Shoots !

It has only been a week since the vineyard proclaimed that Spring has arrived. Buds have opened up and started to grow.

Vineyards and the activity of the grapevines has to be one of the most documented horticultural events there are. There are 47 defined life stages of a grapevine, with bud break actually being #4, and the  2 - 4 cm shoots with 2 or 3 leaves separated being at Stage #9 as seen above. Things change very rapidly in the vineyard this time of year.  We will watch as we get even more leaves, 10, 12, up to 16 or so as we also see the beginning of bloom......the start of little fruit clusters.

When we last pruned during the dormant season we left more buds than we ultimately desire. We are looking for about 24 buds that have fruiting character; 12 on the left cordon and 12 on the right. Basil buds, those that are near the cordons, generally don't provide fruit, but they are the beginning of replacement spurs should we need them. We have put the herbicide spraying behind us, and on Monday we will be putting down some 33-0-0 fertilizer. about 1/4 cup , at the base of each vine. We'll start out fertilizing 3000 vines, but eventually all 8000 will need to be done. After that it is a mad scurry to perform final pruning on all the vines to get to our final bud counts before the shoots get to be about 10". If we delay beyond this then energy will be channeled to areas we don't want.

Right around bloom the necessity to begin our spray program takes top priority. I have yet to calibrate the new sprayer we got....maybe later this week. Other than gasoline to power the tractor, trucks, and ATV, spray chemicals are the second largest expense in a vineyard. But without them, we might as well write the season off. Where we are the climate is both hot and humid; conditions that make it ripe for fungus growth or insect infestations. These are problems that California doesn't have any where near the level we have in the Mid-Atlantic region. I just finished a report on "going Organic" and objectively decided to try this in Virginia is the kiss of death, for being organic prevents one from using all the tried and true methods for keeping these diseases or bugs in check. There is one certified organic vineyard in Virginia and it does not appear they are close to profitability. To wave a banner and go broke  is not a good business model.

Bud Break 2014

It almost gives you the same sensation as waking up Christmas morning and wanting to see the presents under the tree. It has been discussed with anticipation all through the winter. The pruning has to get done......before bud break. The spraying has to be done.....by bud break. The trellis needs to be repaired.....all by bud break.

Like a clock ticking, the calendar keeps moving along and eventually you get to the time when winter is officially over, and the chance of a killer frost is behind you. Of course all these projects didn't get done. Maybe the To Do list was overly ambitious, or maybe there were too many other things to do.....after all, bud break hadn't come yet and there is always tomorrow.  Intermittent cold weather or rain always seemed to get in the way. It would have been nice to have two weeks in the 50's during December, January, and February. But it didn't happen. And as many of you are aware, I spent plenty of time dealing with livestock issues.

Regardless, with all the work still to do, there now is even more ahead in the very immediate future. When we did dormant pruning, we left extra buds on the canes in case we had severe winter injury. Now we need to prune these extra buds away in order to obtain "balanced vines". On the Petit Verdot , they need to be trained by selecting cordons and tieing them into place. For our Cabernet Sauvignon, we are in a "height stage", where one trunk needs to be selected from several emerging from the grafted knot that we will allow to grow to the 2nd wire. And all this needs to be done before our shoots get too long, and send out their tendrils that will fight us even more in the trimming process. Excessive shoot growth means energy is going to all the wrong places on the vine, instead of making that nice balance between photosynthesis and fruit growth.

This is also the time to do some required book work. Rates and ratios from last year have to be studied regarding the sprays we used. Then I have to place a seasonal order in with the local Farm Service to make sure the chemicals are available when we need them.  To complicate matters, I upgraded my sprayer this past Fall, to an Air Blast Sprayer, which sounds like a jet engine strapped to the back of the tractor when it operates. It takes the fluid pesticide and pulverizes the droplets to an extremely fine spray and blasts them across several rows in each direction.  The fan lifts the leaves up and mists their tops and bottoms. It even manages to squeeze its way in between the hanging grapes in their loose bunches which will help prevent bunch rot. I have no idea what the spray rates are for this machine, so I will have to go out and practice with a tank  of water before I pour gallons of chemicals in the tank for an actual spraying.

This year I also want to fertilize the vines. After last year's harvest there was a small depletion in soil nutrient level. This needs to be replaced, and the decomposing organics in the cover crop don't satisfy this need. Applying some 10-10-10 will likely be my fertilizer of choice to enhance the macronutrients . There is no easy way to put this down under the trellis wire. A cup of fertilizer must be applied to each vine, sprinkled in a ring 12" to 15" away from the trunk. It is a laborious job.

All's Calm In The Pasture

Since my last post regarding my cows, there have been some tense moments that have led to some emotional (not really) decisions to be made. Shortly after the late evening escape covered in my "It's All About The Moods" post, the herd managed to escape again and have an early morning jaunt over to the same farm they had visited a few nights before. The downside to all of this is that I no longer had my trusty farmhands (Rich & Chris) to help me herd them back.

Just as before the resident farmer gave me a call and told me where to find them; a good half mile away. They were adjacent to a fence in his northern pasture, sort of watching other cows and a few eager bulls as they nibbled on some short grasses under the barbed wire fencing. I was cold, and tired, and frustrated, and worst of all alone. My limited experience told me that trying to get them moving in the direction I wanted, being alone, was more likely going to end in failure as the cows bobbed and weaved from my blocking of escape pathways. It is not unlike them to start heading in the right direction, only to have them take a wide u-turn and go right back to where you  had them a half hour earlier. And this was the case today too, until all of a sudden Charlie (who owned the bulls and cows on the other side of the fence) came driving through with his pick-up truck to cut them off and start pushing them away from his bull....whose only motivation for staying on his side of the fence were an ample supply of females he called his own. My 4 cows however provided the bull with new conquests, and Charlie didn't want a bull to escape to satisfy his appetite.

So Charlie and I drove our trucks as if we were riding ranch horses, across fields that had hardened up enough so our wheels wouldn't sink in. The fields had corn last year, and the thought crossed my mind that with all of these short corn stalk spikes one would eventually spike through a tire. But the task at hand was to move the cattle back to the farm and all we could do was hope nothing else happened to interfere with this mission. Amazingly it went well, and the cows went to their pasture as hoped.

With my mind rattled, though some calming was now evident, I got on the phone and called the guy that I had bought the cows from and asked if he knew someone that I could sell my 2 trouble makers to. T29 and U204 took great pride in crashing through fencing for their nightly ritual of exploring the surrounding neighborhood. I had to make a business decision to at least get rid of these two cows that were causing all the grief....not that all the others didn't follow their lead on these great escapes.  I was lucky to find out that there was a rancher in the next county that had a red angus herd, and would be willing to buy these two cows and their unweaned calves to supplement his herd. He couldn't pick them up soon enough !

By the next day, with some difficult coaxing needed to move these 2 cows and 2 calves to a loading pen, he came and picked them up just hours before he was scheduled to go on vacation in South America somewhere. I am very glad he saw the need to grab them before he took off, which would have meant another 10 days of unhappy adventures.

Cutting my herd in half helped to solve my problem immensely, but it wasn't a cure all. The 2 calves that remained with their more reserved mothers still had an adventurous streak, and they would easily crawl through the loose barbed wire fencing that still bordered 2 sides of my pasture.  I had put electric fencing up on the west and south sides by then, but I had the 2 remaining sides still to do.

So one morning I woke up and here the four of them were, eating the grass in my back yard. My yard is surrounded by a tall picket fence which I decided was a good place for them to stay to bide me the time to complete the electric fencing around their pasture. I closed the gates and for the next 3 days I threw baled hay into my back yard, which given food and a place to drop their plops they seemed fairly well at home. When the fencing was done, I "scheduled" a half day to gently move them back into the pasture.

Since then they have been fairly content. No break outs. No bad behavior. The replaced fencing has kept them in and allowed me to get many a good night's rest. They have been fed either roll hay or bales every day, and with it nearly the beginning of April I suspect that grass will be growing soon so I don't have to keep feeding them. The calves are getting rather big now; I am guessing they are easily 400 to 500 pounds each. From a distance it is hard to tell them from their mothers. They are still sucking down their mother's milk though, which probably won't last for too much longer. The moms will want to kick them away soon; they are getting too demanding and too large to keep hanging on.