Union Grove Farm- Building a Regeneratively Managed Vineyard
You may have noticed a beautiful field of sunflowers growing across the road from Maple View Ice Cream as you sat and enjoyed your cup or cone last summer. What you may not have realized is that those sunflowers were playing just as much of an integral role in building soil biodiversity as they were in beautification of the community.
In October 2021, Union Grove Farm (UGF) purchased 279 acres of what was previously Maple View Farmland when the Nutter Family decided to retire from the dairy business (Roger Nutter also joined UGF as a consultant!). Owner Greg Bohlen started Union Grove Farm in 2018 with the goal of establishing a regeneratively managed table grape vineyard, while also conserving greenspace within the fast-growing community of Orange County. Today he is quickly achieving those goals, with the first harvests of RazzMatazz grapes beginning in 2020 and the addition of Maple View Farm and other properties.
So, what does this have to do with sunflowers?
The crux of regenerative agriculture is improving soil health, starting with keeping the soil covered. More specifically, this means that there is something growing on the soil at almost all times, whether it is a cash crop or a “cover crop.” A cover crop is one of grass, forbes (broad leaf plants such as sunflowers), or legumes, grown expressly for the purpose of taking up excess nutrients which are then returned to the soil after they are mowed and left to decompose on the soil surface. This process invigorates soil biology by providing soil organisms with a food source in the form of decomposing plant material. North Carolina soil is poor in quality with clay soils having been covered in pine trees or over-farmed with tobacco and conventional row crops in the 19th and 20th centuries.
In short, the first task of Bohlen and his team at Union Grove Farm (UGF) has been to work on improving the health of their soil. A group of Weaver Street Market employees and I had the opportunity to see this work firsthand on a visit to the farm in late September 2022. The sunflowers growing on the fields on Dairyland Road were past blooming but still filling their important role as food for soil organisms as the stalks decomposed on the ground.
In addition to cover crops, UGF is also utilizing waste materials from the community to rebuild their soil. Leaf litter from the town of Carrboro is collected along with wood chips from clearing power line corridors and waste cardboard from Weaver Street to produce a mesophilic (carbon-based) compost. Waste food scraps are also collected from Weaver Street to feed an army of red wiggler worms that produce vermicompost (read: worm poop), which is then turned into compost tea. Compost tea is sprayed on the compost rows to speed up decomposition and directly on the fields to enhance biological activity. All this work not only improves the condition of the soil, but it also increases the nutrient density of the grapes by making more minerals available for plant uptake.
Although much of the results of this work are still a few years off- with 17,000 vines planned for planting on maple view land in 2023, and a few years until sizeable harvests- the vision is one that will impact Orange County in a huge way. Close to 1000 acres between Carrboro and Hillsborough will be kept in greenspace and agriculture, including the historic Maple View Farm. A commercially viable seedless grape crop has already been proven through extensive breeding and testing, which could potentially replace some of the fruit that is trucked from California and abroad with a locally grown, nutrient-dense option. And additional businesses are planned, such as a distillery to produce muscadine bandy, and a farm-to-table restaurant.
In a time when the effects of climate change are becoming more apparent, it is refreshing to witness a business whose most important goal is to fight it, while also invigorating our local food economy.