‘New beginnings are often disguised as painful endings’ ~Lao Tzu We ended how we started, by singing on the land. That vintage 2021 marked the beginning of yet another decade in this millennium was a truth I only appreciated in retrospect. That it was the last harvest for me at 12345 Oak Road (seriously, that […]
Letters from the Edge
New Release 2021 wines from Hope Well
Hi there, Friends, It’s been a few turns. You’ve changed. I’ve changed. Everything has changed. What, in the pandemic, we may have mistaken for a temporary, though massive, perturbation in our lives, may have in fact been the changing of a deeper rhythm of our lives. But that is another post, and today it is […]
Trees in Viticulture? Podcast with Mimi Casteel
Why is it relevant to talk about trees in viticulture? Earlier this year I had a chance to explore this important and relatively new topic in regenerative viticulture in a podcast with Pauline Vicard, Executive Director of ARENI, “a global research and action institute dedicated to the future of a Fine Wine world sustainably evolving […]
Mimi Casteel Revisited – Is Wine Big Enough, Organic Wine Podcast
My second interview on Organic Wine Podcast last December was a welcome opportunity to explore where I am going next on my Hope Well journey. Adam Huss never fails to ask the difficult and interesting questions. For instance, Is Wine Big Enough? Mimi Casteel Revisited – Is Wine Big Enough? December 6, 2021 Mimi Casteel started […]
Silver Linings
Catalyst: an agent that provokes or speeds significant change or action Most of you who follow Hope Well now know that 2020 was a catalyst. If you read Vendange 2020: the Hardest Lessons Yet, the events of 2020 were yet unfolding as I wrote that post, still eager to see what the harvest would yield, […]
The Nitty Gritty on No-Till
Dear friends, I had the great pleasure recently of diving into a nitty-gritty conversation about no-till agriculture with Jesse Frost on his No-Till Market Garden Podcast. This is a podcast by real farmers for real farmers and Jesse knows how to ask interesting questions about how regenerative no-till farming actually works on real farms. […]
No Time Left
Presented at the Acres USA Healthy Soils Summit August 26, 2021 Hi everyone, my name is Mimi, and my farm is in Oregon. I’m very honored to be a part of this day with you. I’d like to begin by sharing a story about where we are, as a way of beginning a conversation about […]
Hope Well Journey
There is no easy way to start a letter like this. For years you have been on this journey with me. We have traversed the hard-won successes and the setbacks of trying to reimagine agriculture at the family farm scale. When I left Bethel Heights, this farm, this place, was where I lived. It was […]