Let it snow, let it snow, let it sn.....oh no!

Yesterday the weather was beautiful. A little windy, but to be expected this time of year. For the past two weeks or so, the weather's been hovering around 70 during the day and 40s at night. Perfect. The vines are starting to bud out. Exciting.

Today is not so perfect. We woke up a layer of melting snow. Snow! Not good. It's snowing, sleeting right now. I think sleet is worse because not only does it freeze the bud, it blugeons it to death from the heavens.

The snow is never any good this time of year but the cold temperature makes it worse. The snow keeps the air relatively warm but if it stops and night comes (and it always comes), we'll have a freeze on our hands. Then we'll wake up to limp, mushy, lifeless buds. And we'll have to start all over.

The orchards folks do have those windmills in their fields just for such an event. Maybe they'll get them going next door to us and we'll benefit from them heating the air with the fans. This one in the photo automatically starts so we may hear it tonight. It always startles me. The sound of the blades through the air sounds like the opening scene from Apocalypse Now.

We'll see. Patience is a virtue? Patience is a virtue. Patience is a virtue. Keep repeating.

I think this calls for something a little stronger. A nice 20-year Taylor Fladgate tawny port is just what the doctor ordered and of course pieces of Lindt dark chocolate. Yum.

Remember.....imbibe and enjoy.

No Thruway

The constant "beep, beep, beep" has been the familiar sound this week on the vineyard homestead. Bulldozers, backhoes, and big hydraulic excavators are disrupting our relatively idyllic vineyard lifestyle.

Apparently, there's a problem. Our road is closed. There's nothing wrong with our road. Our road, 38 3/8 Road, is a potholed, dusty gravel farm road. The potholes are fine. It keeps the locals from driving more than 25 mph in the front of the house. The dust is bearable. Ask me again in August. And the gravel hasn't broken my windshield yet. Except for the goofy address, all's good. The address by the way is how many miles we are from the Utah border. Some may celebrate, some may dread. So anyway...

About three months ago, our neighbor with the young peach orchard was having some problem with flooding. We had a similar problem with flooding when we first moved here six years ago. It seems flooding would be the norm.

Legend has it that before the vineyards, this area was initially a swamp. We believe this to be so because the Colorado river is just a couple of stone's throws away from us. Starting in 1905, the Palisade Irrigation District (PID) started constructing large dirt-walled irrigation canals above the area to water Orchard Mesa. And that lent itself to a lot of water seepage. So the land was way cheap (pretty much unliveable) until a smart fella started building subterranean water channels in the area. The water would then runoff into the underground channels as opposed to stagnating at ground level. This idea really caught on and now the entire Vineland area has underground piping that moves the ground water back to the Colorado river.

Well that infrastructure was built a long time ago. And now it's time to replace it again. We've been told that basically the Palisade Drainage District (PDD) is broke and can't do anything to fix the leaking, corroded, crushed underground piping. That the affected landowner has to pay. Crazy, huh? That's because landowners in the area are only required to pay $5 per acre per year. That must of been the rate turning FDR's administraction. It doesn't seem like they've EVER raised their prices. Thus, each landowner takes on the staggering cost of repairing a broken system that will affect everyone downstream and upstream as well.

Thus, at 38 3/8 Rd we have a f*!+ing mess. Mess aside, it is amazing to think there's this huge spiderweb-like subterranean piping system under our feet that keeps us afloat. I just hope OUR subterranean piping system doesn't go the same way as this fiasco. That flooding we had six years ago was in the center of the vineyard.

Well, the excavators have gone home and the beeping has stopped. Time for a delicious local Grande River Vineyards Syrah. Not too spicy, heavier than a Merlot, but not quite a Cab Sav. You can drink this wine with or without food, but I bet this is going to go really well with the pork loin Kenny's making.

Remember.....imbibe and enjoy.

Get me Outta Here!

I can hear them yelling out, "Hey I'm ready to come out! Do you hear me? Help! Let me outta here!" All said like a class of kindergarteners let loose at the opening day at Disneyworld.

This is when I love this area most. There's still a coolness in the breeze, but the sun is the summer sun. The sky is the most beautiful cobalt blue. When you look up, you get lost in the "blueness". Gorgeous.

Here in the Vinelands, the cherry trees are in full bloom. The aroma is exquisite. Not quite jasmine, but a hint of jasmine with a bit of rose. And the blossoms are unmistakable. A blue white, delicate flower with an extremely pale, purple center, and green and orange tendrils exploding from the center. The beauty demands you stare at its wonder. And with the orderliness of the pruning, the trees hint of a Japanese garden. It is a very zen picture.

The peach trees are also in bloom with their bright pink flowers shivering in the breeze. Their centers are as demanding as the cherry trees. Their bright pink centers draw you to their posture like a bee to nectar. In the distance, the blossoms look like dusty rose clouds rising up from supportive brown branches, not like flowers at all. Only when you are within their heady aroma can you see the full splendor of a temptress.

I take comfort in knowing that all those blossoms are for another purpose besides their obvious beauty. If they make it through the frost, they'll become lucious fruit. The cherries come first and then there's peaches from June until August. Yum.

The grapes are not so showy. There's no true flower with the vines. Maybe that's because the grapes are so tempting to the bees by their sheer nature, that no accoutrements are required. Naked blossoming. Hmmm.

And now I believe it's time for a nice 2007 pinot gris from the Lurton bodega in Valle de Uco Argentina. Valle de Uco is a splendid wide open valley right against the Andes' mountains. A beautiful area. A must see.

Remember, enjoy and imbibe.

Spray, Pray and Love

The vines are all pruned, most of the trunks tied, the main area is mowed, but there's still a nagging problem. It's always something.


The weeds (ours are No. 1 remember?) along the length of the vines is still going strong. Big, beautiful, spring green weeds full of life......ready to choke out the life of our still not awake vines. Geez.


We asked our neighbor, our normalcy gage, what we could do to get rid of these weeds. Especially the alfalfa. Now alfalfa is a very good crop for the fields in Illinois. What else is there in Illinois, sans Chicago? Oh yeah and corn, but I diverse. Alfalfa is full of nitrogen which helps fertilize the soil. But it's not very good when it grows right where the vine trunk is coming out of the ground with roots so deep it competes with the vine for water. Sorry buddy, no can do.


I first think "What about precision weedwhacking?" But the vines are in such a sensitive state that accidentally nicking the base of the vine would be very stressful and possibly kill the vine. I'm out of ideas.


So our wise neighbor says "You can spray weed killer." To that I retort "Spray! Spray? Are you crazy, spray?" He begins to calmly explain how there's this weed killer that absorbs through the leaves and then oozes down to the roots from the leaves. There are no leaves on the grapes so it shouldn't hurt it, right?



Hmmm........so off to Murdoch's (the friendly redneck hardware store) to get some of this killer stuff. We come out with an expensive 5 gallon container of MadDog Plus. As if just MadDog wasn't enough. It smells sweet and flows like molasses. It looks deadly. When I look at the ingredients, after getting past the glyphosate and N-glycine, it really is .......salt. Oo-ooh.



I don my rubber gloves and paper face mask and begin the mixing in our portable backpack sprayer. This truly is the farmer's friend. You can carry up to 6 gallons of .....whatever right on your back. I carry mostly deadly stuff.



I hoist the sucker on my back and walk to the far row. That's the one that gets all the water so it's the lushest (is that a word?). And I pump and spray. You pump with your left hand to pressurize the tank and you spray with your right. Pump and spray, pump and spray. All the while thinking "Aha, there you go you little green leafed plants sucking the life from my precious grapes, so there! Take that!'


Meanwhile, to get the weeds I have to spray the base of the vines most times. Hmmm....... As I finish up my tank, only getting to the end of the second row, I wonder "Will this work? Will it kill the vine by accident?" I enter slumber that evening a little guilty and extremely hesitant.


The next morning I jump out of bed and cast open the curtain facing the vineyard so I can see my dastardly deed from yesterday's work. Nothing. Not a drooping leaf in the field. They all look as beautiful as before I came in with the dead squad. Hmmm....... I tell Kenny of this and he says "Oh yeah, they didn't die for me until like the next week."


So here I go out in the field again to spray more rows with stuff that looks like clear molasses and sprays like water to not see dead weeds until next week.

Now that, my friend, is faith. Amen.

Time for a rose wine, Vega Sindoa 2007 will do nicely. Yum.

Remember...

Enjoy and imbibe.

Mowing and no grapes

Today we mowed the field. It's April 11th and I'm really surprised the weeds are so high. What's another surprise is that the grape vines still are barren. I've been told that is normal, and my normalcy gage, our next door neighbors, is fine.

But those weeds are growing like gang busters!

After a week of intensive investigative research, I believe we've won. Within the entire area of Palisade, I think we have the best weeds. Yeah! Wait a minute, we don't want to win. So today we mowed.

Mowing is a 8 hour process. You see it all has to do with the tiny Japanese tractor, Seabiscuit. Seabiscuit can't mow the entire row. The row is too wide. So the row has to be mowed twice.

Precision mowing is a balancing act really. I try to get the mower as close to the vine as possible without ripping the grapevine out in the process. It's very tricky because our vineyard is the Vineyard of Random Enlightment. There is not a vine, a pole, or a wire that is exactly the same as the one beside it. Some are spaced closer than others. Some lean to the west, some lean to the east. Thus, the Mower must be ever vigilant mowing slowly down the row.

Precision mowing is done. Now time for precision weedwhacking. Maybe someday it'll be an Olympic sport, you know like precision water ballet.

Well for now it's time to open a bottle of Ravenswood Zin. Remember....

Enjoy and imbibe.