Brush yourself off and start all over again

It's been a week now since I have been at the vineyard. For the most part I have been in overdrive to get done what needs to get done. My Sunday is winding down and unlike the other night, I took my walk down the driveway in the day light this time. My driveway is a quarter mile long, so it is a good 7 to 10 minutes depending on my pace and stamina.

It is an inspection of what has been accomplished, and a realization there is still way more to do. I have just finished weed-wacking around all 2000 Cabernet Sauvignons....it took nearly three days to do them all. The difficulty was that I was making up for last year's neglect along with this year's growth. But now that it is done I can use herbicides to keep the weeds in check.

My walk is slow. The sky has those clouds that look like they were a paint by number picture. Shades of blue with a zig-zag of white throughout. There is a light wind....not as hot as earlier in the day but still warm nevertheless. I am drinking maybe my 12th bottle of water for the day. My hands are swollen from all the pruning and holding the wacker with its never-ending vibration. I can't even make a fist, but the good news is that I had one pair of pruning shears disintegrate in my hand, and the wacker's forward handle broke mid-way through the project. Bodily parts held together even though the man-made ones fell apart because they couldn't take the hard abuse.

When on a farm one must recognize that a couple hours a week must be planned for socializing. Yesterday my next door neighbor, an old time farmer, came over and said hi. We shared a couple local stories, he wished me well and let me get back to work. Today George appeared to pick up some cherry wood I had cut up and piled. George, along with his being a drummer in a local band, also loves to bar-be-que, and he wanted to try this type of fruit wood in his next ribs adventure. I was more than willing to contribute. Also this afternoon Alan from Summerwind Vineyard showed up. He has a nice vineyard located over in Smithfield and we on occasion share horror stories on the hard work constantly being challenged by the nutricious weed-growing rains and onslaught of black rot that comes from high humidity. It is nice to cry on each other's shoulders.....it is also nice to know someone who cares about his grapes as much as I do and has gone through many of the trials that I seem to be attracting.

I have so much paperwork to do but it just doesn't seem to get done. I have to layout the next expansion block, Block 3 for next year. I have already ordered 1700 Gamays (think Beaujolais) for next Spring and have to put together my requirements for Scuppernongs. The winery business plan must be put together, along with the permiting process that needs to get underway. And then working on the websites for the vineyard and winery to support all this effort from a sales / marketing perspective. But I am so tired at the end of the day I don't have the focus for these projects. Getting out in the field at maybe 5:30 a.m. to take advantage of the cooler mid-60's temperatures and working easily to 6 p.m. or so makes one not want to do anything more, even though dinner still must be planned. I try to think ahead here and make it easy and not boring. I have succeeded so far, avoiding attacking the cans in storage which provide basically filler, no flavor or imagination. Once I get past this, after having a glass of wine or a beer sort of puts me in a phase out mode. Paperwork no longer is a priority. It'll have to wait until I get home "to rest" I guess.

So wound up

I've been at the vineyard for 3 days now.My method of operation is to come up with a list of projects to get done before I leave, and usually this list is way too long. About mid-way through, after I realize that there still is too much left to do, I decide which are the critical jobs, and which ones can wait till next time. It goes back to Business 101, set priorities, marking them A,B,or C and tackling the A's first (C's always seem to be more fun though).

I'm not yet at the point where I can classify these by their importance.....I still feel that I can cross most of them off the list. My days have started rather early....4 a.m. now as I write this blog. It is with 5 hours sleep, but I feel OK. The days have been really hot and to take a nap right after lunch is always a possibility. Last night I couldn't get to feeling tired, so I put on my mocs and walked down the driveway to unwind. The temperature was on the muggy side, and the light bouncing off the clouds onto the driveway was just enough for me to see where I was going without a flashlight. It was strange to see parallel white lines in the driveway's sandy ruts reflecting this nightime light. It wasn't like the skies were clear and the full moon was shinng. Overcast skies still allowed for this good visibility. Off on the side of the road is Block 2, and there I could see similar lighting patterns as the reflections off the tilled strips made for a zebra-like effect amongst the vineyard rows.

I have started my mowing, putting in 6 hours on the tractor. I did all of the vineyard and a couple of adjacent areas. I still need to do around the house and barn......maybe another 2 hours for that. Then I can switch the tractor back to the sprayer for a must-do fungicide & insecticide spraying. While pruning the Nortons (finally) I saw some really huge catepillars....big ugly green things that if I was into eating bugs, I'm sure one or two of these things would cover a slice of bread....with Miracle Whip of course.

The Nortons as I have discussed in the past have been the neglected child in the vineyard. An American grape that can take alot of abuse (please disregard the slaughter by the new tiller when I say this), they prosper without much attention. Finally getting to clean them up some requires a significant time per vine to just remove the suckers, any of which are the size of small trees. Looking down the completed rows shows serious signs of demolition, because as I cut the trimmings I drop them in the grass strip between the rows where I later mow them in.

Even after I prune each vine they still aren't quite right. There is a specific pattern for pruning the Nortons, which are hung on a Geneva Double Curtain trellis system. But after ignoring them since Aptil it is nearly impossibe to separate the new growth and locate them where they need to be....it is a lost cause. Will it effect the grapes, maybe, but I am not overly concerned. The grape bunches that exist now with the grapes the size of pearls are so plentiful that if they weren't so bitter they could feed all of Smithfield.

We had some rain earlier in the week, so while I was recovering from my long drive down I could apply myself to some inside work in a more relaxed manner. Just as there are winter projects and seasonal projects, there are also outside projects and foul weather projects. Organizing all the chemicals, trying to make room in the shed from all the tossed tools and half-completed repair projects, and jump-starting putting up another Purple Martin house were on the agenda. Like many of these chores, you can get just so far before you need a certain tool, or some hardware that just isn't in the inventory. Going into town for a 45 cent bolt to complete the task but spending $3 of gas to do it just doesn't make sense. So you just put it on the list, and do the "Little House on the Prairie" thing and go into town once a week to pick-up food supplies, parts, or whatever in order to make the best use of time and cost efficiency. No wonder some projects take weeks to complete !

Though it seems I am personally working on fumes putting out all the work on what appears to be very little sleep, I do sneak in a nap as I mentioned every now and then. In the evening with the t.v. on I'm not sure if I am only listening to the programing instead of watching it. Since I generally listen to news, or political speak, I don't need to follow visually a well-constructed plot line. And with all this being said, I am sure I tend to get cranky, but working alone prevents me from taking it out on any passer-by. Diane does get my abraisiveness when we talk on the phone, but with years of experience I am hoping that she puts the phone down while I rant and doesn't take any of it personally. Chris, who was running my operation took the major brunt of my lack of sleep last time I was here......he is sort of escaping that this time with better planning.

Spraying, running wire in Block 2, and working on getting rid of the weeds under the wires that the tiller didn't quite reach are the assignments forr the next week and a half. I think I will spend Sunday doing the odds jobs that are of personal interest, like putting up that Purple Martin house, and a flag pole too. The front fence needs painting, and there are fallen trees and branches that need to be cleaned up, left over from the last storm. At some point I have to go food shopping......I am still working off of the inventory I carried down with me which will start falling short in the next day or so.

So much to do, so much to do. Too bad I'm not a good whistler.

May was so yesterday

I am in a perpetual state of going back and forth, back and forth. Two weeks there, two weeks away.If the month has more than 28 days in it, I have no clue where I'm going or heading.

It becomes a matter of making a list, checking it twice, and plowing forward trying to get all the things done that need to get done.....in 2 locations. The economy is in the tank, so my interest at the factory drops. The workload on the farm never seems to achieve "caught up" status, but when I am there there seems to be a forward motion, even though the results of my labor are month's away. This Fall will be our first harvest, and the efforts made now should be reflected in the grape production.

May was no different than many others, but with the traditional kick-off list of things to get started. I spent quite a bit of time pruning our varietals, this being the 3rd time this Spring they have been shaped. It is amazing how the suckers dominate in just a few short weeks. Once again the Nortons have taken a hit and were ignored, but in my June trip I hope to give them some needed attention. My Father visited at this time on his trip from Florida to the Adirondecks, and actually spent time with the Seyval Blancs cleaning up new growth. The vineyard has come a long ways from when he first visited on our initial planting three years or so ago.

He stayed for 5 days, working in the field off and on and visiting people in Williamsburg. And though the pruning was both relaxing and productive, the high (?) point of the week was when we were all anticipating the final episode of American Idol to see if our southern entry, Scotty, wins it all. On that Wednesday after an Italian dinner we were about to head into the living room for some relaxation and entertainment, but before we got up from the table a large BANG was heard. We had been directly hit by lightning from a passing storm. Well, the sound lasted only a microsecond but that was all it needed to blow out our power, and my Father's ear drums. But putting things in priority, we knew if we didn't act fast our chances of watching Scotty were dim.

My Father and I rushed out to the barn and grabbed the portable generator and hooked it up to the t.v. in his camper. All was saved.....Scotty won and we got to see it. Dominion Power came out within a couple of hours and replaced some fuses up on our power pole and we were back in business like nothing had happened, except for my Father's hearing which to this day hasn't fully recovered.

The rest of my time on the farm was devoted to pruning plus some spraying. Applying fungicides and insecticides now is a bi-weekly thing. It is the necessary element of trying to grow grapes in a humid region. Japanese beetles have habitually made themselves known on June 1st, so I was able to put this first spray down before their onslaught.

I also devoted a day to using my new tiller. In 8 hours I was able to till the 6 1/2 acres of vines, which easily would have taken 8 days had I done it using the walk-behind Troy tiller. The Italian machine is a monster, and though it has its quirks (it eats anything in its path), it was a real time saver and did a good job. It added another thing to my Winter list of to-dos, to try to adjust the sensor that "notices" vines by being more sensitive. Not something to re-engineer now.

June should be rather dull by comparison. More mowing, more spraying, more pruning. I am truly looking forward to it.

Footprints In The Sand

On my last trip to the vineyard I was eager to try my new tiller, but timing didn't work out very well. The clock ticked towards the end of the week as I had to return up north to maintain some sense of reality, so when Friday rolled around I had to leave knowing the tiller was finally ready for trial. I just left the tractor & tiller at the farm equipment operation as I went home, trying to decide how soon I could return. But it is so often the case that as you move along in the calendar, there are new priorities to address, and the middle to end of April is no different.

This was a rare trip down when the pick-up wasn't full of something, and with that being the case I took a detour to a suburb north of Philly to pick-up 40,000 feet of trellis wire. I would need this later in the season as our new vines grow vertically to reach 36 inches from the ground. It is a long drive and the side trip makes it a little longer. Arrival at the vineyard is usually in the dark, and the headlights from the truck as we turn into the driveway don't shed enough light to see very much. Tall weeds and the required mowing appear to take center stage; grapevines in full bloom are hardly noticeable. To see the new season's hope will have to wait until the morning.

Morning started at 5:15 a.m. on Day #2. We have a driveway alarm that blasted at that time, and though I immediately recognized the sound, I jumped from the bed and raced full bore to the front window. Who could be going up my driveway at that hour ? I installed the unit because our driveway is a quarter mile long, and thought it would be nice to be made aware of any visitors, invited or not. The light was barely out then; I'm not sure it would qualify for daybreak or dawn it was so dark. I didn't see anything though, so the next logical step was to make the coffee and start the day.

It wasn't until 9 or so when I walked down the driveway to try to put the puzzle together on why the alarm went off. It is sensitive enough to screech when the wind moves the tall weeds across the driveway, but the wind was very calm that day. As I walked along I generally look for animal signs, specifically deer or turkeys, sometimes a mink or a fox. The deer and turkeys cause all kinds of grief in a vineyard. As for the carnivores, I wonder how my cat will deal with them when she eventually is relocated down south. The answer to the alarm became quite clear as I approached the sensor. Right in front of it were dozens of deer tracks, all nice and fresh in the sand over the top of the truck's tire tracks from the night before. They must have been out of sight by the time I raced up to the front of the house after hearing the alarm.

As I may have mentioned in past blogs, we had a horrible drought last year. The mortality rate amongst the new vines was fairly high. I had decided last yeaar that I would replace the approximately 12% of the Petit Verdots that bit the big one, and only replace a half of the over one thousand Cabernet Sauvignons that had died. Grafted grapevines are expensive enough; to plant them again is not only hard on the wallet but tough on the back.

So once again most of my time on the vineyard was spent on planting these replacements. Diane came down with me to help, and she said it right that when you spend the whole time planting it just doesn't seem like very much gets done. On a good day you may plant 200 or so, but that's not typical.
She managed to do a little secondary pruning.....removing suckers and doing bud counts on the cordons and canes. Other than spending 8 hours to mow all the grass around the farm, I guess that's all I did to be productive. Diane had to fly back on Tuesday, so that left the balance of the plants for me to put in the ground. It is a long and tedious job. It's not just redigging the hole and putting in the vine. It includes hand trucking all the pails of water needed to soak the ground and water after the earth is returned and packed down. And this water isn't right there either. It's not like you can run 600' of hose to your location. We put a 55 gallon barrel in the back of the truck and draw from it the pails of water we need, and then carry these to the spot where we are planting. Figure 2 pails for every 4 to 6 plants. Back and forth, and back and forth again. I finished the job with one day to spare.

During all this time I had maybe 4 hours to experiment with my new tiller. I had a choice at the end to either till or spray herbicide, and I chose spraying. I figured I could always till next time, rolling the dead weeds under.If I opted to till now, the weeds I couldn't get at would be waist high. That would have brought back nightmares from last year which I wanted to avoid at all costs. The new tiller for me was like driving a new oversized car. It had more power than I had envisioned, destroying everything in its path. And being way behind the tractor with this kind of energy required a sharp eye to watch it getting close to the vines. Do you know how hard it is to drive a tractor forward but looking backwards ? Well, forward isn't the problem. Forward and straight is. A minor adjustment in the rear could easily push your nose too far one way or the other, and then that complicated the whole process forcing you to zig-zag to try to straighten out. With practice I'm sure I'll figure it out, but it was a good thing I had an empty row to first maneuver around or I would have wiped out a slew of vines !

The week ended way too soon, but even though I can be pretty busy while I am alone, I miss my family and crave to return. There is always work to be done on the farm, and when the week ends I start putting together the list of required things to get done when I come back in 2 weeks. My list has over 30 things on it already, with tilling and getting the irrigation system back up and running being the top two.

On the last evening that I am at the farm I make it a habit to walk one last time down the driveway and around the two blocks we have planted. I look for things I missed, but usually it is to reflect on what was accomplished and what needs to be done. I begin to miss the farm and I haven't even left it yet. I have been on the farm without leaving it since I dropped Diane at the airport just three days earlier and tomorrow would be my day to rejoin civilization (if driving up US 95 at 70 mph with all the crazies is rejoining civilization). I slowly make my turn at the end of the driveway to return to the house, seeing how the grapes reflect in the setting Sun. The vines all look like they have their arms stretched out to welcome me; they either don't know I'm leaving or are glad I am, since all I seem to do to cut away at them during my pruning chores. It is for their own good, I tell them.

My pace up the driveway is not hurried; I realize when I get back to the house my only mission is to pack up and ready to leave the next morning, which is usually early. I am now past Block 1, reaching the middle of Block 2 where the alarm sensor is. I am looking for more deer prints because I hadn't seen any fresh ones since that first night. Even with Diane gone I never really feel alone knowing there are plenty of animals out there, and once again my feelings were justified. Right where I saw the original deer tracks there were some new ones......a coyote.

GOOD BONES

It is rare that I get off on a piece of machinery. I view most of these accessories as serving a purpose, more utilitarian than being a showpiece. Sure, I "love" my blue New Holland tractor. And when I'm home up north I miss it as I drive around the yard cutting grass on a lil' Craftsman 10 horse. And when I'm tilling the garden in New England it takes me an hour or 2 using my Troy-bilt tiller, where it would take maybe 5 minutes with my New Holland with the tilling attachment.

But here is my new In & Out Tiller, still at the shop getting its hydraulics hooked up, shining bright yellow in the sun waiting to be put to good use. Looking at it all you see are the bones. There isn't a piece of wasted metal or iron on this machine. Bare skeleton doing the bare essentials. No glistening fenders or armor put on just for show. If it wasn't for the traditional slowness of hydraulic action, I'd swear the thing could fly with all the moving parts it has.

Vineyards tend to be planer. There are some that are on slopes, but as you drive a tractor between the rows, the tractor sits exactly 90 degrees from the land it is driving over. Knowing this comfortable fact, you realize that the accessories attached to the back will be in-line with the tractor, and move parallel to the ground surface too. I go into all this to help you understand that even though the new In & Out Tiller can twist this way and that, it is unlikely I will ever need some of the designed-in movements it is capable of doing. Set its height using the 3-point mechanism on the tractor, determine the starting point away from the wire, and go.

I purchased the tiller from Italy. When one thinks of wine, or at least the years of wine experience within the industry, you think of either France or Italy. Napa may be doing well in the wine business domestically, but they aren't known for their ground-breaking advances in hard core vineyard machinery (and no, NAPA auto parts didn't start in that part of California). It was shipped over via container during the winter and just saw the light of day a week ago as the local distributor unpacked it and sent it over to eastern Virginia. The better news was that even though the manual was written in Italian, it has great pictures !

The staking is almost done now, and it appears the timing will work out well as I finish that hammering job and start my tilling trials. Look for a video in the future.

6000 STAKES...MOSTLY WELL DONE

As I get older, just as ambitious but restrained in knowing what I am capable of doing in a short period of time, I try to choose one major project to finish while I'm at the vineyard. In a previous post I believe I talked about my new "toy" for 2012....an In & Out Tiller I purchased from Italy. This accessory is attached to the back of the farm tractor and allows me to till in between each of the grapevines and under the wires. It has a sensor on it that sends a microswitch signal to the heart of the machine, that then hydraulically retracts the tilling mechanism when it approaches a vine or a post.

In one....no many.....of my earlier posts I have complained how weeds seem to dominate my nightmares about the vineyard. Controlling weeds really is a big thing. Hopefully this new machine will calm my worries. But I'm getting ahead of myself here. The new tiller just arrived but is a few days away from being hooked up and ready for trial. What I have to do now is pound in 6000 stakes. You see, the tiller doesn't know a small vine from a weed. The grapevines planted last year are not sturdy enough to fend off a sensor, and the tiller would make mincemeat out of them if there wasn't a method to protect them. Hence the stakes.

I purchased 6000 oak stakes and picked them up in West Virginia on this trip down to the vineyard. 6000 stakes weigh somewhere around 1800 pounds and completely fill up the back of my pickup. Figure 2 full skids worth, each skid being 48" x 42" x 30" high. Talk about control issues on the drive down ! I felt like I was hydroplaning on the interstates, nose in the air and waving left to right as I pointed the truck south. Driving a little slower helped tremendously, and again I have to admit that it is with conditions like this when I finally obey the speed limits. 60 mph seems so slow !

Four hours after I left WVA I was pulling into the farm, tired as can be but prepared to now pound in the stakes when I woke up the next morning. Relatively speaking, the ground was soft, though it still took 7 or 8 hits with a sledge to put the stake in only 6". Each vine gets 2, one on each side of the vertical vine rootstock. When I finally get to till I will drive up one side of a row and drive back on the other. This makes for a nice 24" cleared area directly under the wires.

Until I get the tractor ready, there is very little more I can say about it. I am quite eager to see it in action, but in the meantime I have to pound stakes. As of now I've completed all the Cabernet Sauvignons. I have the Petit Verdots still to do....maybe 3 more days of pounding. Let's see.....that's 1000 vines, 2000 stakes, times 8 wacks each for a total of 16000 wacks of lifting a 2 1/2 pound sledge, which makes for a repetitive bench press(with one arm) of 40,000 pounds or 20 tons. Hope my arm has it in it !

My other new gadget, alot less expensive fortunately, is a time lapse camera. I've mounted it in Block 1 aimed at one of the more developed Seyval Blancs and with this I am trying to get a nice set of pictures showing bud break and shoot growth. I was worried that I might miss a good starting point but with all the cold we have been getting lately it looks like we will be getting a delayed bud break. I originally forecasted April 1st.....it looks more like mid-April this year. It should coincide with some replacement vines I have coming in right about then that will fill some of the gaps resulting from last year's drought and subsequent losses.

Diane is flying down this next week. Richmond is holding a big expo called Wineries Unlimited which she, as the winemaker, and I are attending. It is time to get serious now. We are most likely going to get our first crop this Fall and we now need to gear up with all the winemaking equipment. Not really a social event, it is wall to wall stainless tanks,pumps,filters,destemmers & crushers, bottling machines and on and on. Tie this in with getting a winery built next year and it looks like, once again, we will have our plate filled....or at least our glasses.

A NEW SEASON

There is only minor debate as to when the new season begins. Some vintners believe it is when the last grapes make it to crush during the harvest season. Others think it falls somewhere between the time dormant pruning occurs and bud break. Time wise there is a big time difference here. Harvest is in September or October, while bud break has been as close to April 1st as the last frost permits. This is almost 6 months of variance. For me it is somewhere in the middle, maybe more like the calendar with January being the start. When the harvest concludes there still is some warm weather to work within, and here is when you not only shut the operation down, but there are the many small projects that took the back seat relative to other priorities when the grapes were the king. These projects relate to "last year's" season, though obviously they need to be done prior to next season. In January however there are all the things that need to get done before the grapevines require absolute attention. And to know that the new season has started is to know that there is a daily juggling of time prior to the anticipated April 1st "blast off" doing the needed jobs within the weather pattern of warm days and still brutally cold days. Last week was my kick-off for the 2011 year. The string of warm days in a row justified a trip to the vineyard. The number one priority was to do the first round of rough pruning on the Block 1 grapes. Generally grapevines require 2 dormant prunings, doing the first pass right helps tremendously on the effort required for the second. During the first pass the idea is to get the vine to have the basic shape you want. This means getting rid of everything that doesn't contribute to the training method you have chosen. It involves choosing the main canes, trimming off the suckers, possibly shortening some growth that turned out to be overly aggressive in the previous season. If the vines were neglected this could mean alot of work, as much as 8 to 10 minutes devoted to pruning a single vine, which was the case for many of our Nortons. Diane and I walked away feeling fairly successful in our pruning efforts. Nearly all of the grapevines were pruned, leaving only a couple of rows of Seyval Blanc that had been late season pruned to go over again for new growth. And as if we didn't have enough to do, we gathered a bunch of prunings in order to make grapevine wreaths when Diane gets in the mood. The second pruning occurs just prior to bud break, which as mentioned has come on or around April 1st. This is where you decide how many buds you want to leave , with their appropriate spacing, depending on how vigorous the plant had been the previous season. This technically should include weighing off the clippings from the 1st pruning and putting this weight through a calculation specifically assigned to the type of grape you have. Some types can handle a greater fruit load than others. I'll go over the particulars in my next entry. I've mentioned in previous blogs how Diane makes an effort to pull me from the fields to do a little socializing while in the area. She found the perfect excuse this time around by getting us to go to the Virginia Vineyard Association's Wine Expo held in Richmond this past weekend. Held at the convention center, it showcased many of Virginia's 190 wineries by providing tastings of the many wines grown and produced in the Commonwealth. Having tasted plenty of wine, I can honestly say they would hold up well when compared to Napa or Sonoma. Also at the convention the Governor's Cup was awarded to Virginia's top red wine for 2011. It was a Meritage blend from a small microwinery.....quite good I might add.