No Harvest this Weekend

EC Pete tested the vidal this past wednesday and due to the cooler weather and rain, the harvest has been put off until next weekend. ger is thinking that next weekend will be a large harvest of several varieties and wants us to be there. this weekend we are smushing in time for my family, as all my family is born in the month of september. ec pete and ger's dad will pick up the slack in our absence and next week, everyone will be down--including wc pete, who is flying back in to help out with the harvest.

next weekend, i will create another widgenie widget that tracks our red varietal brix levels. we started last week, but i don't have the stats with me. stay tuned!

Diversions

hanna canceled boy1's football game, but gerald will keep his plan to travel to the vineyard and continue with the brix testing, ph testing, and inspect the vineyard to make sure all is well. i'll call him tomorrow and get the brix in order to update the widget.

i'm keeping my plan to give the boys a bit more variety in their weekend diet of farm, farm, farm. we're staying home, out of the weather, near their friends, and later we will experiment with the homemade cheese kit we purchased from the New England Cheesemaking Supply Company — mozzarella cheese in 30 minutes! (i'm hoping it will be easy and tasty enough so that i can work my way through leeners.com's cheese making web pages!) i stopped making our own bread due to the heat of summer, but i think i might crank up a batch so that we can make our own pizza tonight. too bad i went with a flower garden this year instead of my usual tomato patch, or we could competely imitate barbara kingsolver for one night!

Tracking Hanna

2008 Seyval Harvest

Despite the 8/10 an inch of rain the night before, gerald tested the brix of the seyval, munched a few grapes and announced that the seyval harvest was on. so gerald&i, dad byrne, and uncle pete gathered in the proofing vineyard early on saturday and harvested the seyval blanc. the weather was overcast, cool, but humid. everyone was ready to harvest quickly and process the grapes back to pete&lyrel's farmhouse. our hoped-for lugs did not come through, but we had our buckets from the previous year and with 2 previous harvests under our belts, felt comfortable that we would be able to harvest without issue.

three quarters into harvesting 361 pounds of delicious white grapes and we realized we did not have enough containers. the boys decided to send me to the hardware store with boy1&2 for more containers. half way to the store and my surprise visitors—my mom and dad—called to tell me they had arrived. for boy2, this was especially funny: "your mom and dad? your mom and dad will be at the farm? mimi? grandpa? but why would they be at the farm?" it tickles the 5 year old when the world does not operate on its usual spin cycle. upon seeing their mimi and grandpa, the boys wanted to show the farm off and so ger's dad was then dispatched to the hardware store.



we gave a tour of the proofing vineyard, the treehouse in progress (and the desperate need for a zip line from the treehouse to the tobacco barn), lot 11 and the second year vines, the christmas trees their daddy planted when he was a boy, and the pawpaw patch. after the tour, we walked back up the big hill, met up with the harvest crew and headed back to pete&lyrel's house for grape processing.

this harvest was a little unusual. if you look at the sea of seyval berries in the photo above, you will see tiny, hard little grape berries among the clusters of seyval. gerald speculates these hard green little grape berries are the product of the unusually wet and extremely hot weather during bloom. uncle pete wonders if it isn't part of how the varietal grows—but at any rate, ger decided that what we were calling the "little green bebes" must not enter the crush. so the hand processing of the grapes included the removal of the offending immature grape berries. and there were many immature grape berries to be removed.

here is the 2008 sevyal processing gang. harvest was over by 10am. we started the processing shortly after and did not finish until after 4pm. we sorted the grapes, but found that there were so many immature green grapes, that it largely became a huge hand destemming operation. luckily, the back porch is wide, cool, and catches nice breezes. all sorted and destemmed grapes went into the big grey crush tub, newly purchased for this harvest. 361 pounds would take forever to crush in the small, crush diva stainless steel tub. the white trash bags in the grey tub contained bags of ice to keep the berries and juice chilled. after the sort and partial destemming, i jumped into the tub and started the stomp. i stomped and stomped. we realized that all the berries wouldn't be crushed in the large tub—there was too much room for the berries to escape underfoot. ger scooped out juice, berries and pomace, strained out the juice and sent me stomping the remaining pomace/berry mixture. i think we finished the crush about 7pm. by then i was stickier than i had ever been. i had crushed by foot and by hand. at one point, i considered crushing by just rolling in the tub. i was tired. so much for the goddess of stomp! ger and his dad started the pressing after i had crushed enough berries. i got dinner going about 7pm, but they didn't finish until after 8 with the press and processing of the juice.

throughout the day, the largest part of the conversation centered around enthusiasm for the port of leonardtown winery, the need for larger capacity equipment, and the need for a larger labor pool. heh. it loomed large in our minds.

the boys and i do not make up a full time, dedicated worker the likes of gerald, pete, uncle pete or dad byrne. we will also engaged elsewhere for the season, so i would like to extend a personal invitation to all friends of the farm—no matter their age or ability—to help my husband and his family get through this awkward, middle stage of growth. there is plenty of work for all. if you are a local friend of the farm family, its probably best to contact bernard byrne in order to coordinate labor.

posting, such as it has been for this year, will likely become more sporadic, as well, but keep checking in. thanks to all. its been fun.

Seyval Harvest this upcoming weekend!

The brix levels are in and gerald says we will harvest the seyval next week!

Prepare to be Zazzled.

another blog not about the vineyard? what's going on? football season has started and practice coincided with the august southern maryland wine growers cooperative meeting. momma&theboys stayed at home and gerald covered the meeting and vineyard work. unfortunately, no brix measurements this week. maybe next week.

but take a look at this!
i know! so before you ask, what is that?, i'm going to tell you. these are women's mini-slip on keds and custom notecards. i opened a zazzle.com account and, using the french oak barrel photo, created a custom designed shoe. and then for good measure, i created a notecard using the french oak barrel, as well. if you would like to see the ourvineyard product line, visit: http://www.zazzle.com/pd/find?qs=ourgirl

There, you will see the custom products i made today. check in every once in a while. boy1 and i have some cool ideas. maybe you'll find something you like!

What's up with the Widgets?

have you noticed the widget on the left? its a widget that will track the brix of our grape varietals as we progress weekly through to harvest. i made it in widgenie, a widget maker that creates animated charts from an excel spreadsheet. its simple and easy to use. the best part is that you can grab the widget code and embed it into your own social media. whenever i update the widget, your embedded widget will update, as well. so feel free to grab it and share with friends. widgenie recognized our blog's use of their product in their latest email.










you'll also notice that you can now subscribe to an RSS feed of the blog. and if you like, i also offer a widget blog feed that's quite pretty. i made that one in spring widget—that's where i found the RSS feed of Mike Steinberger/Slate Wine Articles. Mike writes really well and i enjoy all of his articles. spring widget is easy to use and i recommend using it and sproutbuilder, another widget maker.

feel free to share!

Veraison

veraison is well underway

Veraison started a little over two weekends ago in the proofing vineyard. the seyval is well underway, as it is our early grape. they are delicious! those boys can grow some lush seyval. the rest of the grapes are turning their colors, but taste of tannin and green peppers, so boy1 and i concentrate our attention to the seyval until ger shooes us out. the sevyal tastes tartly of apple and cinnamon. its a great treat to eat a grape berry you know is ripe and warm in the late morning sun. but we do this all in the name of developing a sense for when the grape is ripe, of course.


the weather is unseasonably cool and crisp, so much more like september than august. where are our dog days? ger is happy for both the cool weather and veraison, which signals the vines to STOP WITH THE VINE AND LEAF GROWING and concentrate on the fruit ripening. from here on out leaf canopy management should be easier. after we put up the netting last saturday (a whole other post) we woke up the next morning and culled the grape clusters. for a layperson like me, it looks wasteful. that's alot of grapes in that cart. we do add them to the compost, but culling is necessary. we want to concentrate on producing the best grape berries and so by cutting the third cluster (ger was at times, more aggressive) of every lateral shoot, the vine then concentrates on ripening the remaining clusters, producing a sweeter harvest. gerald is also pretty happy with the cool weather, which he says will slow the ripening and produce a more complex flavored grape.

wc pete returned back to washington this past week. the leaf canopy is still quaking from the heavy hand of his unmerciful rule. i'll post about the netting, next.

this weekend, we have begun testing the brix level of our grapes.

Home Port

ger's christmas present gets put to good use.

Ger has determined that his small french oak barrel will be used in our first attempt to create port-like wine. to the left you see the barrel being prepped. the barrel was dry, so the first step was to fill the barrel with the cold, 10,000 year old water (thanks, pete and lyrel!) from the aqueduct under charlotte hall. the water swelled the wood together to give it a tight fit. the water was emptied and the barrel plugged until the ingredients were mixed.



ger and wc pete mixed 100g or tartaric acid, 5.625lb of cane sugar, 7 liters of 40 proof brandy into a blend of our '07 harvest. our blend consisted of 3 gal. touriga, 1 gal. tinta cao, 1 gal morvedre, and our big dog: 3 gal. sangiovese. they then topped the barrel off with another .5 gal of our mourvedre. since the port will be aged in his barrel, we expect the colour will oxidize to tawny and hope the wine will take on a soft, nutty flavor. all of this happened in late june/early july, but i've been waiting for my summer grad class, information management, to finish so i could post without guilt. about a week or two later, gerald drew a sample from the barrel and a sample from a small, control bottle that wont be oaked. we all could taste the difference that oak brings to the wine. and i'm with lyrel's opinion that what wine is offered in American markets is often heavy on the oak. but for the port, i liked both oaked and non oaked. the oak seemed to smooth out the wine and gave it a spiced sort of taste. to this simple tongue, it tasted like it was on its way and ger and i traded that "hee, this is so cool" grins.

now it is a patient wait. ger estimates it might take the port 3 years to mature in the oak. he's looking into that part. me, i look forward to being back at the townie and enjoying our own fortified dessert wine on those crisp, cool, late fall evenings. we'll pore a small bit into a glass after we've had a bit to eat and settle into conversation—maybe we'll even be able to sit in our backyard and admire the colours of the sycamores and watch nature prepare the lake for the winter.

i feel cooler already.

Long Hot Summer

WC Pete is in town and he's working hard in the vineyards. canopy management, working the lateral shoots and more. the family has joined him for the summer, so we have plenty of kid power and playmates for boys1&2—for which they are grateful. the days are long, hot and humid, although this year has, on the whole, been cooler and wetter than the previous years. ger has been in the wine room working the whites and reds. i'm pretty happy to report that the wine from last season's harvest is coming along tastily!

Taming New Frontiers

hazy early morning in what we refer to as lot 11, the vidal vineyard, or the east vineyard

Our frontier acre of vidal is looking a bit more tame—a sort of civilization of shoots is growing from the lunar landscape of the previous year. the frequent rain we have been receiving has been a blessing in making sure the tender vines make it through their first year, so we haven't had to worry about getting water up the big hill. its been a pretty wet season so far.

compounding the lack of blog posts has been our heavy scheduling of graduations, boy2's birthday, maryland vineyard field days/girl1's birthday, momma's summer grad class [information management!], and boy1 fracturing his toe in two places. our precious vineyard hours on the weekend have been getting chewed up from bleed over of our weekday life. west coast pete has arrived just in time to get the leaf canopy management under control.

here is the last image i have of work i've been able to contribute to the vineyard. right after the several weekend of weekday bleed overs, boy1 fractured his toe and was unable to go to the vineyard. yes, those are plastic ties. remember when i was part of the bamboo stake pounding brigade? now the vines are starting their disciplined life of training to stakes, wires, and trellising. i walked the vidal vineyard, twisting the plastic ties around the bamboo stakes and the first cordon wire.




that day gerald worked in the vineyard with me, reviewing the health of the leaves and training the tender shoots to the bamboo stakes with plastic tape. the plastic tape is gentle to the vines—it doesn't cut or tear into the vine—but holds them firmly to the stake so they have good support as they clamber up to the sky. boy2 and i will be happy to have boy1 able to be back in the vineyard again. boy2 will have his playmate again, and i will be able to participate in the vineyard more fully. right now, i've been limited to taking images and doing an occasional walk-thru. but its also been great hanging with the boys outside the vineyard, working on my coursework, and catching up on old hobbies.

Love is in the Air!

connie's post
spring is here, and with it comes the desire for procreation. even the ladybugs are getting into the act. hope you are in love this spring, too.

Paw Paws!

connie's post:
I can't tell you how happy i was to discover the young paw paw trees in the tall tree clearing. the clearing is a small circle of empty space and sits at the base of the far field and ends at a dry creek bed. it is nice to walk into, as the shade from the tall trees makes the little alcove cool and inviting.

paw paw trees are small, under canopy trees. in the early fall, they bear fruit that tastes like banana pudding. that is, if you can manage to get to the fruit before the squirrels do! i have been searching for a stash of paw paw trees for a while, so it was exciting to discover a patch right at the farm!

i was introduced to paw paws by my paternal grandpa. i remember when i was a little girl, we went on a little hike up the small hills next to the big river, where my grandparents had retired. my grandpa pulled a paw paw off the tree and with his pocket knife, sliced open the fruit. he must have known about the stash, since he pulled a teaspoon out of his flannel shirt pocket and scooped the fruit out for us to taste. by then, i was used to foraging for blackberries, persimmons, and walnuts—but i still remember the utter delight in discovering something so delicious to eat in the forest. it was like a little treasure.

i look forward to introducing the boys to paw paws. they were not initially enthused about persimmons and the pucker power unripe persimmons have. i do think they will enjoy the paw paws better.

bon appetit!

Linking to Mondavi

Robert Mondavi died today at 94, a life well lived. here are a few news article links:

• NY Times: Robert Mondavi, 94, California Winemaker, Dies
• MercuryNews.com: California winemaking patriarch Robert Mondavi dead at 94
• SFGate: Napa Wine Pioneer Robert Mondavi Dead at 94

Oats

Raley has oats sown in the fields this Spring. They're growing up tall and green and lovely. The vineyard season is in full swing now. Buds began to break early April during a warm spell. There was one night that came close to 32 degrees, and that was all we've seen of old man winter since. The weeds threatened to get ahead of us, but judicious control measures have put them in check and have allowed us to concentrate on the vines. Current focus is on shoot thinning: our pruning efforts this past winter were informed by a year's experience and it shows. We have many more shoots on each vine this year, and can now go through the vineyard picking just the right density for the season. Once we have the vines down to 4-6 shoots per foot of cordon we'll begin the task of positioning each shoot to grow straight by taping it to the lowest catch wire, which is located about eight inched above the cordon wire.

100th Post! New Vineyard Planting

yes! we are still here. i won't make my excuses, as you already know: grad school final project, strep throat (me and boy2), life, life and more life. here is a link to my final project wiki: Collaborative Nonprofits. i recommend using wikispaces for any project. i'm a total convert.

back to the vineyard.

it was a typical blustery april day, threatening to burst into tears or sunshine at any moment. uncle pete, gerald, a friend of the farm, had spent the morning digging holes with the auger and preparing to plant. ger then prepared the rootstock for the planting session. he poured this clear mixture of something and water into painter buckets. it had gruel-like consistency and it protectively coated the rootstock to keep them from drying out. uncle pete and fof (friend of farm) started planting the vines and ger picked up the boys and i from the farmhouse, where i had been working on my final project. we headed out to the proofing, east and west vineyard with the rootstock in buckets and planted 225 vidal, viognier, and nebbiolo vines. i wish i didn't have a no child photo policy, as boy 1&2 found a mud puddle and the ensuing mayhem was captured digitally. the boys ended up wearing the entire puddle and the men wished i had been their mother, as they said they were not allowed to get so muddy growing up. which i dont believe for a moment. i didn't mind it as long as the shoes were off. muddy shoes are the worst. but the boys were satisfied.

we filled in the holes from viognier vines that didn't make it in the west field. we planted nebbiolo in the place of the shiraz, which had suffered crown gall. ger and fof loaded the hand auger into the back of uncle pete's truck and we headed east, to lot 11. once there, uncle pete drove the truck with the hand auger back and forth and wherever there was a dead vine, they would stop, pull out the hand auger and drill a hole. i followed behind, planting the vines as i went.

there was some back and forth between the three men as to how to break it to me that my planting skills were lacking. something about fear, or not wanting to make me mad, or what, but i have no idea where they would get that idea from my general sweet and demure disposition. uncle pete, being a military man or having drawn the short straw, was sent to negotiate a truce for a battle that never happened, and once i was given a refresher in proper planting, i went about fishing among men again. the day was long, but nice. that hand auger is heavy, i can attest. i helped ger drill several of the last holes and it was hard on the shoulder i dorked up earlier in the year. i made a mental note to get into the doctor and more importantly, start working out again. the farm work has always been easier when i'm used to physical labor.

A Bouquet for Lyrel

Mimi's irises make their debut at the farmhouse's wet spot out back

Lyrel, so that you may enjoy this post, I will capitalize where necessary and be on my best behavior. Promise. I'm sending you a virtual bouquet (see left) as spring has burst all over your farmhouse in the form of Mimi's daffodils, snowdrops, vinca and irises. Its quite lovely—a postcard that says, "Wish you were here," in yellow, creme, white and lavender. Boy2 and I couldn't resist them and took a cue from a house brownie that had left several bouquets for us to enjoy the week before. The weather at the farmhouse was chilly enough for a fire, but sunny enough that we both could scamper about, searching for the best blooms to cut. Don't worry, I taught him to be a good steward of blooms and we cut a couple from each mound, oo-ing and ah-ing as we went along. Mimi had planted many different varieties I had often admired in the catalogs and its so nice to see them all about the grounds. I then cut some of the tigergrass for greenery and you have a very pretty bush that has the most tiny little white blossoms all along their long stems—they became sweet accents for the bouquet. I don't know if you can see them, they are delicate little things. We carefully arranged them in a parfait glass and then took the bouquet's picture against Aunt Judy's painting in your dining room. Then we had to flee, as they were unexpectedly aromatic and Momma couldn't take it. Hope you enjoy it as much as we. Ps. Your rosemary made it through the winter!

Home

Where have we been? its been a month without a post. is nothing happening at the shoestring vineyard?

of course not. plenty of things have been happening outside. pruning, for instance, is finished.

well, that's certainly blog worthy. where are the pics? where is gerald's commentary?

in the camera and in gerald's head, respectively. west coast pete was out for a week, and ger, west coast and east coast pete pruned; modified two rows from a vertical shoot position trellising to a lyre trellising system, and attended the annual maryland grape growers conference. ger said that was a good meeting. they stopped and saw uncle charlie (never seen in this blog) on the way back. ger has planned and started construction on the bay build out. the cleared site has been cleaned of sticks n' bits and has been seeded with rape seed to help with the erosion.

so they have done quite a bit. why can't we see what's going on? where are the tales of minutia you spill when you have nothing else to report? oh, and the farm diary. we havent seen posts of that for at least six months.

yeh. ive been thinking about that farm diary. i need start transcribing again. as far as the other stuff, as soon as the camera cord and i can find each other again, i'll at least post the slides. tales of the ordinary and other minutiae will have to wait. sadly, our townie is in need of repairs and maintenance, and i am now committed to seeing that it happens. we had our first family weekend without the farm since we went to disney two years ago. it was short, but felt good.

so thats where you've been?

yeh. home. just saying home gives me that happy, hopeful feeling. ger and i hope everyone is blessed to have a home falling around their heads as they pursue many, many adventures, as my family does. and thanks for asking and the interest. i'll catch up again with you soon.

Dreaming of Very Vine Things

a man can dream, can't he?

connie's post:
Here, ger gets dreamy over the cleared fields possibilities. He's taken soil samples. He's walked the field, counting each step in order to calculate a rough estimate of the field length. He looks at how the sun travels across the field. and he thinks. and plans. and dreams.

but there are considerations to be made. here you see where the other side of the vidal acre meets up with another hill, forming a very shallow hallow. hillsides are great for cool air drainage. this hollow has a disadvantage. at the edge of the cleared field is a road that cuts across the farm land. the road dips a little to one side, the cleared side. water run off is causing erosion and is making ger and brother pete think about the implications. ger is considering planting the area with vines, as the hollow slopes down. he thinks the vines on the high side along the road might do okay. he's thinking of what variety(ies) he might try, but first needs to get an actual measurement of the field to know how many vines he can fit into the field. within the next two weekends we are going to plant that area with rape seed as a cover and hope for a good snow.

Discovery!

i find my first arrowhead, ever!

connie's post
Boy2 had his trusty shovel and toolbox at the base of the vidal acre, and was playing where many of the cleared trees are being turned into firewood. i, his faithful momma, kept an eye on him while i tried to make myself useful in what area the boy roamed. that meant plugging some of the holes under the small critter fencing, created by water erosion from some rain storms we had earlier. as i was gathering the rocks and a few remmants of the vidal fence posts, i kept scanning the ground as you can find some pretty cool things. like this lichen bit, here at the beginning of this paragraph. just really graphic looking.

and then i see it!

an arrowhead, made from white quartz!

i never find arrowheads!

now i'm that nine year old tomboy in moccasins and pigtails, i'm so excited. weeee! i show boy2, who is equally excited, but who wants to hold it and put it in his pocket. uh-uh. i don' think so. i found it. (totally regressing) i show it to ger's dad and he says i should look around for more—usually you find more than one. eventually, i find something else in white quartz that looks like it might be something a small scrapper like thing, but then again, it could be just an oddly broken, flat white quartz. i bet the erosion uncovered the arrowhead. finally i give up and try to help dad chop firewood, but its just more or less dad taking a break while he watches me flail away—doing a real hatchet job (heh) on the helpless log—until he takes pity on the axe and takes it back.

i take the arrowhead out of my pocket and rub my thumb over its meticulously chipped edges. and i look up and think of stealthy indians crouching among the tall trees, tracking the deer through a foggy day a long, long time ago. if i was that tomboy in moccasins and pigtails, i would have given the arrowhead to my favorite boy. i think of my favorite boy, pruning vines in the proofing vineyard with his uncle. i gather up boy2 and we walk up the path to his daddy.