Perspectives

blackberry shoots spring out of the compacted earth

connie's post:
Its a warm february and life is thrown off by the confusing hot and cold signals nature is blowing our way. while the new vidal vines are doing their best to hit the snooze button and ignore the warmth, we have new plants growing to fill the tall tree vacuum from the previous year. most of them look like weeds and a few look toxic (check out those mushrooms!)—no doubt some are—but as the adage goes, a weed is just a plant in the wrong spot. above you see the start of a promising blackberry bush and there are many more of them. i'm planning to transplant them this march, down at the bottom of the hill to take advantage of the water run off. i like walking through the vidal acre, pausing and looking at the new plants, and it would be great to have a plant field guide to identify them all. i also have plans to resurrect the growing trays at home in order to get a head start on growing lavendar plants. i'd like to see how they would fare along the deer and small critter fencing. i think that's the thing with february. one gets antsy for green of any sort and then all of the sudden, you are growing mesclun in window trays. well, ok. that's me. i really dig having a southern exposure kitchen.

the post installation project in the vidal acre has been completed and the geometry of the posts in the field always makes me think of environmental art. while the proofing vineyard is cozy and intimate, the vidal acre in its infancy seems freakishly frontier-ish. it's wide expanse of dirt, sprouts, and tall fence postings and it reminds me of my childhood driving family vacations out west. the silliness of scale is only enhanced by the field being hemmed in by the surround acres of tall trees.

currently, we are in the middle of pruning our vines and that will be the subject matter for my next post. we have a much, much, larger job than previous years and we are learning quite a bit as we go.

Way Back Machine, Late December

A pan blur image standing inside the old tobacco barn. Son of Sony camera performs!

Connie's post:
New camera, new year and new adventures at the farm. and so its april already, four months without so much a passing glance at the blog. be assured, gentle reader, the farm and the people who belong to it have kept stepping to the rhythms of the season with their faces set resolutely to their upcoming goals. so sit back, enjoy the music from the vineyard, and catch up on the progress my husband and his family has made.

let's go in chronological order. according to the way back machine, in december we set up the two year vines with row posts and wire for them to scramble upon this spring. ger's brother pete came from the west coast to get'er done and the two brothers had many adventures in the set up, some of which ger prefers i just don't get into. i will say that the farm runs on a shoestring and sometimes the improvisation necessary to accomplish a task often becomes the task itself. the rest is a rich tapestry of comedy and chaos. so, gentle reader, you may ask, "how does one go about setting up end row posts and then subsequently wire them?"

1. row posts start off with two pressure treated pine posts. The pine posts are brought into the farm. locust posts are cut from the farm's hardwood growth. Here, gerald and pete cut the locust post to size.

2. the improv spinning jenny dispenses the wire that provides tension to the end pine posts, which helps keeps the wiring taut and the middle posts upright under the vine's seasonal growth.


3. gerald tacks the wire to the posts.
4. pete and gerald install the locust post cross bar (more strength and stability for the line)

5. as pete steadies the locust post, gerald starts winching the wire tight with help from boy2.


6. peter and gerald finish winching the wire tight.
7. viola! a nice set of end posts!