Establishing Roots
April 2025
Welcome to the first of our 3-part farming series, where we will take you through our process. Not all farms are created equally, and not all farming is either. We are constantly evolving and modifying our systems based on our observations and experience and on what we’re learning from the land, our farming community and Momma Nature.
If we throw mother nature out the window, she comes back in the door with a pitchfork
That’s a quote from The One-Straw Revolution, Masanobu Fukuoka’s revolutionary collection of musings on farming, eating and the limits of human knowledge that has become one of the founding documents of the alternative food movement. First published in the 1970s, Fukuoka was a trained scientist who rejected modern agribusiness in favor of sustainable practices that eliminated pesticides, fertilizers and plowing. As a holistic method of farming, he called this technique a “do-nothing” approach, which has since become a central tenet to regenerative agriculture.
We founded Branchwater with the goal of farming organically, and we have never used herbicides or pesticides here. Plowing is a more complicated issue when you grow annual crops, like wheat and rye.
The conventional way of farming—even if you’re trying to be organic—is that you plow the fields after harvest and then disc it. Plowing will pull 18 inches of sod and dirt up and turn it over so that the roots are facing the sky. Discing will break up those sod clumps and allow moisture to escape thereby killing weeds and sod that has been upended. After this, the fields are conditioned with a roller harrow which consists of two rows of 20 x 4-inch metal wheels with small indentations on them which rotate on their axels independently. Behind each axel of rollers are adjustable harrow arms that look like a calligraphy “S” which extend up to 12 inches into the soil. The point of conditioning is to smooth the field by moving dirt into trenches left by the plow and the disc and to leave the field as clean slate for the planting of winter crops. The thinking here is that only by having an overturned, chopped-up and rolled over field, can a farmer plant into the seedbed and minimize weed pressure once the crops take hold.
It’s what’s inside that counts
Undoubtedly, a freshly plowed and conditioned field looks and smells amazing, but we know that it does a lot of damage to the soil.
First is the issue of topsoil and water retention. Plowing, by its very nature, takes any topsoil in the field and buries it 18 inches below ground. Simply put, there isn’t any topsoil when a farmer plows. Discing breaks up all those root structures from the overturned field which allows moisture to escape, drying out the soil and leaving it susceptible to wind erosion.
Second is the issue of CO2. Plants take in CO2 for photosynthesis and sequester it through their roots in the soil. Plowing releases CO2 back into the atmosphere. NASA has released satellite images of CO2 emissions on earth throughout the year and the majority of the emissions occur in the places and the months when farmers are plowing in order to plant the next crop. Together with forestry and other land use, agriculture is responsible for about 25% of all human created greenhouse gas emissions. Watch this cool video to see NASA’s A Year in the Life of Earth's CO2. A major tenet of regenerative agriculture is that soil is our greatest potential tool in the fight against climate change and that it is the job of the farmer to sequester carbon by building soil.
Third is soil compaction and erosion. To plow, disc and condition a field requires a farmer to be on the tractor covering the same ground at least five times: once to plow, twice to cross-disc and twice to condition. This causes compaction in the subsoil and leaves the dirt on top available to be carried off through wind erosion or through water runoff. Not to mention the carbon emission of running a tractor for those additional hours.
Fourth is the lack of biodiversity. Plowing strips the field bare of competing plants and encourages monoculture of the one crop a farmer plants. Different plants release different carbohydrates through their roots, and various microbes feed on these sugars. In return, the microbes secrete nutrients back to the soil that can be taken up by the roots of plants. Increased plant diversity creates a richer, more varied, and nutrient-rich soil that leads to more productive yields.
Putting ideas into action
One of the many complications of farming is that you only have one chance per year to try something new, to see if it works—that is, if you don’t also suffer a drought or some other weather-related calamity that would affect your yield regardless of what you’re attempting. When we purchased the farm in January 2014, we were just trying to realize the scale of what we had taken on and were also busy with our work lives, since Kevin had started his wine import company, Schatzi the same year.
We cut hay that spring and did soil tests to get a benchmark on pH and other nutrient levels. Under the advice of a local farmer, we contracted with him to plow both the Big Field (14 acres) and Little Field (6 acres). Kevin disced and then we brought in 36 tons (3300 lbs/acre) of crushed limestone from a quarry in Connecticut. Kevin conditioned the lime into the soil and we planted red clover in both fields to improve our nitrogen levels. We also started a compost program that year and were able to get horse and cow manure from a nearby farm that we piled in the Big Field and left to decompose through the winter.
In the spring of 2015, we spread the compost on our fields and then contracted to plow again that fall. Kevin cross-disced and conditioned and then we planted Winter Wheat and Danko Rye in October. Our first harvest was in July 2016 with 13 tons of wheat and 7 tons of rye. We did soil tests again and added another 39 tons of crushed limestone (3550 lbs/acre) and compost for more organic matter. These applications were worked into the soil and we planted rye in the Big Field and left the Little Field fallow for planting corn in the spring of 2017.
2017 changed our thinking. Kevin had been reading about regenerative agriculture and especially how to build soil, increase compost nutrient levels and add biodiversity. We plowed the Little Field for what we hoped would be the last time that spring for the corn crop, which we were told we had to do in order to get a harvest at all. In keeping with our organic intentions, we planted several open pollinated heirloom varieties for corn. The plan was that these varieties would cross-pollinate and create a new strain of corn that we would then harvest and propagate in successive years. In the middle of May, we planted 50 lbs. each of Reid’s Yellow Dent, Lancaster Sure, Pencil Cob and Hickory King Yellow. The wild turkeys decimated the young stalks. So, we replanted with the same varieties and another heirloom one, Silvermine. Our yield was 3 tons, less than .5 tons/acre, a disaster. The rye in the Big Fields was completely lost to weed pressure and intense winds from thunderstorms which knocked down the grain heads. This was the year we decided to shift our thinking away from a reliance on plowing.
Robin with our first (and only) corn harvest - 2017
Some encouraging test runs
After the rye was down, we planted oats, winter peas, clover and daikon radish in the Big Field. These were co-planted with the intention of increasing biodiversity, nitrogen-fixing (clover, but also through the interaction of the peas and oats), increasing bio-mass (peas), increasing water retention and unpacking the soil (radish) and preventing erosion, since the field was full of plant life. The rye crop that was lost also self-seeded and what we saw in the spring of 2018 was something completely different.
The oats and peas could not survive the winter, we knew that. But they left a tremendous amount of bio-mass on the field through which grew clover, rye and radish. We left the field fallow all of 2018. In retrospect, with some more understanding, we shouldn’t have done that but instead should have planted more cover crops to keep the field growing. But at the time, we were contracting out all the planting because we didn’t own the equipment needed for this. And, with the grain bins full, and without news of our SBA loan being approved or not, we didn’t want to invest in more crops that we potentially couldn’t store.
In truth, the fact that we didn’t have the money to move forward on the barn reconstruction allowed us valuable time to experiment with regenerative agriculture and to reexamine our approach to farming altogether. The continued delays in funding we faced in moving forward with the reconstruction led to better ideas, methods and designs in every aspect of Branchwater. It gave us the time and space to rethink our original ideas, to consider nature differently, to observe, to redesign equipment, and to modify our assumptions from the knowledge of our own experience.
In 2018 we replicated in the Little Field what we had done in the Big Field the previous year. Instead of a fall planting, we did a spring planting of buckwheat and cowpeas, with similar goals. Kevin had mowed down the cornstalks for increased organic material and added compost. The cowpeas added bio-mass and organic material, but they are also nitrogen fixing, and this is where co-planting buckwheat was crucial. Cowpeas fix nitrogen out of the air, but they do a more robust job at this when there is very little nitrogen already in the soil. Buckwheat steals soil nitrogen from its neighbors, which tricks the cowpea into fixing more nitrogen than it would if grown by itself.
Soil tests at the end of 2018 proved that this had worked, and the buckwheat flowers made for a beautiful carpet of white and a good source of pollen and nectar for our bees. These experiences gave us more courage to move away from plowing and to embrace regenerative agriculture as a more responsible way to farm, resulting in better yields and better-quality crops. We also knew that 2018 would be the last year that we could contract farm.
Regenerative agriculture requires the planting of several crops throughout the year, and we simply couldn’t afford to pay another farmer to do this for us anymore. So, we decided that we would need to invest in a no-till drill seed planter and a roller-crimper. The roller-crimper is a ten-foot steel tube with a chevron pattern of blades on it. When filled with water, it weighs just over a ton and we use this to roll down the cover crops into which we plant the new seeds with the no-till drill. Because of the biomass of the cover crops, the weight of the roller-crimper does not compact the soil and the chevron blades don’t cut the crops but crimp them instead. This keeps their roots sequestering CO2 as the plant lies on the ground, ultimately becoming a “green manure” through which the next crop grows.
Aaaaaaand, we’ll leave you with a cliff hanger here. Farming is a dense topic and while some of you enjoy a lengthy read, we don’t want to lose the rest of you dedicated subscribers!
our daughter Sylvie in our field of buckwheat - 2018
And they farmed happily ever after
Tune in for the next edition of our 3-part farming series, when we discuss the many challenges we have encountered on our regenerative journey. Potential titles for our next post:
“Wait, What? The Wheat Was Still Standing This Morning When I Checked”
“Crop Failure: 2 Out of 3 Ain’t Bad!”
“Why Oh Why Must It Rain All of July?!”
“The Plow: Wow! Maybe It’s Not the Plow, but How (Often)”
What We’ve Been Up To Lately
We bottled our 2023 Bartlett Pear at the beginning of March. 5 tons of fruit produced a mere 706 bottles of brandy (375ml). The pears came from Fix Brothers Farm, where we source much of our fruit. (Psssst - we were able to secure English Morello Cherries from them last year and we will have a limited release brandy from those next!)
You will notice that the label on the pear brandy has changed. That is because we had originally only intended to produce one pear brandy, from Bartletts. But, as with many of our farming stories, this one too involves some loss and a whole lotta drama!
While processing our 2022 Bartlett pears, our pump exploded. We quickly moved the remaining fruit into cold storage while we tried to get the pump fixed. We ultimately were able to borrow a pump from our colleagues at Klocke Estate, but when we brought the Bartletts back for fermentation, many were riper than we wanted for the style of our fruit distillates. We salvaged about 20% of the fruit and moved the resulting distillate into a used apple brandy barrel, where it rests today.
To make up for the loss of fruit, our friends at Montgomery Place Orchards came up with a few bins of Bosc pears for us in 2022. Then, in 2023, we got more Bosc from Fix Brothers to make up the volume. We bottled 412 bottles (375ml) of our debut Bosc Pear Brandy in June 2024.
And that is how our pear brandy got a little sister and a new label!
What we’ve been mixing up lately
Did someone say Pear Brandy?!
This cocktail, named after or our farm’s top diva, became a tasting room favorite during the Fridays at the Farm series we launched last year. She’ll be making more appearances in our 2025 season, showcasing the 2023 bottling of our Bartlett Pear Brandy and you might want to designate your driver in advance. This cocktail goes down way too easily!
Q-Tip
2oz Branchwater Bartlett Pear Brandy
1oz Fresh Lemon Juice
1oz Small Hand Foods Orgeat
Shake with ice and serve up in a chilled cocktail coup. Garnish with microplaned orange zest.
What we’ve been reading, watching and listening to lately
We recently started a book club with a few local friends and our selection this month was The Swerve - How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt. It is a little academic, but that’s ok, our brains need exercising too! It follows the unlikely discovery of a buried literary treasure -Lucretius’s On the Nature of Things, a poem written during the late Roman Republic. Poggio Bracciolini, a papal secretary turned book hunter unearths a rare copy in a monastery in Germany in 1417. It’s a historical journey, tracing thoughts and ideas through the centuries and exploring the impact of words and philosophies and religion in shaping our modern world. A really fascinating read, we highly recommend it.
As for screentime — we are totally obsessed with the BBC series This Farming Life. It definitely has us dreaming of an extended trip to Scotland visiting distilleries and sheep farmers!
Musically, it’s all Bob Dylan or all Beyoncé most days. On the podcast side of things, on the recommendation of a good friend, we’ve been listening to The Bulwark and learning a ton!
Do you have some recommendations for us? Please send them our way!
Looking ahead…
Spring! Spring! Spring! Oh boy, it’s Spring! It catches us unprepared every year, despite our best intentions to plan ahead. But plan we have and here is what we’ve come up with so far:
Branchwater Provisions reopens Saturday, April 5th! Our farm store and tasting room are reopening for the season. Hours are Thurs-Sun 12-5 April-December. We look forward to seeing you after our winter hiatus.
Dry Vermouth Launch Party Sat, April 26th 3-5pm - Yes! It is finally happening and thank you for your patience while we navigated the twisty turny world of label approvals for this special beverage category. We will be previewing our dry vermouth. Branch-tinis and other concoctions will be available for purchase.
Crafting in Community - we are very excited to launch a series of creative classes and workshops, where people can come together to exchange ideas, and share knowledge and skills. If you are interested in hosting an event here, please reach out. We have space (with some quirks and limitations) we are more than happy to share with our community.
First up: Introduction to English Paper Piecing Workshop with Jacqui Rose Sun, May 4th 10am-1pm Info and sign up here
Fridays at the Farm is back! We introduced this series last year as a way to showcase the spirits we make here, serving up cocktails and specialty food boards against the farm’s casual and calming backdrop. Many of you have been asking about it, so we’re bringing it back! We’ll be hosting Fridays at the Farm the final Friday of every month from May through October, so mark your calendars! (May 30th, June 27th, July 25th, Aug 29th, Sept 26th and Oct 31st 4-7pm)
North Salem Farmers Market - for friends further south, you can find us at the historic hamlet of Croton Falls in Westchester a few Saturdays this season. We will be there on May 10th, July 12th, and Sept 13th. The market runs from 9am-1pm and showcases quality foods, organic produce, flowers, and handmade goods from local farms and artisans.