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.

It's All About The Wine

Though my rants and stories tend to center around the vineyard and my cows, making of the wine is the ultimate goal in any season. When harvest occurs back in September, it seems that all the work is done and winter time projects begin to take hold. However, during this time the grape juice is patiently going through its task of slowly fermenting, letting its solids drift to the bottom of the tank, and bringing on the character that will define its taste and aroma profile.

It has been about 6 months since we picked the grapes. Our Seyval Blanc came in with our first real harvest of just over a ton of grapes. We lost quite a few from a late season heat & humidity spell, tainting some of these grapes, and our reds were clobbered by the latent mold spores waiting for the opportune time to attack.  But this is real farming, just as soybeans, corn, cotton, and peanuts are that are grown in the rest of the state.

Picking and crushing, along with destemming and initiating fermentation all occur on the same day. From there comes a series of steps that include pressing, more fermentation requirements, and a possible racking or two.  And then it is time to wait for the process to take hold, expelling CO2 as the yeast does its thing by converting the sugars into alcohol. A month or so later we might rack again, which takes a few hours. This might be repeated several times before we finally decide to bottle. After 4 or 5 months we begin our taste tests, checking for mouth feel, acidity, alcohol level, and clarity. There are things we can do to pull some of these traits towards making the best wine possible. If there are particles still suspended in the wine after these rackings, we may add some Bentonite which helps clarify the wine........we will also send it through a filter just before bottling to provide one last opportunity at making the wine visibly clear and showing the color of the wine as it should be.

Rich and I were assigned bottling duty this year. It needs to be done while it is still relatively cool out, and before the vineyard pulls us in that direction for the next growing season. We found a day this past week, the fourth week in March, where it was just too cold and rainy to get anything really accomplished in the vineyard. So the winery found "willing volunteers" to get the bottling ready and in motion to bottle last fall's harvest. Bottling isn't hard but there are a few steps that need to be handled well, and with some kind of poetic balance between Rich and me so we don't trip over each other. We start by cleaning everything which takes a few hours. Tanks, pumps, hoses, fittings, machinery, and ultimately the bottles all need to be flushed with a sanitizing solution. Only then can we move forward and begin sending wine through the hoses to get to the filling machine. We have gone through these motions before, and each time we get a little more efficient. And each time we make notes on how to do it even better next time.

I have been chosen the "filling guy", using a 4-station filler to top off the bottles with the right amount of wine. From me the bottles are transferred to a side table adjacent to the capper where Rich puts a cap on top of the bottle, inserts it into the machine, which then spins a chuck down on the bottle simultaneously making threads in the cap as it seals and caps the bottle. We just bought a new capper chuck from Italy this year, and this was our first time at using it. It performed perfectly......we have found that the best winery equipment comes from Italy.

It took all day to bottle 762 bottles of our inaugural edition of our Seyval Blanc. It is not like a Pinot Grigio or a Chardonnay. It is not even like a Vidal Blanc, another white French hybrid. It has its own flavor. Some citrus, some grassiness, a hint of vanilla. Can't sell it yet, at least not until we get our state ABC license. For now it will have to mellow out in the bottle; Diane seems to think this will take about a month.

I remember staying on my Uncle's farm in the Catskills during the summers. He had a hundred or so Holsteins that he milked every day. When his family needed milk, he would bring out a pitcher and milk right into it, carrying the fresh white stuff into the house and putting it into the refrigerator for later consumption. We have started a tradition here, not unlike his. At the end of our bottling we had some wine that was the last to come through the hoses, or just a portion of a bottle that we wouldn't be capping. Rich filled a pitcher for our dinner that night, and it was very good even without the mellowing Diane is allowing.

"Home Depot" Orange

We sort of proceeded according to plan today. Rich and I woke up at a respectable time (though not as early as in the heat of the summer). We prepped the tanks with the pre-emergent herbicide, checked to make sure there were't any clogs, which is normal for this gooey stuff, and got on our way.

We were about 5 miles into our 11 mile trek over to our other vineyard when I felt the steering wheel of the truck vibrate. Normally I would just blame it on a rough road, but I took a  look in the mirror and quickly saw that one of the tires on the trailer had blown, and I mean really blown. It was obvious the tire was shredded....no quick plug to fix this tire. But our trailer has a double axial so without too much of a thought we proceeded on towards the vineyard. I did make one stop to inspect the tire, just to make sure I wasn't inheriting another tire problem. I wasn't, so we continued on to the vineyard.

Once there we made the decision to continue on plan and start spraying Block 1. I had never used this tank and wand configuration before for ground spraying, so I didn't know our spray rate. Rich took the gun and we started crawling down and up the rows as he sprayed this bright orange herbicide on the strip just under the wires. The tractor was in low and in first gear....a baby could have run faster. But with all the spraying Rich needed to do, that was about as fast as we could go. A good spraying now will relieve us of days upon days of weed whacking in the summer.

As you would figure, our 50 gallon tank ran dry only halfway into Block One. We had only sprayed 1 1/2 acres of vineyard, and needed to make a new batch to continue. The chemicals were back at the other place (figures @#@!@#) and we had that flat to resolve. Our first thought was to take off the tire, drop it off at the local equipment place, head over to White Oak Farm and grab the chemicals we needed, and then return. As one would guess, we tripped down to Plan B right away when we realized that we didn't have a jack or a wrench that would work on the trailer. Sooooo we went straight to the farm to retrieve those items, and the chemicals, and returned to the vineyard.

Rich worked on removing the bad tire, while I went over and started mixing the chemicals in the tank with water. Plan C came on very quickly when I found out my tenant (there is a house on the vineyard that I rent out) had decided to leave the house with the main breaker for the well pump turned off. We had no water, so I couldn't mix a tank of the orange stuff.

Oh, I hate going to Plan C because it basically means the afternoon was a bust. Rich and I went over to have a new tire put on the rim just as Duke was upset in the NCAA tourney. Rich returned to the farm as I went back to the vineyard, remounted the tire, re-strapped the tractor up on the trailer, and returned to the farm.

Tomorrow is another day to try it all over again.

It Really Stinks, But Someone Has To Do It

We've finished our general trellis repair and now it's time to get to  the spraying. We have about 9 acres of grapes now, in two locations, so the spraying is going to take quite some time. And it's not just one type of spraying, but three.

Rich is seen in the photo, spraying lime sulfur with a hand held wand on each of the grapevines. It is a boring process, but he is listening to Led Zeppelin or some other oldie on his iPod as he waves the wand over the trunk, cordons, and spurs. What we are trying to do here is attack latent fungus from the previous season, and to do this all the exposed wood is being saturated with a lime sulfur solution while still in the dormant stage. The lime sulfur smells like rotten eggs, and no matter how careful you are, or how covered you try to be, the smell permeates everything and stays in you nostrils for days.

My job is to ride the tractor, pulling the spray tank behind me. Rich yells at me a lot, as I go too fast or go too slow tugging on the hose he is holding in his hand. His real goal is to get back and watch the NCAA basketball tourney in the afternoon and it's my purpose stay ahead of him at his pace. Not that easy when you figure each vine is different and requires more or less attention by Rich to do the spraying properly. It is not just setting the gear speeds and steering the machine; my neck will ache for a week from constantly turning to see exactly where he is.

Tomorrow we start spraying the pre-emergent under the vines. We use a chemical called Surflan, which leaves a bright orange stripe under the wire......almost makes it look like the soil was tilled. This stuff prevents new weeds from germinating in the next few weeks as Spring comes upon us. We have the equivalent of 2 1/2 solid acres to spray with a wand....it'll take forever.

Time To Get Serious

I've pushed off going out into the vineyard for a couple of months now. It has been just too cold, or the cows have taken up all my time, or Rich isn't here yet to help out. It's been any number of excuses.

But today was a warm day, and the next two days will be even warmer....upper 60's and maybe even a 70 degree day if we're lucky. So I started collecting the tools I need and some of the repair parts required to venture back into the vineyard. This all needs to be done before bud break. Rich reminded me that the "traditional" bud break date of April 1st hasn't been valid for the last few years.....more like April 15th. So that gives us a month to get everything done. And with the late snowfall we have received, he is likely to be correct on his prediction.

We are starting slowly here. There is some very much required work to be done with repairing the trellis system for our Norton grapes. We have a T-trellis system (the trellis looks like the letter T), which is  more or less a requirement for really aggressive grapes. When we first put it in we did a combination of wooden posts and metal posts just as an experiment. Well, the metal posts just can't stand the lateral forces of a hurricane, and we had an entire row tip over on us when Irene came around. We are finally now getting to replace these metal posts with the time proven wooden posts.

The metal "T's" on top of the wooden posts twisted with the wind forces, and these are all being replaced with 4" x 4"'s with steel bracing. It takes quite awhile to make each one of these in the shop, and then we have to go into the vineyard and remove the metal T and then reassemble using the new improved version. We were only able to repair one row today with these new top T's.

We next went down the row with the bent metal posts, having to manually dig holes for each of our replacement wooden posts. The positioning wouldn't allow us to bring in the tractor and use the hydraulic post driver to do this work....too many wires and vines in the way to jockey the tractor in position.  The ground was still a little damp,  so digging down 2 1/2 feet wasn't too bad. We replaced 7 posts (certainly this was one of the shorter rows) and will next need to assemble the new 4" x 4"'s on top to form the T's.

There is still pruning to do on the Nortons....we had been waiting to complete the repairs first. And then we noticed the irrigation system was a mess. It was broken in a number of areas....was this because of the icing and the possible freezing of the lines, shattering the PVC, or was this due to mischief ? I'll make that determination later when I starting evaluating the extent of the damage.

Wednesday is Richmond's Wineries Unlimited Tradeshow, where they promote all the new "toys" for the winery industry. This year they have invited brewery equipment makers to display their processing equipment; this is of special interest to Rich because he is starting to tinker with producing his own beer. He is thinking of setting up a micro brewery next to our winery. We'll see where that leads after we try some of the beer he is making in a 5 gallon carboy that is gurgling in our kitchen.....taste tests in about a week.

And early next week we have our Seyval Blanc to bottle from the grapes we harvested last fall. We have enough to make 50 cases or so. During the winter we purchased a new Italian screw topper for 750 mL bottles and I am excited to see how that works when we bottle this white wine.

Winter Is Behind Us

As I write this I am looking out of the same window where I took this picture just a few short days ago. The ground is clear now, and the temperature is predicted to be 67 degrees by Wednesday. It is now time to play catch up in the vineyard. I still have plenty of dormant pruning to do, which was side-lined as I spent my winter chasing after cows and putting up electric fence. There is much to do in the vineyard other than just pruning. I have 2 rows of vines that were flipped during a hurricane and all those posts are in need of replacement. The irrigation system has been compromised by the severely cold temperatures we had, which caused ruptures in lines where the water wasn't drained fully. Several of our hydrants cracked too, so I need to dig down to the water lines and replace the junctions with underground cutoff valves, which hopefully will prevent a repeat in the future.

We are also gearing up for the Winery to be built this year. The ground is a little mushy now, so it is still too early to bring out the heavy equipment. All goes well we can be starting the actual foundation work in May. It'll be a 4 month project. Getting the place geared up for visitors and tourists has its own priority. Making the winery and vineyard family friendly takes on a mission of its own.

It is more work than Diane, Rich, and I can take on all by ourselves. I am posting internships for those that want to learn about the process.....vineyards, new business venture, tourist attraction, small-scale farming....there is so much to do and learn for someone with an interest. We'll offer room & board and a small allowance.

Diane is still up in Massachusetts, having shoveled even more snow earlier today on top of the recent blizzards. I can hear it in her voice that the weather, and being away from our Virginia home, is wearing thin. Hopefully the house will sell early this Spring.