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.

The end of the year, but not the end of...

I must confess, I miss it already. Even though the season is officially over, I miss the bull work, the repetition, the looking forward to the "possible" harvest which the migrating birds enjoyed this year. There was the official bud break which occurs about April 1st, and then the rapid growth of shoots which inevitably leads to a huge amount of pruning that needs to be done. This year I taught my brother and his wife the solitary nature of pruning.....visualizing the end intent, choosing the shoots to get you there, and trimming off those that have been determined their place is better on the ground than with the vine.

This year was tough, but I look forward to a completed irrigation system next year to help spur new growth. Even though I only plan to replace half of the vines that didn't make it through the serious drought we had, I wish I could replace all of them and then expand even more. The next expansion isn't planned until Spring of 2012 with 3 new varieties. It can't come soon enough, and once again I'll set up the "perfect plan" to make it all run smoothly....though it hasn't yet.

Last week I was walking the vineyard and I could see the absolutely straight rows of poles I put in with the help of my son Chris. It was his first introduction to farming and driving a tractor....well, at this type of farming anyway. I'm sure that at the end of the day he was mentally trying to figure out if there was a better way. Maybe there is....someday we'll find it....but it was a project successfully completed and that he can be happy about.

The Fall is a time to shut the place down and start looking at all the little projects that were put on the back burner during the hectic growing season. I drained the irrigation system, and my other son Rich was with me and was assigned to finish the trellis system (Geneva Double Current) for the Nortons. We know we'll need the full trellis next year....Nortons grow like crazy.

December will be dedicated to more little projects. But there is one BIG one I'll begin. When we started this vineyard Diane and I talked about the winery, but at the time it was years off. The clock has ticked, the vines have grown, and we are now at the time when we must pay attention to the winery. We have sat with a local architect we like in a preliminary discussion and now we have to get serious. In December I will have another meeting with the architect and we will get the project rolling. We plan on putting the shovel in the ground in Spring of 2012, so that gives us just over a year to do all the advance work. There is so much to do, and I suspect that even with all this prethought we will still run out of time towards the end. First crush is planned for Fall of 2012 and we have to have a place to do it all in. Build a winery, put in the fermenting tanks with the destemmer, crusher, pumps, filter system, etc. etc. Then have a tasting room, a minny bakery on the side, along with a gift shop.

It can seem overwhelming at times.

It is a very exciting time.

No need to reflect...season's over

Sounds kind of depressing, doesn't it ? In the past I've used the end of the year to reflect, but looking at the last few blog entries it appears that I have been making comments in this regard throughout most of the season as events have unfolded and completely altered my "big plans" for 2010.

Things just didn't go as smooth as I had wanted. They started off on the wrong footing with a delay in the new field opening due to a late soy harvest in 2009. And then my key guy had decided for him that 3 squares a day and a roof over his head, complements of the Virginia Commonwealth, was going to dominate his year. It was one of the driest and hottest years on record, and with new plants and a non-existent irrigation system, it proved that crop losses in the vineyard matched those in other crops.....we lost 50% of our new vines, mostly Cabernet Sauvignon. Diane, ever the optimist when it comes to things of a growing nature, thinks that some will show signs of life if we just continue to water them through October. I'm not too sure.

General pruning and weed control took a back seat to getting the new block up and growing and watered, which pretty much worked its way well into September before this task could be considered done. Way too long for an expansion.

I'm looking ahead to next year, and the year after which as they say will be here sooner than you think. As for the grapevines in Block 1 and Block 2, there is always the pruning that is requiring. This can be done anytime once they become dormant up until they start to have bud break. A mild winter will allow this to be done piecemeal during the next 4 or so months. And then there are the replacement vines to be put in Block 2....almost 1000 of them. Gulp ! But time wise this won't take very long since they are already marked with the irrigation system working to give them a good start.

As for weeding and fertilizing, we have all the sprayers now converted to handle vines already up to the top wire, as well as having directional nozzles to aim at the one year old plants still close to the ground. This past year we added a new piece of equipment that will spray herbicides in the most efficient and directed manner available. We tried it this past year and it was a great success, though we weren't as diligent as we should have been in maintaining a spray schedule.

Our big purchase in 2011 will be an in-and-out tiller. It is just another cool piece of equipment that attachs to a 3-point capable tractor and tills weeds under the wires, toggling out and in around the grapes for absolute ground coverage. It is hypnotising to watch this thing work. When we get the website up we'll have a youtube of it in action. I calculated that it would take nearly 2 weeks to till the two blocks using a conventional tiller so it didn't take much in the way of justification to decide to get one of these fast running Italian machines for next year.

And now I am putting together the plans for the winery. First crush will be Fall of 2012 and we need a winery to do all this in. That means the chrome-plated shovel must be ready to break earth in that same Spring.....just 16 months away. Diane and I have talked about styles and layouts, and right now we are looking at a nice post and beam barn layout. It would fit well with the local architecture and allow us the flexibility to alter the inside to meet our needs. Initially the winery, tasting room, and retail outlet need to be considered, but ultimately a small bakery, coffee shop, and restaurant are to be added shortly afterwards. There is alot to consider and soon we will need the help of an architect to fine tune it, but at least "we think" we know what we want.

Of course, all of this must in some way coincide with my selling my business and home in Massachusetts, both tough nuts to crack in a downer economy, but things always seem to work out with perseverence and focus.

One final note. The birds got to the Norton grapes in a very timely manner. They know the BRIX reading as well as any refractometer does. When I returned to pick them, all I saw was grape bunch skeletons. It kinda capped the year I guess, but on the bright side this was not a major harvest year, and it forewarned us of a problem that needs to be addressed before next Fall.

The Dog Days of Summer

What'll you do when that great plan made earlier in the year goes absolutely to pot ? Remember Jerry.......well he came back temporarily only to be "relocated" to a State facility for about 6 months. Apparently the vineyard didn't keep him busy enough to stay out of trouble.
So that completely erased my visiting the vineyard once a month to my being an A+ member of AirTrans, going back and forth to Virginia 3 times in August alone.

Oh, and lets toss insult to injury here and have August to be one of the hottest months on record with almost no rain.

Remember the ongoing project of putting the irrigation system in ? It took 3 trips down to finally get the system working for the Petit Verdot....finally. And it looks like I may have found someone to help complete the layout for the Cabernet Sauvignons during my latest absence, but even so he may only be able to get 2/3 of it done by the time I return 7 days from now. But it is progress. Maybe we'll have the system fully in by Labor Day !

The question then comes down to how many of these vines were hardy enough to survive without alot of water. I guess we''ll see if we get any new growth in the next month or so having been finally properly taken care of.

Working in Virginia, in the fields, in the summer, is an experience in itself. When you get up early in the morning, maybe around 6:30 or 7, you are as refreshed as you're going to be with hopefully a full nights rest (trust me, that's rare for me regardless). It is in the upper 60's or low 70's outside, but the official dew point is barely a few degrees below this. The grass and the weeds are soaked, and any idea of not having your feet completely water-logged within the first 15 minutes of working in the field is utter nonsense. The heat rapidly rises, and for the first half of August this means upper 80's or mid-90's by noon. The dew point does stay put, but the humidity climbs nearly as fast. Five hours into the day you are drenched.....not just the shirt but also the pants, socks, and shoes. And oh, if you keep track of this sort of thing, they have what's known as the Heat Index which basically describes how miserable you are in numerical terms. How about 126 for a number ?....doesn't it just sound bad ?

But this is what is presented to you, and if you want to be productive at all you tackle this head on, putting on the suntan lotion, drinking plenty of fluids, and push on until around noon when sanity takes over and you have to retreat into an air conditioned house. Hey, but this is only 5 hours ! Back into the fields at around 5:30 or 6 to put in another couple of hours after the sun has dropped nearer to the horizon and teases you with what you believe to be cooler conditions.

Update on the BRIX levels....
During August I had checked both the Seyval Blanc and the Nortons. The Seyvals were rapidly moving up, first to a 20 reading and then finally to a 25 reading....already time to harvest !! I conferred with my winemaker and was told that the next time I was down here in Virginia I would have to pick them. So here I was, on the 2nd trip to Virginia in the month, only to find that the birds (we suspect turkeys) were monitoring the BRIX levels also. All the Seyvals were eaten !@!@#@! Our next hope is the Nortons (picture above). As of August 16th they measured 20 on the BRIX scale so we think they will be ready by Labor Day or shortly thereafter. Not sure if the birds like red grapes quite as much as they like the white ones, but maybe we can beat them to the harvest this time and give us enough of a test quantity to make some nice table reds or some blush wine.