What does organic farming really look like on the North Fork now — on this land, in this climate and with current economic factors?
That was the central question North Fork Environmental Council president Mark Haubner put to a panel of veterans who have spent decades learning and living the answers: pioneering vintner Louisa Hargrave, who planted the region’s first vinifera vines, winegrower and land preservationist Russ McCall and biodynamic farmer Ira Haspel.
“These are three people who have dedicated their lives to healthy air, water, soil, plants, insects and fungi,” Haubner said, hailing their trio of approaches to organic land stewardship: sustainable (Hargrave), regenerative (McCall) and biodynamic (Haspel).
The forum was held Monday evening at McCall Wines in Cutchogue, as the late summer sun went down and each panelist unearthed their origin story.
‘New crops’
Hargrave recalled the reality behind the oft-told story that she and her husband were hippies who “stumbled” onto the North Fork in the early 1970s and casually stuck vines in the ground.
In truth, she said, “we spent a year living in a Jeep Wagoneer going all over the country because we knew what we wanted to do: we wanted to grow very specific grape varieties that were very hard to grow, that everybody had said could not be grown. And we felt, if we could find the right conditions, we would try it and succeed.”
The North Fork met the moment — not just in terms of soil and climate, but of people and politics too.
“The zeitgeist was in favor of farming new crops in the State of New York and land preservation,” she said.
The early years weren’t easy.
“We didn’t want to use herbicides, so … we’re just constantly trying to do this by hand or mechanically, and it was really almost impossible.”
They eventually resorted to herbicides, but in time technology reduced their use.
“When they introduced air blast sprayers, we were able to use less spray material.”
By 2012, the region’s growers created a certified sustainable viticulture program — “a 122-page checklist,” Hargrave said, covering everything from pesticide use and water management to employee working conditions.
She said sustainability is a group effort.
“How many of you have bought — besides today — a bottle of Long Island wine in the last month?” she asked a few dozen people perched at picnic tables and lawn chairs on the grounds of the vineyard.
More than half the hands went up, and she nodded.
“Keep doing it. Without you guys buying this stuff, the goose — the golden goose — is cooked.”
‘Common sense’
McCall ran a wine wholesaling company in Atlanta before returning to his great grandfather’s house in Southold in the 1990s to defend local land from development.
He bought property that is now part of his vineyard to halt a 60-home subdivision from being built on a burying ground for the Corchaug people — one of four indigenous tribes living on the East End when 17th century European colonists first arrived.
McCall sold all of the development rights, and confronted the math every conservationist has to face.
“You have to figure out how you’re going to pay the taxes,” he said.
He planted vines in 1997 and kept acquiring land. For McCall, regenerative farming is “common sense.” He grinds vine clippings back into the soil, rotates grazing animals and uses compost to strengthen fields.
“Whenever we take something out, we put it back. That’s regenerative agriculture to me.”
Death is part of that process.
“I’ve had some horses and cows die over time, and the town wants you to have the carcass burned. Well, we never did that … you let them die and live on the property. Dig a hole. It’s like everything: it goes around a circle.”
‘Hocus Pocus’
Haspel’s entry into biodynamic farming began when his late wife KK came home from a lecture at what was then Long Island’s only organic farming school.
“She said, ‘We’re doing biodynamics.’ I thought it sounded like Hocus Pocus,” he recalled. “But after a year of doing the practice and then tasting the food, my stomach and my taste buds convinced my brain it was a good idea.”
Biodynamics is rooted in Rudolf Steiner’s response to German farmers who saw their soils and animals failing under early petrochemical agriculture after World War I. It rests on timing (moon, sun and planetary cycles), curated compost preparations (yarrow, oak bark, nettle, dandelion, valerian) and microbial life, he said.
“It’s really the micro-growers that do all the work.”
At KK’s The Farm, crops are interplanted — fruits, vegetables, flowers — so they support one another. Inputs are minimal. “That saves a lot of money,” he said.
Scaling up in America is possible, Haspel said — citing thousands of biodynamic acres in India and Australia — but transitions require support.
“We need farm subsidies to support local farmers during this transition period … to guarantee they’re not going to lose any money.”
‘Take the very best’
When Haubner pressed Hargrave on whether all local wineries could ever be organic or biodynamic, she was characteristically blunt: probably not.
“We have a situation with the humidity here that there aren’t fungicides that can really deal with the kind of fungus that we have … you can’t really adopt a method that isn’t effective if you’re commercial and you’re going to lose your crop.”
Growers in the Champagne region of France, she said, face similar conditions and rely on copper sulfate, a “toxic [compound that] builds up in the soil.”
Her advice was to take the best from each system and apply it judiciously.
“Take the very best of organic and biodynamic practices and principles and adopt them here when they work.”
Success hinges on vigilant observation, she said.
“When you are being more particular in your desire to be sustainable … you’re going to be really taking a very close look at everything you’re doing.”
Yet farming here is always bound by economics and consumer habits.
“You have to be able to make a living to stay here.”
So farmers adapt — selling jams, jellies, pies or wine when raw crops don’t sell.
McCall suggested tax relief as the best incentive.
“The best encouragement [for organic farming] is lower taxes.”
Hargrave said that farmland cost towns less than homes.
“A farm doesn’t send anybody to school … hardly ever calls the police.”
None of the panelists pretended that sustainable farming has a single, neat definition. They said it’s an ongoing practice: “make the soil better” with each cycle, as McCall put it.
But if you do it right, they said, there’s gold in the dirt.
“Sustainable agriculture, regenerative agriculture, permaculture, organic agriculture, biodynamic agriculture, soil remediation,” Haspel said, “are all things to help improve our soil.”
