About 18 months ago, we cleared an acre of land on David's half (now the Sammy Smith Vineyard) of our 18 acre compound. We found barbed-wire on the perimeter and surmised that this land was once used for grazing. Over the last 50-100 years, it has been left to re-wild. Over time, we have learned that we can minimize soil disturbance and compaction if we forego "grading", and simply knock down trees and use a "box-leveler" to drag the loose soil and rock to achieve a rough level. After a few years of random foot traffic and lawn mowing, this somewhat lumpy surface slowly transforms to level.
Free-hand drawing of free-hand soil profile restoration.
Filling Holes
The majority of trees on this steep, rocky plot were roughly arm-sized in thickness. However, there were three large oaks that left sizeable craters when they were cleared. The craters were not deep, as they are over the part of ground where natural bedrock resides just a couple feet below the soil surface, but they’re too big for our standard laissez-faire approach. Left un-filled they will collect water, causing damp, muddy conditions and small patches of vines with ultra-vigorous growth. We could erase the craters by levelling the surface of the vineyard, but we would then be churning the soil over a large part of the block in order to improve the surface level for 20 or 30 vines. The alternative is to amend these root holes by hand, with our best approximation of the natural structure that we find in the rest of the slope: a mixture of small rock fragments, quartz boulderlings, loamy soil and flat chunks of slate and schist. Done by hand it’s somewhat time consuming, but not overly strenuous, and in the end we create a better environment for our vines by mimicking the soil found throughout the new vineyard site.