Our ability to sustain

depends on you the consumer literally and figuratively to share the dream of organic living, local family production by buying, consuming and promoting the products of all this effort.

We finally decided to seek the new Sustainablity certification through the Wine Institute. We'll keep you posted and announce when we complete the certification.

Sustainability

Where was this term 40 years ago? 30 years ago? Then just barely showing up on the radar screen of words but now the big buzz word in the Green Movement. But beware this word can be used more often than one realizes as an excuse, a crutch, a reason to not proceed or sustain a direction. Let the pessimist get their hands on it and watch out. Let an optimist run with it and it's like a spider spinning a web. Sustainability is a BIG word.

With an unbiased realist behind the wheel there's bound to be some good points made and questions raised. But please don't patronize me by saying you/we can't afford this, that or the other alternative to non-renewable resources, toxicity or disregard for other living things. Be challenged by what isn't and let's strive to make things happen that are good toward the concept of Sustainability.

Take for instance weed control in the vineyard. One could say I can't possibly afford not to use herbicides, Roundup in particular. The alternatives are more expensive and not as effective. If your goal is a sterile strip three feet wide under each row of grapes without a living thing to compete with the vine you may be right. But that goal is unnecessary and counter to developing a healthy diverse biologically active soil so the sustainability agrument of cost is mute in this case.

The word Sustainability should be used as both a test and a challenge. A test to review your practices to see if your meeting your management goals effectively as well as cost-effectively. The test should also review and ask the question if your goals are sound, realistic and meet the more general goals of minimizing ones negative impacts on Earth. But if you fail your own tests, the response should be to challenge oneself for a better solution, a more focused goal, an innovative approach. Failing your tests of sustainability should not put to rest the need to do better.

Sustainability is a broad stroke of a reality check. All those good intentions but nobody wants to pay. It should pay to be a good steward of the land. It definitely should but it doesn't. It doesn't because our Free market economy gets away without paying the true costs of a product's negative impacts for example. In the beginning because we may not know what, if any, the negative impacts are. And where there's money to be made we may not uncover the negative impacts of toxic products for years to come, hidden from us, challenged and spun by the Public Relation specialist(s) and lobbyist(s) protecting the interests and ultimate profitability of the manufacturer, etc. But that just raises questions of true sustainability which is a complex can of worms that will take more than this page to address.

But if it wasn't for the early and continued commitment of myself, our goals to be certified organic, to be 100% solar-powered, to run our tractors on recycled biofuels, to minimize off-farm inputs, to build an appropriate soil fertility for the crops we grow, to hire local people, to create a local product that comes directly and cooperatively from the very soil you walk on, the sun overhead and the water that falls on your land and turn that into money that creates and drives our local rural community without much personal renumeration or building of wealth, we wouldn't have anything to talk about let alone question whether it was sustainable. Here at Fitzpatrick's we have challenged ourselves to be sustainable for four decades, long before there was ever even the prospect of recognition and financial reward.

But the sustainability question i s BIG and real. Why shouldn't I make enough money farming organically creating our wines in the most responsible way to pay typical overhead expenses including personal health care and fund a retirement plan? After all we work 24/7 50 weeks out of each year. But unlike working for the Government, the Utilities or the like there are no guarantees of sustainability. Sustainability? Where do we begin?