports on one of the latest attempts to stop a weedy pest:

Transcript

Sometimes biologists fight foreign
pests with other foreign animals. But that
can be risky because it can create a bigger
problem than the one it’s supposed to solve.
Sabri Ben-Achour reports on one of the latest attempts to stop
a weedy pest:

On farms, backyards, and rights of way up the Eastern Seaboard a pointy leaved thorny
newcomer is becoming increasingly visible. It’s called mile-a-minute weed.

Bob Trumbule is an entomologist. He leads me through a stream valley north of
Washington DC where blackberries and small trees are being swallowed up by this
invasive vine.

“So now we’re getting into the mile-a-minute here. Basically what it does it, it’s an
annual vine, it grows up and over plants, it smothers them, out competes them for
sunlight, and weighs them down.”

The weed is native to Eastern Asia: China and Japan. It was introduced accidentally in
Pennsylvania in the thirties. From there, it’s spread to seven other states. It prevents new
trees from sprouting in forests. But back in Asia, it’s not a dominating species like it is
here.

Judith Hough-Goldstein is a professor at the University of Delaware.

“Part of the reason is because it doesn’t have anything that’s feeding on it. It’s gonna be
without its predators so it can out-compete other plants.”

Over several years, biologists searched for something that would eat the vine. They
found a tiny, black weevil in China. It feeds on the plant and lays it’s eggs there, keeping
things in check – in Asia.

“Here are the weevils. I’m gonna give you a glimpse of them here in the cup. They look
almost like little ticks. I’m gonna put them down here in the mile a minute weed patch,
and basically what they’ll do – they’re tough little guys – they’ll climb around and in the
past experience have started to feed almost immediately.”

Up close, they look like little anteaters, poking around the leaves with long snouts.

This may sound risky. There are lots of examples where similar approaches have gone
wrong. A parasite was introduced in North America to control gypsymoths. It attacked
native silkmoths. Mississippi catfish farmers used Asian carp to control algae. They got
loose and are taking over the Mississippi River system and threatening the Great Lakes.

And Trumbule admits nobody knows for sure exactly what might happen.

“Any scientist that might say otherwise is not being honest with themselves or the person
asking the question.”

But he says a lot’s been learned since the days when any scientist could introduce a
species on a whim. These days, exhaustive testing and federal permits are required
before anything is released.

That’s why for almost ten years Judith Hough-Goldstein has been trying to determine if
the weevil would eat anything else. Tests were conducted in a U.S. Department of
Agriculture ‘quarantine facility’ with sealed windows and its own re-circulated air supply.

“So what we found was that, in fact, this particular weevil is extremely host specific. The
insect has evolved to depend on the plant.”

So much so that the weevils and larvae actually starved to death rather than feed on other
plants.

In field tests in New Jersey and Delaware, the weevils have decimated mile-a-minute
weed. Some researchers say it’s the most impressive biocontrol they’ve worked with.

For The Environment Report, I’m Sabri Ben-Achour.

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CONSTRUCTING NATURAL HABITATS (Part 2)

  • This grizzly at the St Louis Zoo is displayed in an exhibit that mimics its natural habitat. A whole industry has emerged to manufacture these exhibits.

At your local zoo – if you can suspend disbelief for a moment – you might find yourself in the middle of a tropical rainforest. Or a dusty African plain, watching the animals in their natural habitat. Of course, those wild settings are merely a façade. Clever construction techniques covering up concrete cages. In the second of a two-part series, the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports… the thought and planning behind the displays can be nearly as intricate as nature itself: