The Restaurant Guys

Barbara Shinn on Biodynamic Viticulture

• The Restaurant Guys • Episode 88

Share episode

This is a Vintage Selection from 2007

The Conversation

The Restaurant Guy, Francis, visits viticulturist Barbara Shinn at her vineyard in Long Island, NY. As they walk the fields, they discuss how she became a biodynamic farmer and how that is expressed in the wine. She uses a variety of methods from fish guts to laser planters with sublime results. 

The Inside Track

The Guys knew Barbara from The Red Meat Club (a monthly gathering of NYC restaurateurs) and her restaurant Home which she ran with husband David Page. The couple bought a vineyard and taught themselves how to grow grapes and make wine. Barbara talks about forging her own path to create a sustainable vineyard with excellent wines. 


“ My philosophy before we planted the vines was to make very, very high quality wine and to be as organic as possible. Our best winemaker friends and our best manager friends and even the viticultural section of Cornell University flat out said to us, ‘You cannot do both things at once. Here on the East Coast, we have too much disease pressure. It's too humid. You cannot be organic in this environment. So if you wanna make high quality wines, do that. You'll be lucky if two to 3% of the materials that you use in your vineyard are organic.’

And this year, well, I proved them wrong,” Barbara Shinn on The Restaurant Guys Podcast 2007

Info

Barbara no longer owns Shinn Estate Vineyards

See The Restaurant Guys LIVE with Chef Alex Guarnaschelli at the New Brunswick Performing Arts Center on Monday, May 12! VIP tickets include an After-Party with Alex! Become a Restaurant Guys Regular for a discount https://www.buzzsprout.com/2401692/subscribe  Tickets https://www.restaurantguyspodcast.com/rglivealexguarnaschelli


Our Sponsors

The Heldrich Hotel & Conference Center
https://www.theheldrich.com/

Magyar Bank
https://www.magbank.com/

Withum Accounting
https://www.withum.com/

Our Places

Stage Left Steak
https://www.stageleft.com/

Catherine Lombardi Restaurant
https://www.catherinelombardi.com/

Stage Left Wineshop
https://www.stageleftwineshop.com/


To hear more about food, wine and the finer things in life:
https://www.instagram.com/restaurantguyspodcast/

https://www.facebook.com/restaurantguys

Reach Out to The Guys!
TheGuys@restaurantguyspodcast.com

**Become a Restaurant Guys Regular and get two bonus episodes per month, bonus content and Regulars Only events.**
Click Below!
https://www.buzzsprout.com/2401692/subscribe

Mark:

Good morning, mark. Morning Francis. How are you this morning? I'm very well. Yesterday we did a great interview with David Page out at Shin Vineyards, uh, who took us through the the changing lifestyle. Of going from a chef to a winemaker, and today we're gonna be talking for a little while. Uh, Francis did another interview during that same trip with Barbara Shin, who is David's wife. I

Francis:

think that my interview with Barbara talks more about the vineyard itself. Mm-hmm. And how they, they're really doing things that radically different and we've been to a lot of vineyards in a lot of parts of the world. Uh, they're,

Mark:

they're certainly doing things very differently than, than people on Long Island are, are doing. Yeah. Yeah. They've really changed that or hopefully are going to change. I don't wanna say they've changed'cause I don't think that many people are doing things the way they do, but hopefully they'll change the paradigm. Hopefully they'll change the way things are done.

Francis:

Let, let's listen to what Barbara Shin has to say about maybe blazing new trails and possibly change the paradigm of farming, especially out here on the East Coast. So Barbara, I look at your vineyards, uh, vineyards around the world, and I've seen a few vineyards like this, but most of the picture postcard vineyards that we see from California or from Europe are very neat rows. Um, and there's not a lot of, activity besides the vine. going on here. I see dandelions, I see clover. I see grab. Just, are you guys not paying attention? What's going on? Well,

Barbara:

the first thing that you have to do when you're walking through an organic vineyard is to literally change your paradigm of thought as to what is beauty in a vineyard. The first thing that we began to do when we changed into an organic soil practice here was to treat our vineyard as if it was a meadow and. Also, perhaps even forest, since we have a permanent crop here. Grapevines are not torn up, torn out, and planted every year. This is a permanent crop. You have to think of your farm as if it was a forest or a meadow. Forests and meadows don't need to have any fertilizer applied to them. Uh, you don't need to go in and plow a meadow and such in order to, um, eRate the soil. They're self-sustaining. Natural habitat that can feed itself through its soil food network.

Francis:

What purposes does it serve to have all of the beads and the grass and the cover crops that are running. Not wild because you cut it down, but they'll leave it all here rather than take it out.

Barbara:

Well, the general answer to that is biodiversity. We have a monoculture of grapes growing here. And let's say for instance, there's a disease that happens with the vines or a, a insect that comes in. If you just have a, a single crop that you're planting, the chances of that disease are past. Being just running rampant is, is huge. So if we can keep some type of biodiversity on the floor of the vineyard, we're providing a wildlife habitat for other animals to come in and habitat the vineyard and, uh, eat the clover and do natural composting for us, let's put it that way. It also allows for the different plants to add their own nutrients back into the soil when we mow them. And we also provide a beneficial bug habitat where the good bugs will eat

Francis:

the bad bugs. All of these things are, are important to the planet and, and sort of fit with my philosophy of how to be do right by the planet. But do they make good or what?

Barbara:

Well, I believe that it does, and you have to go with your gut and you need to go with your heart. And I think that we've proven that here at Chin and State Vineyards. We have quite a different way of farming than most vineyards out here on the east coast. And our wines have proven themselves over and over again. I get to a lot of organic vineyards, but you just sort of, you are blazing new trails and Well, I think the first thing that became apparent to us is Davidson. My philosophy when, you know, before we planted the vines, was to make very, very high quality wine and to be as organic as possible. And our best wine maker friends and our best manager friends, and even Cornell University, who we were speaking with, the viticultural section of Cornell University flat out said to us. You cannot do both things at once. Here on the East Coast, we have too much disease pressure. It's too humid. You cannot be organic in this environment. So if you wanna make high quality wines, do that. You'll be lucky if two to 3% of the materials that you use in your vineyard are organic. And this year, well, I proved them wrong. I was steadfast knowing that I could do that in the shear. 90% of the materials used in the vineyard were organic. I

Francis:

look underneath the wallet and there's, there's stuff here. I mean. there's actual material here where you look at a lot of picture postcard vineyards and you see just the soil. Is this just a PLA material decay?

Barbara:

Well, it's interesting when you say you see just the soil, because when you look at a picture postcard. Vineyard with that barren strip of scorched earth underneath the vines. You're not looking at soil, you're looking at dead matter. That soil's not alive. All of the beneficial microorganisms in that soil have been killed, and the soil is so salty from all the herbicides and pesticides that have put on it that it cannot even attempt to sustain any of that underground life.

Francis:

So that'd be dirt in Mississippi soil? Yes. You tried to use as many organic practices as you can. Yes. But you also have taught, you and I have talked to grade length about biodynamic principles. Now. Can you explain to us what that's all about?

Barbara:

Well, biodynamics is a way of. Approaching farming in a way, perhaps even approaching your life. Biodynamics started out as a lifestyle and in 1920s was coll applied to agriculture by Ru Steiner. And what he was asking farmers to do was to ignore the. Promises in the silver bullet of all of these new chemicals that were being introduced to farming in the 1920s, such as the chemical fertilizers and chemical pesticides that allowed farmers to just follow a recipe, apply all these, um, materials to their farms, and then go to bed at night and sleep and not have to worry about disease. And he was very worried about this because he actually foresaw the death of the soil and the weakening of our agricultural products because

Francis:

of that. So he, he, he foresaw that when you apply chemicals to the soil. Of necessity, the, in the following years after you basically sterilize the soil, nothing will grow unless you apply more chemicals to make them grow because the chemicals are calibrating in the soda,

Barbara:

right? So you're entering this terrible cycle. So he was trying to tell farmers, look at your farm. And for instance, here we are in a vineyard, and find the closest ecosystem that you can occur naturally in nature and treat your farm like that. So before, when I was talking about, well, we. Tree out the floor of our vineyard as if it was a meadow and our vines as if there were trees. That's what we do. We grow a natural meadow all the way across our vineyard that does not have to have manmade uh, fertilizers applied to it in order for it to sustain itself. Now, every year we do take a crop off of the vines, so we are taking nutrients away from our farm in the form of grapes. So we do have to put back down. Those nutrients, but I put those nutrients back down with organic

Francis:

materials. Well, I saw back at your winery, um, 8 55 gallon barrel of, um, fish, gut juice, um, that find its way into your winery. How are you being innovative with this and, and applying these principles in new ways? Well,

Barbara:

the fish, but juice that you call is called fish hydro, which is the heads and the guts and the tails and the skins that are the byproduct of a catfish industry in the northern Mississippi. So by sustainable practice of reusing that, waste material. On our farm for, uh, nitrogen feeding of the vines. The catfish industry is not adding to the landfill, and we're actually gaining an organic source of nitrogen by applying that to the soil. The other thing that I use, uh, for, for potassium for instance, is seaweed from Canada. That is, uh, powdered and I reconstitute that with water and trip it along the base of the bins, and so I get potassium in an organic manner.

Francis:

Well, and you get your own in your own compost. You have an interesting way of using compost in your. Yeah,

Barbara:

well back up to a biodynamic practice. The biggest aspect of biodynamics is called manuring, and I don't really call it maning too much because you could just think of a big pile of, you know, countdown. I use three different types of compost here on the farm. One is a warm castings, the other is a brown compost, which is, um. The tree barks and leaves and such. And the other is actually is a manure based compost that is varied in the ground for a year and then dug up, and that's a very high potent ized compost. Now, when we spread compost on the ground, we're not spreading it in order to spread dirt, we're spreading it in order to introduce the beneficial microorganisms that we're speaking about earlier to the vineyard floor. And what I do is soil drenches. Uh, with this, I don't need to spread up tons and tons of dry compost On our land, I take about three pounds of high quality compost per acre, and I put that in a very large tea bag, and that's why this concoctions called compost tea, like a tea that you drink, putting in a large tea bag. And I warm this compost in. Warm, warm aerated water for about 24 hours and the millions of microorganisms that are alive in this compost start multiplying by the end of a 24 hour period. I have billions of beneficial microorganisms in a that of 50 gallons of warm aerated water, and I can drip that at the base of each pine.

Francis:

So you basically, without spreading the compost itself, you just spread the beneficial parts of the compost and liquid. That's right. Yes.

Mark:

Francis a great beginning of the interview there with, with Barbara Shannon, and one of the things that I really hope is, I really hope there are some, uh, New York New Jersey winemakers listening to this show because Barbara's got a new way to do things. One of the things you're gonna see are people are gonna learn from the things that she's doing out in her vineyard.

Francis:

I visited a, a vineyard recently that I had visited many years ago. There's a vineyard in, in Pennsylvania called Sandcastle Winery. Mm-hmm. And, and the wine's pretty good. I mean, I would do things differently if I were them, but they had this amazing vineyard land and I tasted the vines years ago. Wine. The wines, the wines years ago, and the grapes off the vine. I went out and I visited with somebody there, I was a manager, a wine vineyard manager many years ago, and I stopped down in Pennsylvania on a motorcycle and with Jen, and we stopped by. And the vineyard is beautiful. It's on these steep slopes, but everything is dead under the vines. Mm-hmm. It's not, it's, it's a, it's a monoculture. And I just, I felt what Barbara's talked about, about just basically growing a meadow under the vines. Mm-hmm. You don't water a meadow, you don't fertilize a, a meadow and it just takes care of itself. And it's really interesting to look about how about how we work with nature as opposed to working against nature. Anyway, we'll take a short break. We'll be right back.

Mark:

We are talking via a, an interview that Francis did a little while ago with Barbara Shin of Shin Vineyards and were actually, Francis went out to the vineyard and, and did an interview with her out there.

Francis:

We've been friends for a long time and what's interesting is we met Barbara and David before they opened their first restaurant. Now it's a restaurant we did, they did a bunch of other businesses. They have, uh, the bed and breakfast and the winery. Barbara's an interesting person and she was an artist, right? Yeah. So, but here's, listen to Barbara talk about the relationship between farming and art. I think you'll, I think you'll find it interesting. You had a few informations before this. You didn't come out of college and go to theology school at the University of California at Davis. You started as an artist. But

Barbara:

I did start as an artist. But even before that, when I was in college. For art. I was taking a lot of soil science classes just simply because I enjoyed it and I considered a career in forestry, which was a, an entry level career in Ohio where I was, um, going to school. I. And right now I feel like this is probably the most creative thing I've ever done in my life. As a matter of fact, today I was just telling some wine drinkers that I was taking on a little walk through the vineyard that I considered this to be my painting every single day of my life.

Francis:

That's a beautiful thing. Do you miss be in the city all the time, late at night, or you like getting up in the morning, getting on the tractor? I like getting up in the morning and getting on the tractor.

Mark:

One of the things that a lot of our listeners, I'm certain don't know, but, but some of the people who have known us for a very, very long time do know is that our restaurant used to be a gallery.

Francis:

Oh yes.

Mark:

And in, back in the days when it was a gallery, our opening artist of the restaurant when we very first opened was. Barbara Shin. That's right. And she did a, she did a great piece in it and she's very, uh, esoteric, I'll say. And she did a great selection and, and it was up with stick pins and giant, she

Francis:

did pictures. It was giant rolls of photographic paper that Barbara exposed in her loft in Manhattan. Mm-hmm. And then hand washed developing chemicals over. And it was fascinating. A little scary, scared some of our customers. It

Mark:

was a little scary. The name and I'll. I'll share with the listeners. The name of her show was called Eat and Die. Yeah,

Francis:

we all do it, but I don't know that you wanna contemplate that while you're eating dinner, but it was very popular. People really like it a lot.

Mark:

We'll be back with more of this fascinating interview with Barbara Shin right after the news. You're listening to the Restaurant guys

Francis:

Today's a rather unusual show. We are, um, talk, we're going through an interview, a series of interviews that I did with, uh, Barbara Shin, who's one of the owners of with her husband, David Page of Shin Vineyards and Shin Bed and Breakfast out on Long Island. There are two restaurateurs, winemakers, farmers, bed and breakfast owners, and, uh, two of the most insightful people I know. Uh, and we're speaking specifically with Barbara today, uh, about the land of Long Island and why it

Mark:

shouldn't be discounted, and Francis spends a little bit of time in this next segment talking to Barbara about the topography of Long Island and, how it might be a little different than you expect. Let's listen.

Francis:

Okay, so we're coming down off your vineyard and La Island has this reputation of being a very flat place and people talk about great wine was coming from Hillside, but there does seem to be a quite a bit of rolling Hillside here. Well, I like

Barbara:

to call it little flips of land. In any farming environment, you always find little, you know, micro ecosystems that are even within your own farmland. And being very flat means that any subtle change in the positioning of the land really means that you're affecting the vines even more because you're not dealing with shading from mountains. Um, or water running through down into a valley, which means that the soil's gonna be too wet. Just the small little flips of land really change the sun exposure of, of the vineyards up here.

Francis:

Now I'm looking right toward the base of your land right at the road, and then we cross the road, and then there's a hill that goes up and, and there's a tree line there. That That's the Long Island sound.

Barbara:

Yes. Which again, just shows you how fragile this environment is. We're in a maritime environment. Our soils are very sandy. The water table's very high, and again speaks to you as to why. Being careful what you put on your farm is so important because it doesn't end up in our water table.

Mark:

I am sure some of our listeners are a little surprised to hear Barbara talk about the, the region out there and exactly, what it's like the, the hills and, and that it rolls a little bit more than you might anticipate.

Francis:

Well, there's the hills and that it rolls, and when I say there's a breeze that starts like clockwork, you know, you can feel when we talk about. Events out there, it, she, you know, 20 degrees, cooler. Mm-hmm. You know, than you might expect. one of the great things about all the great wine regions of the world is they are near large bodies of water. Mm-hmm. I mean, whether it's a river or an ocean or whatever, because large bodies of water have a mitigating effect on the temperature. they keep it warmer at night and they make it cooler during the day. Actually, a little bit of trivia, the in 1945 was the last time the Long Island sound froze over. And when the Long Island sound froze over. There was such a bitter cold through Long Island that all grapevines died.

Mark:

they had to start from scratch,

Francis:

but the Long Island. But the Long Island sound keeps it up there. There's, in, in addition to the topography of the land, how they treat their soil and what's there mm-hmm. Is also very interesting and very different

Mark:

In this next part of the interview, you and Barbara go and, and visit some other places. And, uh, for me this was probably the most interesting part of your whole journey out there

Francis:

Even if you don't know a lot about farming, let's listen to what Barbara has to say.

Barbara:

I'm down here. Leaning very closely down to our soil underneath the vines. I'm looking to see how liable our soil is and how much water it's holding. And as you can see, as I'm digging through, I'm all the way up to my first knuckle and the earth is, is damp, it's moist, it's uh, grainy. I'm all the way up to my top knuckle. Now my fingers are completely buried and so I don't quite find that I could keep just digging with my hand probably until I hit my elbow. Um, you can see the soil as I crush it in my hand, and it's holding together. That's all of the beneficial microorganisms that are in that soil. Keep it, uh, I don't wanna say slimy, but they do exude a slime through these, um, single cell organisms and that's what keeps the soil pliable and, and able to hold moisture. Well, it always goes up the thing crunch on the top, but as soon as you dig down, you've got moist, uh, soil. Yes. And it smells like freshly plowed earth. It can smell the carbon that's in the soil, which is so important for a nutrient exchange between the plant and the soil.

Francis:

Okay, now, now we, we've crossed over from your, we've walked down little ways. This vineyard that on they embraced for our modern chemical farming. The, the norm? Well,

Barbara:

right, well, you can see here is underneath the vines. They've used herbicide and I just call it scorched earth. There's a very small strip of grass that grows down. The vineyard grows, but if you multiply this over the acreage, they have and see that this herbicide of strip underneath the vines is actually larger than this tiny little strip of grass that's growing in between these areas of scorched earth. I would say two thirds of this vineyard is herbicide all year long. It's killing the soil. The soil will crust over. You cannot dig into it. And it's, they say hard as a rock. Well, this dirt is hard. Hard as a rock and it's dead. Okay, prove it to me. Well, all we have to do is bend down. Yeah. And when I was digging in, the soil didn't occur to you to actually knock on the soil. No, it didn't. Okay. I'm gonna knock on this photo and you can see how hard it is. It's hard to rock. Garden are rock. Can't get into it. Look, I can't even get my hand into it. It's, it's, it's dry and it's,

Francis:

wow. Yeah. It's, it's really wild. You really can't, I mean, I'm trying to push as hard as I can and I did break the crush, but all I get, if I get underneath at oil, I just get dust. I just get dusted. Nothing. There's nothing living in the side of the box and we break down my head. That blows away on the wind. That's true. And we have

Barbara:

a real potential bad erosion. Problem here. If we do get a heart rate now with this soil, is this soil more likely to erode? Where our stay put mark, our stays put because of the natural metal that we grow other across the vineyard that it, the soil does not move, it stays intact and just continues to to prosper. Full stop.

Francis:

Okay, so we're not away from your vineyard. This isn't your property, this vineyard here. It is sort of what kept it looks something like yours. I don't know exactly like yours, right behind it. I don't know. How many acres is that of, of disaster area over there? What is that? A marsh

Barbara:

actually, that's a vineyard that, uh, the owner has chosen to not take care of, and it's only taken about three years for the vineyard to completely die off and become overgrown with what, we call the wild olives out here. Wild olives, actually. Olives or no? They're, they're a species that is related to the altitude, but they're not producing any fruit.

Francis:

so you're telling me that three years ago this was a, was cultivated vineyard then

Barbara:

this

Francis:

is a beautiful vineyard. It was

Barbara:

one of the nicest vineyards out here on the North Fork. And it just goes to show you that if you don't tend to these grapes. Morning, noon and night, 365 days a year, the vineyard will literally disappear. And here you can see, you can't even see a grape vine. They've completely died. And all we have is scrub brush and then the vineyard posts and trellis wire is still strong.

Francis:

Well, and you've also gotta, but look to me to be six foot tall white tree-like things growing in just a couple of years. I'm sure they're just monstrous weeds. But the, the amount of chaos here is, is absolutely incredible. And it's, you know, all the more testaments of the hard work that wine makers keep to keep opinions. Yeah. Mother nature

Barbara:

corrects herself and she cracks herself quickly. And I think to look at this vineyard, it really gives us a lesson. Before I was talking about growing a monoculture. Mother Nature will get rid of that monoculture as quickly as possible. And you can see it here in its extreme form, whereas she has actually rid herself of the vineyard and is now beginning to grow a natural indigenous woods again. But look at here in our vineyard, um, where we were just a few minutes ago. There's camma mill, there's, clover growing. We probably had. Oh gosh, 60 varieties of, um, broadleaf, natural weeds growing. Probably 40 different species of grasses. Mother nature did this herself. We didn't come in and plant this, and she, she's always trying to diversify in order to keep herself balanced. So do you think that's one

Francis:

of the reasons that the first pick do better is because they're, they're sort of more acceptable to mother nature?

Barbara:

Yeah, exactly. And you know, we're not, we're not meant to understand all of this and that sometimes where biodynamics comes in biodynamics, don't try and scientifically explain everything. Work with Mother Nature Trust that what you're doing is eating in a natural ecosystem that Mother Nature has developed over centuries and centuries and eons and hands, and try and work within that instead of working against her.

Francis:

I and I see. Um. Uh, and I see a very tall, um, very wild place. And the thing that makes it actually kind of scary and not just a, an overgrowing part of my field is the posts are still in the ground and the wires are still in the ground. Does that make this so, I mean, you couldn't just come in and recover this vineyard at this point, or, or use it fronting unless you pull out work to pull all that stuff out, right?

Barbara:

Yeah. You'd have to pull all of the trellis system out, uh, and you'd have to come in and, and push right through all of this and cut the trees down and take back the land and turn it into farmland again.

Francis:

Well, it would be hard to push back because it's hard to pull the TRS out because it's intertwined with the under and it's hard to cut the under'cause you've got TRS everywhere. It's a real problem. It's a real problem.

Mark:

Francis, I saw the pictures that you brought back of that abandoned vineyard, kind of a abandoned vineyard. I've never seen anything like it in my life, and I, I just can't, first of all, in such a short period of time that so much damage could be done. It, it just boggles the mind and I. Not just damage, but natural growth could, could come up. I mean, I know how much my hedges grow in a year, but you don't, you don't think about things just, just coming up that quickly, and there's really no way to go into that vineyard and tear it all out because it's all trellised. Yeah. You have these big posts in there with trees growing between them. I, I don't see any way other than to. Get a big backhoe. Yeah. And, and knock it all out. I, I don't see any way to say that.

Francis:

One of the things that really struck me, it's very humbling, uh, was when looking that abandoned vineyard. I, I, I have to say in, in my 20 some odd years of doing this for a living, learning about wine and food and where food comes from, but especially wine and grapevines.'cause, you know, permanent grapevines are a permanent plant. As you, of course, you know, but as listeners out there should know that grapevines are a permanent crop, you know, you don't move your grapevine from one year to the other. But I, I'm, it was so humbling to see. What happens in such a little time, just it's, it is a testament to without your farmer what, what your farmer is working so hard every day to make sure doesn't happen. You know, mark, one of the issues that I got to talk with Barbara about is people often think that people who. Practice biodynamic agriculture or organic agriculture are sort of hippies who are anti-technology for being anti-technology sake. And that's not the case. They're trying to distance themselves from, from eating chemicals. Well, there's,

Mark:

there's an idea that people who are farming organically or, or forming biodynamically are backward thinking. Mm-hmm. But when you look at Barbara and you talk to Barbara and David, one of the things that you realize. Is they're looking back at history. Mm-hmm. But at the same time, they are very forward thinking.

Francis:

Let's, let's listen to an example of just that very exact thing that you're talking about. Okay. Barbara, this is a very different field here, and I got your emails. I'm detailing what exactly is so I can't pretend like I don't know. But, um, this is a new planting and these mines are what, four inches tall?

Barbara:

They're about four inches tall and we planted them a month ago and they're just starting to put out their first leaf. Now these

Francis:

are

Barbara:

in perfect, perfect rows. How does that happen? Well, it's really interesting. We plant them with a laser planter. Uh, what it is, is a contraction, a carriage that's hung on the back of a tractor, and the tractor driver can drive the tractor down a row. There's two guys on the back of this carriage that are planting the binds. The carriage is actually what is connected to the laser that's sitting at the end of the potential row. So what this means is that if the tractor driver starts swerving to the left or the right, the carriage will stay in perfect alignment with the laser. The carriage will fly back and forth and adjust itself in order to stay in line with the laser, and then you get these perfectly planted rows.

Francis:

I think that some people may have a, a misimpression that people who are in favor of NIC methods, more holistic methods of agriculture are afraid to use science. But it seems to me that that's, uh, not the case. But field leisure director,

Barbara:

well, we're in a very interesting time in agriculture for those that tend to heed and pay attention to the times we're in because we're finding a marriage between science and, uh, more low impact, sustainable farming science is actually helping us find. When feeds pressure is high, therefore people that you choose to use conventional, uh, uh, materials may not have to use them in such great quantities or so often. It also helps me as a sustainable farmer not have to use them at all. Be able to perhaps sleep at night thinking, well, you know, not getting rain or not getting humidity. I can back off and, and not have to worry so much and let the vines grow and perhaps not make a mistake in the application of

Francis:

the material put in. We can use science in the service of observing what's going on in the vineyard. Does it help someone who wants to try and act sustainably as possible to do that? Because they know if they can resort to pesticides or something, they need to, if in the end they've, they've messed it up. Well, you know,

Barbara:

it's kind of funny that you put it that way because what science has done is they've actually helped us come up with organic organics, whether or not, so for instance. What I use right now in the spring is white mineral oil to get rid of mites because it smothers the mites and it also will eradicate any powdering milk that may have gotten started up on a microscopic level in the vineyard. So if I use it every seven to 10 days, and here it is, white mineral oil and organic substance, IT science has recently been able to purify and formulate for us still in an organic form then, and I can use this with full confidence.

Francis:

You sprayed, uh, your vineyard with silica? Silica.

Barbara:

Oh, this is a really interesting experiment we're doing in the vineyard. It's not an experiment for anyone that farms biodynamically, but it is for me because I haven't used it yet. And of course, whenever you're trying to be lower impact on your farm with any materials that you use, you always have to make it customized, particularly to your farm.'cause each farm has, it is its own ecosystem. Silica. It's a quart space, silica. And this is the marriage of science and biodynamics. Again, actually this is a good example. Silica in quartz and gets respond into a fine pattern, and you apply it to the leaves. What it's gonna do is it's gonna refract the sunlight all throughout the the growing leafy green canes of your vine and will impart more light right into that growing region. There's a little disease called powdery mild that, um, we can get out here on the east end and actually everywhere in the world that likes the dark shaded crevices of the leaves and the canes. So the theory is if you put this quartz, uh, dust throughout your canopy, the light that is refracted throughout that canopy, which is the green leaf area in the vine, while it becomes saturated with light and the powdery mildew, um, cannot thrive and prosper. But now the university just did a study two years ago. It came out with the, um, observation that, Hmm, pottery mildew likes to grow in the dark crevices of the leaves and canes. I wonder how we can get more light into the canopy. Does anyone have any ideas? I. At first I didn't say anything because I'm experimenting with it and I can come and

Francis:

find out

Barbara:

later.

Francis:

This is something that would be commented by Dynamics, and you have Monet Times looking for a way to achieve this exact thing. Is that a fair assessment? Yes, and I have

Barbara:

full confidence that hopefully I'll be able to pass on this information and have been successful this year. God bless you.

Mark:

Barbara Shin talking about her laser planter.

Francis:

You know, it, in a way, it's using your intelligence to be forward thinking and to be simple. Mm-hmm. And to do it as simply and as possible. One of the reasons I think this is so often a view that's disparaged is because we're trying to do it without petrochemicals. There's really no way for someone to make money other than the farmer. Mm-hmm. By, by doing this, you can't make a farm. You can't make money on dung. Okay. Right. It comes, you know, it. That's not it. Fish

Mark:

guts. Very cheap.

Francis:

Yeah. Very, very cheap. So, so, you know, if you invent a chemical and then convince everybody they need to use your chemical, well, you can make money if you have the patent on that chemical. So let's be, let's be aware of where the competing science is, what it's motivated by, and what Barbara's uh, you know, dispassionate or passionate, uh, inquiry into this situation is looking for. Hey, we'll be back in just a moment. Hey everybody. Welcome back. You're listening to the restaurant guys, mark and Francis of Stage Left and Catherine Lombardi restaurants. I enjoyed the interviews with Barbara and David up on their vineyard. Um, uh, tremendously.

Mark:

This was as real an interview as I've ever heard anywhere on radio, on tv, anywhere. This is exactly the, the conversation that we would have sitting in Barbara and David's living room. or walking their vineyard. But what's in,

Francis:

even deeper for, us, and I hope this came through in the interview from our perspective, is Barbara and David, you know, walk the walk. Mm-hmm. I mean, we've all, we all, you know, sort of came to these ideas together. We came up together in the restaurant business and. You know, these guys, you know, I'm gonna, the green market, they're on the farm.

Mark:

They are the green market. They are,

Francis:

yeah. They're, they don't go to the green market. It's, it's too much between them and the food. Um, but look, I'm not saying that, first of all, it's a wonderful experience to be able to go and visit it and see what she's talking about and be in that vineyard and walk through the meadow that is under their vineyard. And, and secondly, talk to some people that are intelligent, insightful about it. And they're not pretentious about it, or stuffy about it, or overly intellectual about it. This is just what they do. I think it's unusual for them to, you know, they've had full page spreads in New York Magazine mm-hmm. But they're not out there advertising. We're on the radio talking about it. They're in the field doing it. Yep. And it's just a part of their lives Anyway, I hope you've enjoyed the hour, uh, with the restaurant guys and Barbara Shannon, David, page, home restaurant. I'm Francis Shot. And I'm Mark Pascal. You're the restaurant guys, central Jersey 1450. The time is 12 noon.