the path to regenerative farming

In 2014, we were suddenly deep in Step Two, trying to realize the scale of what we had taken on while still very busy with our wine work lives. We plunged in, both with good intentions and everything to learn.

Organic farming was always part of our vision. We planted red clover, started a compost program, and cut hay. We ran soil tests to get a benchmark on pH and other nutrient levels and conditioned the soil with tons of lime from a nearby quarry. We planted Winter Wheat and Danko Rye. We took care to leave our Little Field fallow. We contracted with a local farmer to plow our fields. And we soaked up all the information we could find about things like open-pollinated heirloom corn varieties and beekeeping.

But inevitably, our inexperience led to some disastrous failures. Wild turkeys ate the corn, we lost a crop to drought. We realized what we were doing wasn’t enough. Or maybe it was too much. We read more, asked harder questions, and looked to the land itself for answers. What was it telling us?

Three years in, we initiated a more comprehensive program of crop rotation, cover crops, and no till. As we moved away from plowing and toward building soil biomass, our goals shifted from getting high crop yields to retaining water, opening the soils, and building their health. With this approach, something completely different began to emerge: We found the fields developing a tremendous amount of biomass through which came clover, radish, and rye.

Soil tests at the end of 2018 confirmed our new ideas were working. That summer, a carpet of white buckwheat flowers, a good source of pollen and nectar for our bees, gave visual assurance as well.

From the knowledge of our own experience, we redesigned our equipment and redrew our assumptions. Our embrace of a new relationship with the land was already giving better yields and, more importantly, healthier crops. But we needed encouragement and advice from someone who knew how rocky the road to regenerative farming can feel. Enter Mimi Casteel.

Mimi Casteel could make you believe the Earth summoned her into existence as its advocate. She has an extraordinary ability to explain the most complex concepts in regenerative agriculture with clarity and compassion. She humbly considers herself a “mystery solver for the land,” combining her roots in Oregon, where her parents were viticultural pioneers, her forest science studies, and her work as a botanist and ecologist to find ways for the land to help itself. In 2015, she began to regenerate a farm in Salem, Oregon that had been chemically treated and started her own vineyard, Hope Well, as a place where her vines and family could thrive. If you’ve listened to interviews with Mimi or read her work, you’ll understand why we felt she had to see what we were attempting at Branchwater. Her guidance is our wellspring of courage to take the risks and rejoice in the rewards of regenerative farming.

Why Regenerative farming?

Branchwater pulls from a broad palette of holistic farming ideas. We’ve taken the practice of brewing and applying compost teas from biodynamics. We’ve abandoned tilling in accordance with ancient customs. And we’re learning to embrace the restraint of Masanobu Fukuoka’s “do-nothing” technique.

Taken together, these form a philosophy of farming that prioritizes repairing nature’s processes instead of interrupting them. This is the way Mimi taught us to think of regenerative agriculture. Here’s our attempt to summarize some of her insights that we think are most relevant to understanding what we’re doing at Branchwater:

Human beings have used agriculture to extract resources from the earth in a way that has turned naturally circular systems (most famously the carbon cycle, though this is only one) into linear systems: a bank that we take from and never pay back.

Regenerative agriculture restores those cycles. “Closing the wounds,” as Mimi puts it. Astonishingly, we can do that through farming, by working with, not against, the plants, soils, topography, and climate of our land. Practiced over time, this way of farming brings back vitality and nutrient density to the foods we eat and use to make other products — like spirits.

In the spring of 2019, Mimi came to Branchwater to walk the land with us and help us understand what it was asking us to do. She recognized that our farm is, as she puts it, a place that allows us to rewind our minds back to when settlers were first establishing themselves here. So much has been lost over hundreds of years of farming. But we are learning to recognize how badly the earth’s repair processes want to happen and how quickly they do when allowed to do so. Mimi helped us to see that our farm’s strength is its diversity, its mix of field, forest, and water, all interacting and influencing what and how we grow here.

As Mimi says, “The work teaches you how to do the work.” It’s an iterative process of observation, creativity, and response calling for an open heart and an open mind. We must humbly ask permission to work with our piece of land and to hear what it's trying to tell us about the decisions we need to make for its long-term health. There are days when we look out at the fields and think, what a mess! But that’s as it should be. There is genuine excitement in letting go and waiting to see what happens next. 

why farming matters for our spirits

We believe regenerative farming will have a tangible impact on the vitality of our grains. By laying the groundwork for the fascinatingly symbiotic network between plant root and soil fungi called mycorrhizae, our plants will be able to take up nutrients they need and put back into the soil what they don’t (other plants will happily use them!). This should mean more carbohydrates stored in the grains themselves, which should give us more sugar to unlock in fermentation.

Might our choice to work with heritage grains also produce more complex flavors once fermented? We think the answer is yes. Kevin’s research into heritage wheat shows a definite correlation between heritage varieties and bread flavor and complexity. Why wouldn’t the same be true of spirits?

What we grow and why

We wanted to work with heirloom grain varieties -  wheat, rye, and corn for gin, bourbon, and rye — because of the way we farm. For instance, we selected an old variety of wheat called warthog because it produces a very long straw that puts the grain head almost two-and-a-half feet above the ground. We need that because there’s no way we could get modern varieties, which are shorter, ripe enough before competing plants take over.

Of course, nothing we do makes sense unless it also yields the highest quality ingredients. Beyond our own grains we look to our surrounding region for responsibly farmed produce we cannot yet grow ourselves.

Water, which makes up as much as fifty percent of spirits, is an ingredient that is too often overlooked. But most producers just turn on the tap and hope for the best. We want to draw on our own well water for our spirits because we see it as another expression of place. Hans, who uses water from a specific spring for his spirits, has seen the impact water can have on his products. “If the water is not perfect, the spirit cannot be perfect,” he reminds us. Soft water helps the blend and lessens the alcoholic intensity of the spirit. We will continually analyze the pH, acidity, and magnesium content of our well water, looking for the optimum balance for our spirits.

what lies ahead

Branchwater holds so much possibility. We recognize that we haven’t even begun to realize all that it might be. But we do have a few ideas for the near term! Almost every regenerative agricultural system involves the rotation of animals. In 2019, Robin interned at Kinderhook Farm, a family-run, Animal Welfare Approved livestock farm north of us in the Hudson Valley. She worked with chickens, cattle, pigs, and sheep, and learned about fencing and rotational grazing, processing chickens, and getting along with livestock guardian dogs. She loved the work and came away with an even stronger desire to integrate animals into Branchwater. We don’t have enough fields to incorporate large livestock herds and still grow enough grain for use in the distillery.

What we do have are lots of wetlands and a fascination with birds, so in the spring of 2021 we welcomed our first flock of ducks to Branchwater Farms. We work with different breeds of ducks for both meat and egg production and we are working on a breeding program and we’ll see where it leads us. In the spring of 2022, we began building our flock of chickens and we have developed quite a local following for the beautiful eggs our laying hens provide. We also offer pasture-raised, organically fed whole chickens on a seasonal basis. Both eggs and meat are available at our farm store.

As for four-legged friends, we have a group of bonded goats that came to us as pets in February 2022. And, in the winter of 2024 we will be adding a small flock of fine fleece Shetland sheep, which we will raise for wool and eventually breed.. Kevin has designed a rotational grazing plan for our Secret Field. It’s a perfect location for animals, with the creek along the western edge offering both a natural water source and protection from predators.

We’re planning for fruit trees, too. Our current thinking is not to have a single orchard, but to have several stands of trees spread out around the farm, the way the land was planted 80 years ago.

Branchwater is teaching us - the more we rewind our minds, the brighter the future looks.