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April 2017 WINES&VINES 33 GROUNDED GRAPEGROWING tained. The remainder of the farm can be farmed conventionally. Biodynamic farming also requires that the farm be organized as its own ecosystem to minimize off-farm inputs for fertility and pest management. Typically, 10% of the farm area must be set aside for biodiversity to provide habitat for beneficial insects and mites, birds and wildlife. In Mendocino County vineyards, this is often organized around the natural riparian vegetation along waterways that seem to be in virtually every vineyard, but planted trees and hedgerows—or perennial or seasonal flowering cover crops—can also be used to meet this requirement. These costs are quite variable, but often cost sharing is available from the USDA Natural Resource Conservation Service under their Environ- mental Quality Incentive Program (EQUIP) to plant both native plants for revegetation and hedgerows for beneficial insects and pollina- tors. Since no two Biodynamic farms are alike in this requirement, we did not enter it into the cost study. Additional requirements include that there is an interaction of animal and plant agricul- ture. Biodynamic farming started in Northern Europe, where grazing animals and pastures were often used in crop-rotation systems. In Mendocino County, sheep are used to graze the vineyard floor in the winter. In most cases, the sheep belong to independent herders who contract to graze the vineyards pre-bud break. The ideal situation is that the vineyards are grazed about two times in the winter and early spring. The grower pays a reasonable fee for this (around $35 per acre, with stock- ing rates around 40 animals per acre grazing for two days inside a paddock surrounded with portable electric fences) and gets the benefit of nutrient cycling, more diverse mi- crobes in the soil, tillage savings and, in some cases, frost protection and improved vine growth. Sheep grazing as a vineyard floor management practice can be very useful in wet years, when tractors can't operate on saturated soils. Since the animals are in the vineyard for a limited period of time, soil compaction is not a problem. Mobile chicken coops are also used allowing free-range chick- ens to scratch beneath the vines in cultivated areas and can be a very effective way of con- trolling cut worms and earwigs. The chickens should be protected from predators by closing them in the coop at night and providing a movable cage, if needed. Fresh eggs are a byproduct that can be used either for human food or fining wine. Some growers obtain "adopt a chicken" stock from animal shelters that find homes for older chickens past their prime for commercial egg production at virtu- ally no cost. It is also not uncommon to find bee hives, often owned by commercial bee- keepers that appreciate having a diverse land- scape for the bees to forage in a place devoid of toxic pesticides that might accidently kill their bees. Beekeepers give growers honey in return for this opportunity. Biodynamic farmers must also either make or purchase the Biodynamic preps they are required to apply to compost, soil and foliage of the vines. Most Biodynamic farmers make their own compost by returning the pomace from their fruit after processing and adding manure from either their own animals or pur- chasing it from organic dairy or poultry farms Most Biodynamic winegrowers have olive trees, perennial herbs, vegetables or fruit and nut trees that they sell either to processors or direct to consumers.