Fresh Vision

[An excerpt from “A Journey of Gratitude”]

The ranch at Timber Butte became a gathering place for our family. I expanded the back patio into a family room, building a large fireplace in one corner and a long table to seat everyone.  One evening, after we shared a meal, the kids started discussing the possibility of growing a vineyard on a south-facing slope and making wine. “Wine?” I said in surprise. “Why would we want to make wine?” The thought had never entered my mind as something we might do as a family. Our vision was to develop a sustainable farmstead that raised and grew organic food, but wine was not on my radar.

“Why not?” they said. “Wine is a growing industry in Idaho, and we have the perfect place for a vineyard here in these south-facing hills. The soil is right, and we experience longer days of sunlight than most places.”

 “Why would we want to make wine?” I asked

Frankly, I knew nothing about growing grapevines, never mind the art and craft of making wine. I struggled with two questions: Where would we begin, and why would we begin? This was a significant paradigm shift for me.

I look back at this moment some ten years later and realize how crucial this event was in our family’s life. The questions kept mounting, stretching me outside of my comfort zone. First, why was I resistant to the idea of making wine? Second, who did I ultimately want to be in control of the vision and future of Timber Butte Homestead?

Nancy wrote the quote from Mother Teresa on a blackboard in her kitchen: “If you want to change the world, go home and love your family.” It was our daily reminder of how we wanted to spend the remainder of our lives. The question was, what does love look like in the changing dynamics of our family? We had adult children, and it was our dream to have them participate in our lives, as well as our grandchildren. Love in this context meant dying to self now more than ever. If they wanted a vineyard, we needed to be okay with it, be cheerleaders, and, even more, help make it happen.

I think it was my deeply-rooted evangelical religiosity that gave me pause. I was raised in a conservative religious home, not to mention becoming a church leader myself. In that culture, drinking anything alcoholic was frowned upon. Nancy, on the other hand, came from an Irish Catholic family who had no problem consuming alcoholic beverages. Yet, she, too, had bought into the more puritan Christian view due to the company we kept.

While we walked the Camino trail, we observed that the best vineyards in Spain had been developed around monasteries and operated by monks, which was true throughout most of Europe. It was only in America that there seemed to be a religious stigma, at least among conservative Christians, where grape juice was used for communion. Never mind that Jesus himself not only drank wine but made it.

All this to say, Nancy and I drove to a commercial vineyard in central Washington and purchased our first thirty Cabernet-Franc grape saplings. We brought them back to Timber Butte and planted them on a hill beside our root cellar. The plan was that if these first small vines survived the winter, we would purchase enough to cover the south slope below our farmhouse. The vines survived and flourished, and the decision was made to plant a vineyard.

In the beginning, Brook took on the responsibility of pursuing a wine-making education. He studied technique and began gathering the initial tools we would need to get started: a crusher and de-stemmer, a wine press, 100-gallon fermenting tanks, and many beakers and chemistry paraphernalia. Everyone helped plant the new vines, set up the trellising and irrigation, prune when it was time, and harvest when the grapes finally matured. It required all hands-on deck, forcing us to plan and work together.

To this day, our vineyard at Timber Butte is one of the highest in elevation in the state and produces red grapes in abundance. The wine we eventually produced became one of the highest-quality wines in our region. Still, most importantly, the development of the vineyard was used to draw our family closer together.

Our family left the ranch in California and came to Idaho in 1989 because the Lord had instructed us to “plant a vineyard.” Over the next twenty-five years, we planted a Vineyard Church and grew it into a large, healthy, vibrant fellowship. Then, in 2010, the Lord said, “Go plant a vineyard, only this time plant grapes.” Both vineyards were works of love, and both were forms of ministry. The second was a ministry to our family and would hopefully leave a legacy.