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tours further highlight how farmers and ranchers help take care of the land and en- vironment. We need to tell their story more so their voice can be heard.” At Gamble Family Farm in Napa County, cattle graze the property’s nearby pastures and hillsides to reduce fire dangers on land that otherwise could turn into a tinderbox as grasses dry. With the region’s catastrophic wildfires in recent years, “the concern has been managing our fuel loads,” said sixth-gen- eration farmer Johnnie White, owner of the cattle. He and his wife Kendall started the cattle operation in 2021. The Gamble family decided to fence off the hill so the land could be grazed to pro- tect not just the family’s vineyard but also two houses on the property and two near- by wineries, White said. He leases the land, running about 11 head of cattle around the vineyard year-round. White sells beef directly to a restaurant and chef in St. Helena. His beef is also fea- tured in local farm-to-table dinners that sell for $375 a ticket. “That kind of shows you the desire for people to get back to where their food comes from,” White said. His cattle are mostly Angus crossed with shorthorn, Charolais and, more re- cently, Akaushi, a type of Wagyu breed
Sonoma County dairy farmer Doug Beretta, right, shows visitors to his farm compost used as animal bedding and soil amendment. The product is made using an automatic scraping system that manages the dairy’s cow manure by separating the liquid from the solids, which are then composted.
known for its marbling. “We’re going for that ultra-premium product,” he said. Because Akaushi cattle are slow grow- ing and take longer to raise, White crosses them with Angus to get “hybrid vigor,” pro- ducing meat qualities of Wagyu but with the growth of Angus. He uses shorthorn bulls in the mix as they are a “little heartier
of an animal” and does “a good job of graz- ing and utilization of the forage,” he said. He then finishes the cattle on grain, some of which is brewer’s grain—a by- product of making beer—from Mad Fritz, a brewery and malthouse in St. Helena. As a vineyard manager who also oper- ates a custom farming business removing vineyards, White said he works with cli- ents whose land will be out of production for a year and uses their properties to grow hay crops. “It’s a very cheap source of feed for us,” he said. “But it’s also pretty sustainable because we’re using this fallow piece of ground, getting a crop off of it to make a nutritious protein source.” Launce Gamble, whose grandfather ac- quired the ranch in the 1950s, said fencing the property so that it could be grazed by White’s cattle is less costly than renting sheep and goats annually for the same service. With permanent fencing, the cat- tle can graze the land year-round, he said. Gamble said state and federal lands also could benefit from a “well-intentioned and managed grazing program.” When done properly, he said, grazing can benefit the earth by increasing carbon sequestration, water retention and biodiversity. In Sonoma County, an organic dairy run by the Beretta family earned the 2022 Leopold Conservation Award, which rec- ognizes farmers and ranchers who employ sustainable practices to maintain natural resources. The dairy has been certified or- ganic since 2006 and milks about 300 cows. To reduce the farm’s methane emis- sions, the family added a system that auto- matically scrapes up the cow’s manure and separates the liquid from the solids, which are then composted. The compost is used in the barn for cow bedding and applied to pastures to improve the soil, dairy farmer Doug Beretta said. Using the compost for animal bedding has been “a big savings,” he said, because the dairy no longer purchases beach or riv- er sand, which costs about $700 a truck- and-trailer load. During the summer, with the cows being
on pasture, the dairy used to go through about two loads a month. In the winter, the loads increased to five or six loads a month. Beretta said he’s also noticed an increase in cow comfort and cleanliness with the compost bedding. The $600,000 system, installed with help from a grant through the California Department of Food and Agriculture, has also made handling the manure easier without the need of an excavator, Beretta said. Instead of scraping all the manure into a pond, the liquid is separated and applied to fields as fertilizer. “We were hauling wet, sloppy loads,” he said. “Now about 70% of all the manure is being reused. We haul more liquid loads than normal, but we’re getting a lot better benefit out of that liquid, and it’s not quite as thick.” The farm has also reduced its labor and use of diesel fuel from trucks that haul the manure, Beretta said. The number of loads has been cut in half because they’re not having to haul the solids, he noted. Being able to use the leftover manure liquid in the field has allowed the dairy to save on irrigation water, said Jennifer Beretta, Doug’s daughter. The farm already partners with the city of Santa Rosa to use its reclaimed wastewater for irrigation to grow feed crops. Using the treated waste- water means the farm doesn’t have to pull about 80 million gallons of groundwater from the aquifer, she said. “We’ve been one of the biggest, in my eyes, water savers for the last 40 years by utilizing that (reclaimed) water,” Doug Beretta said. Now, with addition of the recycled ma- nure water, the farm can grow a second and third cutting of silage crop without using the city water, Jennifer Beretta said. “This project benefited us not only by having less thickness of manure, but we were able to push that water into our irri- gation set and still continue to grow crops even through drought,” she said. “That was really beneficial for us.” (Ching Lee is an assistant editor of Ag Alert. She may be contacted at clee@cfbf.com.)
6 Ag Alert August 2, 2023
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