I did not make my decision to get a better job, but to make a change. After farming for over a quarter of a century in Carneros, I have accomplished my mission here. I always had a dream to farm in Napa Valley as well. Now preparation and opportunity have come together, and I can learn the differences between Carneros and Napa.

The vineyards are located a few miles south of Calistoga in a narrow portion of the valley between Highway 29 and the Silverado Trail. I can see Mt. St. Helena and the white-washed walls of Sterling Winery on a hilltop as I work. The soil is drier than Carneros and there is less vegetation. I visited Donum last Saturday, and they haven’t disked yet. We are disking in Napa, and the soil is already dry.

Of course, the big difference is that I’m growing Cabernet Sauvignon instead of Pinot Noir. Someone remarked to me that now I’m growing the king of wine grapes. And I told him that I had already farmed the queen. When I started working with Pinot Noir, I thought that if I can do this, I can do everything else. Now I realize how valuable my experience is.

I now farm a bigger vineyard with more people and challenges, but I’m comfortable and I trust my experience. It’s a new and exciting venture, but I’m not nervous. I know what to do.  I spent 16 years farming for Larry Hyde and another decade with Anne Moller-Racke. What’s the main thing of value that I learned from them? Very simply, it’s to take care. Paying attention to detail is the best way to farm. It’s important to be self-critical and to do a good job from my own point of view.

I was talking to the owner of Larkmead about an agreement. I told him, “The vineyard is mine, but you can have the grapes.” We laughed about it, but this is my way. I want to farm like the vineyard is my own.

For me, working at Donum emphasized the importance of building a good team to accomplish what is needed in the vineyard. The team communicates knowledge and experience into action. The newest employee, the lowest guy on the organizational chart, is the most important because he is doing the work.

I’ve been listening to our new president. Obama says that we have to pursue excellence, that nothing is easy, but that yes, we can succeed. If one man can do it, we all can do it. It means I can do it well, too.

Donum will be part of my heart forever. I felt that it was my project, too. I was responsible for my area, and with Anne, Kenneth and the whole team, we created success. I feel I can put a big check mark by Donum and I am ready for the next challenge.

My new job is not better – it’s different. Pinot Noir and Cabernet Sauvignon, and its sister Bordeaux varieties, are totally different. I have been welcomed by my friends in Napa Valley, and I have a new team. I tell my people, “I will take care of your job, but you must take care of my job.”

Everyone has a task. The other day we were repairing a mower. A drive shaft runs from the power-take-off to a gearbox, and then another shaft comes out and operates the blades. I pointed out to them that if one part of this assembly doesn’t work, nothing else works. So that’s the exciting part of this new project for me – getting everyone to work well together.

My simplest answers are “we farm our land as stewards so that one day our children may farm it” and “we put back more than we take.”

We view our vineyard as part of a whole bio-system that needs to sustain a balance or equilibrium. From Rudolph Steiner’s (father of biodynamics) day in the 1920s all the way back to the Farmer’s Almanac in the late 18th century, farmers operated within their own holistic unit, or self-contained system, and they carefully observed what seemed to affect them positively.

As a culture, we tend to denigrate the planting charts and practices of an earlier era, but with modernization, we also have a tendency to lose touch with nature. Is it so far-fetched that there may be phases of the moon, for example, that cause more efficient times in the ebb and flow of plant life? After all, plants are mainly water, and if the moon moves the tides, perhaps it can produce better uptake in a plant as well.

Farmers in the “old days” learned to promote soil health, and they grew cover crops and feed for their animals and produced their own manures and composts. We are emulating their ways these days, getting away from monocultures.

Today, farming sustainably can involve the best of both Eastern and Western approaches – holistic incorporating high tech. Supporting our strong belief in protecting the environment are helpful tools for analyzing what we’re doing or need to do with no negative impact.

Water use is a good example. The 1970s gave us the precision of drip irrigation. Now we have neutron probes, pressure bombs and evapo-transpiration (ET) data to measure water content in the soil or the vine and reliable weather forecasting to help us plan ahead.

As technology surged in the 1980s, some thought that viticulture (and winemaking) could be computerized, especially irrigation. But, in fact, today the pendulum has swung back to walking the vineyard. It’s an axiom in our industry that the best technology is the grower’s footprints. You cannot understand the system unless you place yourself in it and make decisions based on observations, not on a predetermined schedule or calendar.

The vineyard reveals its condition with nuances – leaf colors, shoot tips, insect activity, sucker growth, gopher activity, weed growth, a leaking emitter, a broken trellis wire. While you may have perceived the vigor of a block from satellite technology — NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) photos use seven colors to indicate seven gradations of vigor based on how plants absorb and reflect solar radiation – you want to augment that perspective with your own observations on the ground.

As an observer within the system, you come to understand whether or not a pest or disease is a real threat or whether it hasn’t approached the threshold. We realize that a zero tolerance for a pest in a system where beneficial insects balance them isn’t appropriate. If it is a benign population, it isn’t an issue.

While we farm organically, that’s not to say everything goes perfectly. We recently tried an expensive organic herbicide and it just didn’t work. But now there are a host of organic materials available and the practices we’ve adopted work well, like cover crops, green manure and liquid compost teas to stimulate the soil.

Many practices are dictated by site. Because most of our estate vineyards are located in Carneros, where winds are ever present, we cultivate every-other-row. We’re careful not to overwork or pulverize the ground and are focused on preventing soil erosion.

So we don’t have the table-top cultivation and cosmetically perfect vineyards that you might find along Highway 29 in Napa. With our cover crops, we look more unkempt and have more bugs, birds and gophers within a really active ecosystem. But the result is an equilibrium that we can live with – sustainably.