Ted Hall, Laddie Hall, and Chris Hall. (Photo courtesy of Long Meadow Ranch)

Almost 30 years ago, Ted and Laddie Hall entered the wine business with a plan to prove that they could produce world-class vintages using sustainable, organic farming methods. But unlike Napa’s dominant vinters, it wasn’t just wine they were after. According to their son Chris, the Halls wanted to create an “organic, sustainable, integrated farming system that relies on each part of the ranch to contribute to the health of the whole.” It was a pioneering approach they called “full circle farming,” an approach that is unique in its depth and scope among Napa Valley wineries today.

The Halls found their first property, a tangled mass of overgrown vegetation, in the Mayacamas Mountains above St. Helena. They set about restoring the neglected estate, father Ted and son Chris exploring the land from the backs of their spotted Appaloosas. “We quickly knew the potential,” says Chris Hall, who is now executive vice president and chief operating officer of Long Meadow Ranch.

Even so, there were surprises in store: In 1992, the pair discovered 250 olive trees concealed by masses of Douglas fir and digger pines; three years later, they found a second olive grove. While DNA tests have not been able to identify the variety of olive, the now-restored trees have been dated to 1870, making them the oldest of a handful of historic olive groves in Napa dating back to the end of the 19th century.

The historic olive groves at Long Meadow Ranch. (Photo credit: Shoshi Parks)

These days, Long Meadow Ranch also cultivates over 200 varieties of heirloom fruits and vegetables, heritage breeds of laying poultry including Ameraucanas and Black Australorps, honey, several hundred head of Highland cattle, and more on 2,000 acres of land spread out over five properties.

The different areas of the ranch work in tandem—the poultry feast on overripe or damaged fruits and veggies, the bees pollinate the vineyards, the chickens’ manure augments the Ranch’s extensive composting operation, and Haflinger and Norwegian Fjord horses plow the potato fields. Everything produced on the farm is certified organic by the CCOF; their newest vineyards earned organic certification in 2017 after a multi-year process involving a reduction of resource inputs, the elimination of all pesticides, and a plan to encourage ecological diversity and healthy soil and vines.

“We have learned that organic farming methods produce higher quality at lower cost, with real consumer benefits,” says Hall. Heirloom and heritage produce and animals have been chosen for similar reasons. “There’s an agricultural heritage that we’re trying to preserve,” explains harvest manager Charlie McIntosh. “Heritage breeds are heartier, with a genetic resiliency that connects to flavor.”

Bourbon Red Turkeys. (Photo credit: Shoshi Parks)

That genetic resiliency is one of the key scientific principles grounding the farming practices at Long Meadow Ranch; another is water conservation—fundamentally important in this drought-prone region, Hall says. Long Meadow uses both dry farming and deficit irrigation to reduce their water use, resulting in roughly 25-30 gallons per vine per year, compared to an average winegrower’s 100-120 gallons per vine, according to winemaker Stéphane Vivier.

Farming at Long Meadow is underpinned by the “systems engineering” perspective Ted Hall acquired while attending Princeton as an electrical engineering student. The farm is “a holistic system with many feedback loops,” he says, in which each piece affects the whole. Some of his ideas about organic, sustainable growing, however, go back much farther.

“When I was a child I spent a lot of time with my grandfather [who grew produce for a small grocery store in Pennsylvania] learning to turn a compost pile and making soapy water and nicotine water to use as natural pesticides,” he recalls. As a 4-H member, he raised chickens and Hampshire lambs and sold eggs. Later, as a graduate student at Stanford in the early 1970s, Hall and wife Laddie helped to re-start a defunct community garden. On the side, Hall made wine.

Seventeen years later, the Halls took the leap from amateur to professional, purchasing their first Napa property in 1989. Last year, Ted Hall was voted the Napa Valley Grower of the Year by Napa Valley Grapegrowers for his leadership, his commitment to sustainability, and his community focus.

A Rare Breed of Wine Country Farmer

In the big picture, Napa isn’t strictly monocultural—vegetable, field, and floral crops, as well as livestock and poultry, are raised throughout the county—but all of these products combined make up less than 1 percent of the region’s gross agricultural value. The rest is generated by fruit and nut crops, especially vineyards and olive groves, which are planted on about 46,000 acres. And although there are more than 30 varieties of grapes cultivated in Napa Valley, there has lately been a significant shift toward cabernet sauvignon, which fetches the second-highest price on the market and now makes up 50 percent of grapes grown in Napa.

Vegetables and grapevines growing at Long Meadow Ranch. (Photo credit: Shoshi Parks)

It’s not that Napa vintners aren’t planting other crops. According to Korinne Munson, director of communications at Napa Valley Vintners, many winegrowers do plant cover crops like legumes and mustard among their vines, use sheep and goats to remove vegetation, and have vegetable gardens, but, in most cases, these things are done to promote the healthy growth of the vines and for small-scale consumption—most vinters identify themselves and their properties as responsible growers of wine grapes, not diversified farmers producing a wide variety of agricultural products.

Those that produce nuts, spices and vegetables on a large, commercial scale are few and far between.

Many believe that crop diversification is one of the keys to a robust agricultural future. Not only is it a cost-effective means of improving agricultural resilience by decreasing the transmission of pathogens and quelling pest outbreaks, diversification can provide alternate income streams that may help to keep a farmer’s head above water in the event of disease or disaster. Part of the problem for smaller vintners, however, is the market, itself. Whereas Long Meadow generates its own internal economy for selling vegetables, poultry, and olive oil on their Farmstead property and at their restaurant, says Munson, it’s a luxury that most wine grape producers can’t afford.

“Long Meadow Ranch is one of the few vinter/growers in the Napa Valley that has diversified their operations so extensively,” says Novi. A small, select group of other highly diversified wine operations similarly depend on a self-generated outlet for selling products beyond wine. Novi points to two other examples: Hudson Vineyards, which raises heritage breed pigs and goats, grows vegetables and runs a small grocery called Hudson Greens and Goods; and Clif Family, which produces nuts, olive oil, spices, and produce which are prepared in dishes served out of their Bruschetteria Food Truck at their tasting room.

The Farmstead restaurant at Long Meadows Ranch. (Photo credit: Shea Evans Photography)

Long Meadow can be “a little bit more of a champion for those diversified products because they’re feeding more people,” says Munson. Despite their larger footprint, the Ranch has stayed true to their original goals of stewardship and sustainability. “The growth has been thoughtful. Our vision has always been, with wine or anything else, to grow the right crop or the right variety in the ideal environment or location or soil or microclimate for what we’re doing,” says Chris Hall.

Back at the Farmstead, the fruits of Long Meadow Ranch’s full-circle farming philosophy are on full display. Executive Chef Stephen Barber surveys the farm daily, creating new dishes for the restaurant’s menu as produce comes into season. The general store sells hot sauce made from estate-grown chilis, honey from the Ranch’s bee colony, and Prato Lungo olive oil from the historic olive groves. The on-site farmstand and other nearby farmers’ markets sell Long Meadow’s fresh, organic produce directly to consumers. And there’s the estate-grown wine, which flows generously in the restaurant, at regular outdoor community events, happy hours, and in tastings at the general store.

“All the different facets contribute to one another,” says Chris Hall. “We are committed to proving that world-class quality and responsible farming go hand in hand.

Top photo: Laddie Hall at a farmers’ market. (Photo credit: Shea Evans Photography).

Update: This article was updated to accurately reflect the organic certification information for Long Meadow Ranch.

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Today, American pine nuts (also called piñon or pinyon) are rarely found growing outside the Southwest. And even there, they can be a challenge to locate.

It’s not that the taste for pine nuts has disappeared—pine nut consumption has, in fact, almost doubled in the last decade. Nor is it a problem of falling market values: American pine nuts sell for up to $40 per pound. The dissolution of the domestic pine nut market is both the by-product of human-driven ecological changes to piñon-juniper woodlands and competition with imported pine nuts (from countries like China, North Korea, and Afghanistan) that, due to lower labor and processing costs, now dominate the global market at closer to $25 a pound. With a nut that can take up to 75 years to mature, the likelihood that American pine nuts will recover their commercial value is low.

Piñon vs. Mining and Ranching

For thousands of years, American pine nuts have been an essential food source in the Four Corners region of the Southwest. Pueblo peoples and their descendants (Navajo, Tewa, Zuni, and Apache, among others) found the piñon tree so valuable as to be assigned mythical status.

Native Americans were the first to commodify the food in the early 20th century. In 1942, researchers recorded an 8 million-pound pine nut harvest from New Mexico, Colorado, and Arizona. By 1988, the same region annually yielded less than a quarter of that amount.

Piñon belong to two pine tree species, Pinus edulis and Pinus monophylla, and are located primarily on public lands set aside by the federal government for various uses including livestock grazing; oil and mineral extraction; and recreation. This multi-use philosophy, says Penny Frazier, a sustainable forestry advocate and purveyor of American pine nut products, is at the root of the trees’ decline.

The institutions that regulate public lands—the U.S. Forestry Service and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM)—explained Frazier, have historically seen little value in American pine nuts. In the 1950s, the two institutions divvied up the Southwest according to areas they called “forest” and “range.” Because piñon-juniper woodlands were useless as timber, the U.S. Forest Service and BLM cleared “many thousands of acres” between the 1950s and 1970s.

Frazier sees a deep irony in the destruction of piñon-juniper woodland to make way for the cattle industry. She points to research that says a healthy piñon forest can generate $4,000 to $10,000 per acre, when one acre of forest produces 250 pounds of nuts. Compare this to rangeland, which generates approximately $168 to $288 per acre, but also requires extensive tax subsidies to sustain the vast range holdings throughout the country, with $51 million estimated for the BLM alone.

According to the U.S. Forest Service, some of the taxpayer funds devoted to range management under their agency go toward “controlling” the spread of piñon-juniper woodlands into land designated for grazing. Nevertheless, ranching is an important aspect of Southwestern identity. But Frazier believes that’s not the only reason ranchland is common. “It’s much easier to find oil and gas and gold where there is no forest,” she said.

Indeed, three of the five states with the most active BLM mining claims in the U.S. (Nevada, Arizona, and Utah) and three of the five states with the most mineral deposits (Nevada, Colorado, and Arizona) are located in piñon-growing regions. In New Mexico, the BLM records 197,000 mining claims; in Arizona there are 443,000 mining records.

Photo by Alan Madrid.

Climate Change and Labor Pose Challenges

Thomas Kolb, a professor in the School of Forestry at Northern Arizona University, says the practice of removing piñon to make way for other industries has largely stopped, however. Colorado BLM Public Affairs Specialist Deanna Masterson agrees. “We’ve been pretty stable in the number of permits and allotments. We haven’t removed piñon-juniper to create rangeland,” she said.

Although millions of acres of piñon-juniper woodlands remain, Kolb points to climate change as a threat to the American pine nut market. “Piñon woodlands are highly vulnerable to hot weather and droughts,” he said.

Dyer M. LeBaron’s family has harvested, processed, and sold American pine nuts since the 1950s. These days, LeBaron sells primarily online as Wholesale Pine Nuts. But it’s more than just the marketplace that has changed, he said. Over the last 15 years simply collecting the nuts has become more difficult.

“You get very unpredictable weather patterns that we didn’t experience going back 30 to 40 years. Before … pretty much every year we could scout them out and find some very good harvest. Now it’s very sporadic,” said LeBaron.

In recent years, LeBaron says he and other harvesters have also been rejected for commercial gathering permits at previously productive pine nut locations in Nevada and Utah.

Pine nuts require intensive labor for harvesting and processing. Under the best conditions, says LeBaron, in an eight-hour day a single harvester with the right tools can collect 50 pounds of nuts protected by cones covered with a sweet, sticky pitch. LeBaron’s operation typically employs 12 to 30 workers during the short two-month harvest season in late summer. Much of the work is in processing the piñon. Once harvested, cones must be dried and heated in order to open enough to provide access to their nuts. One by one, the nuts are extracted from the cone, then removed from their hard casings.

Labor costs combined with decreasing harvests have made American pine nuts less competitive in a global marketplace currently dominated by China, which exported 76 percent of the world’s pine nuts in 2015. Though Chinese pine nuts are also gathered on public lands, the cost of labor is a fraction of the in the U.S. Frazier says that in some places, particularly in North Korea, which produces 12 percent of the global pine nut market, labor costs are virtually nonexistent because pine nut harvesting and processing is done by soldiers, not private citizens earning a daily wage.

At this stage of global agricultural trade and ecological degradation, there is little to slow the disappearance of American pine nuts from the market. It is likely, in fact, that the productivity of piñon-juniper woodlands will continue to decrease as the frequency of unusually warm periods coupled with drought continue to increase, says Kolb.

“When we have these episodes of piñon pine mortality, we see a shift towards junipers. A lot of areas have been converted from piñon-juniper woodlands to just juniper.”

And as mature piñon continues to disappear, so too will the American pine nut industry.

“An average of 30 years ago there was probably 20 to 30 commercial harvesters,” said LeBaron. “Now there’s just a handful. It’s a dying thing.”

Image at top by Scott Smuin.

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