harlington-webfront-forWeb-storyQ:  Did you always want to be a farmer?
I wanted to be a lawyer. I wanted to get away from the farm life and go to the city. I wanted to wear suits and ties and drive a nice sports car and have a nice penthouse in the city. Now I don’t want that at all.

Q:  What challenges do you face at this point in your career?
The challenge is just getting grounded in what I really ­wanted to do. I had two paths I could take: work for a very large [winemaking] facility or go down the path of an artisan winemaker, and have my own estate vineyard with my own tasting room. I decided I wanted to have
a label with my ­family and one by myself.

Q:  What do you love about farming?
One of the things I love is how it’s ­cyclical. There’s a rebirth and a new beginning. You watch the process of fruit being born. Since you get to do that every year, you get to do it a little bit better. It’s also a challenge because it’s weather dependent.

…This was the first year I really was involved in cherries, ­running a picking crew, helping with ­supervising pickers, working the strategy around handling a ­couple different warehouses, then having rains come, too. You have all these moving parts, and yet we still managed to pick a pretty sizable crop and not lose ­money. It was stressful, and when it was done, it was fun. It’s something I look forward to in the coming year.