Nerd Alert: Early-Spring Vineyard Management

You think this is a photo of a vineyard. Nay. This is a photo of our crimson clover cover crop. 

These past few weeks have been devoted explicitly to the vineyard. We've torn out the old vines, planted new ones, pre-pruned, and sprayed the ever-popular Lime Sulfur. Everything we do right now is to prepare the vineyard for the summer so that we have as little work to do in the heat as possible. As much as I don't like working in the chill, I'd much rather do the work now than in the Summer heat.

This is going to be a very nerdy post, so I'm going to do my best to explain what we're doing in lay-terms but simultaneously answer questions I've received from classmates and the grape-growing community.

This year, we pre-pruned. This means we went along doing just a basic cleaning of the vines, leaving the spurs about 4 or 5 nodes long. Pruning actually activates bud-break, so we didn't want to prune too soon and end up having a budbreak before the last frost. That happened last year and we lost about 40% of the crop. When buds on a grapevine break, they break from the top back. Thus, if the top buds have broken, and we get a frost, there is a chance that the lower buds have not yet broken and will still be able to produce a full crop. We will go back in about two weeks (after we get the Spring gardens planted) and, depending on the weather, get rid of the extra buds leaving fully pruned vines.

Note the extra long spurs and the kicker at the bottom of the vine

We are also leaving some canes where we see weak cordons. The mild winter (which leads to Pierce's Disease) and Spring freeze last year meant that our vines looked quite strange during the growing season. This year's winter was much better in terms of producing temperatures that will limit PD's effect. We might be replacing the most effected cordons with the new canes this year. We won't know until budbreak, but in case we do want to replace cordons, we will have the option of laying down the canes produced last year. We have also left a kicker cane coming out from the bottom of the vine just in case one of the trunks is so affected and we have to start over with the whole trunk. These steps will help us extend the life of our vines.

Note the extra long potential cane that can replace the cordon if
good budbreak doesn't occur.

The next chore in the vineyard was putting in the Villard blanc. We replanted the vineyard (and put in 300 blueberry plants) over the course of three exhausting days. Planting the vines was a very simple process: we dug holes, filled them with a little bit of horse manure and greensand, put the vines in the holes, and then filled in the rest with dirt. Nic and Liuba didn't want to have any rocks in the holes, but I convinced them by the end that it would not hurt the vines to have a few rocks in with the roots. Nic and Liuba then set about putting new landscape fabric down. It looks amazing.

Yumm. the smell of sulfur....

Finally, we sprayed the lime sulfur. This chemical basically sterilizes the vineyard before the season starts. It also smells like poo. It's been quite windy recently, so conditions for spraying have been less than optimal, but by doing a little for three days, we finally got the whole thing covered. We are ready for Spring! Thanks to these long, cool days, the buds are just now starting to swell on the Villard blanc. I hope that they decide to sleep in for another month.


These next two coming weeks, we'll be putting in our Spring garden. It's a bit cooler than I'd like for planting seeds, but luckily, we get a lot of our leafy vegetables started in a greenhouse. Anthony, from His and Her Greenhouse, delivered our plants on Thursday and we put in our first rows on Friday. But more on the planting fun next week. We are so excited for Spring to come. And to start having some income again.

The Post I wish I didn't have to write--- How to rip out a vineyard and my trip to Texas!!!

 

The daffodils are out, the maples are budding, and the days are getting longer. As farmers, we too are starting to gear up for spring now and I think we're more or less on schedule. It's been a winter of steady, tedious work hoeing the vineyard, taking up the black plastic, and pulling up the vines. The Pierce's Diseased Vidal blanc has now been removed and we're getting prepped to plant our Villard blanc in a few days.

For those of you who are interested, this is how we pulled out the vineyard:

1) Cut the tops of the vines off
2) Remove the landscape fabric
3) On a day when the soil is soft, but not soggy, tie some nylon rope to the nub of the vine and attach that to a little ATV and drive forward!

If that doesn't work, a shovel always helps. We took out about 250 vines/ day. It's a very quick process.

 

Right now, we're in the process of digging wholes for the new Villard blanc. We will fill those with a little shovel full of horse manure, pot ash, and bonemeal. We'll be planting our new plants on Thursday, Friday and Saturday the 14th, 15th, and 16th of March, so let me know if you want to come out and help! A few hours of your time will make the greatest difference. Putting out the new black plastic will be the biggest challenge.

 

So, last week, I went to Texas to try some of their Blanc du bois and Lenoir. I traveled to Houston, Austin, and Dallas. The Lenoir is a red grape that actually has red juice. I wasn't as impressed with these wines as I was with the Blanc du bois. The wines had a savoury characteristic to them that wore quite quickly. That said, I'm still going to plant 75 of them soon to see how they do in NC.

One grower I visited seemed to have broken the code with how to make a good Lenoir. He graciously shared with me his trials and recipes, giving me tastes from the different barrels and explaining to me his thought processes. The Texas wine community was so hospitable.

 

William Chris in the Fredricksburg area.

 

 

The Blanc du bois I had were delicious! They ranged in style from very low-alcohol, high acid wines to more standard Sauvignon blanc style. They were best when they had about 1% residual Sugar. It was almost an imperceptible sweetness (it's still a technically dry wine), but it gave a bit of weight to the mid-palate that was desperately needed. Apparently, the acids disappear very quickly as it gets hotter, so they find it necessary to pick the fruit around 18-20 Brix (23 is normally the target). I had a few favourite producers:

 

1) Haak Winery had the high acid, low alcohol wines along with a delicious Madeira

2) William Chris had the great balance

3) Lost Oak had the most similar growing conditions to NC, so I look forward to trying to imitate them!

 

If you're ever in Texas, I would recommend going to visit some of their wineries. I also enjoyed lots of breakfast burritos, chips and salsa, a kolachi, and some fine Texas beers. I also have a new favourite radio station- The Ranch. It's 100% Texas music and awesome. I tolerated the suburbia which seemed to dominate much of the driving I did there, but once I got into the grape growing areas, the countryside was gorgeous. I can't imagine what it would be like during the summers though. So hot and dry. God bless all those cows. The droughts they experience are incomprehensible.

 

On a different topic, we'll start planting our Spring garden soon. Its been raining so much recently, we've had a hard time getting the tractor in the field to prep the soil. I think next year, we'll prep in the fall and let the soil freeze (and hopefully not erode) over the winter. We're getting better at this every year.

 

We'll start taking orders for our CSA soon! Not much longer and I will have forgotten how cool and relaxing these winter days were.



Collards for those who think they don't like collards

I've heard a lot of people talk about how they just don't like collards. I can understand this. I too did not like them as a child. Or as a teenager. Or as an adult. I ate them out of the desire to have a prosperous new year and then did not eat them again until the next new years.

This all changed when I started growing them. Like most vegetables, the way to love eating them is to grow them. The first year I grew them, it was an extremely cold winter for NC. We got comment after comment like: "These are the best collards I've ever had" or "It only takes 15 mintues to cook them! They're not in the least bit bitter!" These collards were nothing like those bought in the store. They were sweet, without the expected bitterness. They cooked so quickly that many people almost overcooked them thinking they were like store-bought collards.

We had such a surplus that mom and I immediately set about to experimenting with the vegetable, pushing ourselves beyond the traditional pork and collards parameters. We came up with three great recipes that I'd like to share with you this year. These collard recipes will convince even the most skeptic of yankees.

1) Cream of Collard Soup (thanks to Peggy Carlough)

- Sautee onions and garlic in butter
- add in chopped collards (about 6 leaves per person)
- partially submerge them in water or veggie stock. If you are using water, add in a bullion cube
- let reduce until collards are soft, about 5 minutes
- purree
- put it back on the heat and a little bit of cream/half and half to taste (you can add mushrooms here if you'd like for a heartier soup)
- add salt and pepper (and NUTMEG!!! my mother disagrees with this spice, but I love it!) and let it warm through
- serve with toast

2) Stewed Tomatoes, Peppers, and Collards
- sautee onions and garlic in canola oil
- add in some red and green peppers (or aji dulce or paprika peppers if you can find them)
- add in some chopped collards and stir
- add water/stock/bullion cube if necessary to get the steaming process going
- add in a can (or two) of chopped tomatoes
- salt, pepper, red pepper flakes to taste
- serve with ricotta chese and pita

3) Collard Casserole
- cut up collards in a pot with a little bit of veggie stock or water/bullion
- when they are a dark green color (before they get brown), toss in some cream of mushroom soup
- take them out of the pot and put them in a greased casserole dish
- sautee onions and garlic in another pan
- add in a healthy amount of mushrooms
- put the onions/garlic/mushroom combo on top of the collards that are in the casserole dish
- top with (swiss, provolone, mozarella) cheese
- bake until the cheese is bubbling


I hope these recipes inspire you to try some of our collards and experiment beyond their tradtional boundaries. Collards are a very versatile vegetable that we should embrace and not relegate to old, poor southerners. They are so healthy and beneficial to our winter diets!

I truly believe that if we all ate more collards, or greens in general, we would lead richer, fuller, and more satisfied lives. New Years Legends can come true.

So what do you do in the winter?

One of the most popular questions I get is "so what do you do in the winter?" It changes every year. For the past few years, we've been clearing out around the fields. Since we're starting to use fields that have been abandoned for 30 years, we have a lot of smilex, honeysuckle, and ligustrum to destroy so we could get our fields to the optimum size. We finished that major project last year, so this year, we'll just be doing a bit of weed eating and bush hogging to maintain our progress.

This year, we have two major projects in the vineyard: 1) removing the Pierce's diseased vines and 2) cleaning the carpet.

The Vidal blanc was great while it lasted. It made a delicious, high acid wine that received great compliments. Nevertheless, we know that it has Pierce's disease and that it won't last much past next year. A good portion of the vineyard has already died. We've decided to remove it now so that we can  move on to our next variety more quickly. We're trying Villard blanc, a grape that was widely grown in France into the 60s. It's fairly rare here, but its resistant. I'm looking to taste as many different companies' Villard as possible so that I can get a good plan for how to make the wine.

decapitated vines, awaiting removal

So the first step is to cut down the top parts of the Vidal. After that is finished, we will pull back the landscape fabric that we use to keep the weeds down, attach the vines to our ATV, and pull them out. We will then go back, add some P and K, and put in the new Villard vines. And start over. It's going to be tedious, but we have almost one month to get them out.

Before (notice you can't see the black plastic)

The second job for the winter is cleaning the landscape fabric that covers the ground between the vines. Since we don't use herbicides, this is our best tool for giving our vines a fighting chance against the weeds. Over the summer, the weeds start to take over the fabric, so now, when the summer weeds are dead, we're hoeing the vineyard. This is tedious work too, but it's much easier to do this now rather than in the summer. After we get the whole thing cleaned (it will take about a month),  we will blow off the plastic with leaf blowers and then spray it with a weak solution of citric acid. I'm considering broadcasting some clover on top of it in the early Spring.

After (gorgeous work Liuba!)

So by the time we get the vineyard cleaned and cleared, it will be time to put the new vines in and get started on the Spring crops. It will be slow and steady work, but I'm glad I can provide work for my employees in the winter that will cut down on the work we have to do in the oppressive heat of summer.

I'll be making a trip to the Dallas, Houston, and Austin areas in late February. They grow two different types of Pierce's disease resistant vines down there: Lenoir  and Blanc du Bois. I'll do an update from down there as I journey to find the best varieties of grapes to grow (sustainably) in NC!!

Forced Relaxation: the winter

It's been a long time since I last updated the blog! A lot has been going on and I've spent almost every week up in Mocksville since we harvested our grapes. The wine is looking good and we'll probably put it in barrel next week.

The theme to the year so far is early seasons. Spring came early, summer came early, fall came early, and now, it looks like winter, too, is coming early. It's supposed to get down to 26 tonight in Concord. I can't believe it! I just hope that we get a good solid week of below freezing temperatures sometime in late January. That would help our vines and pest population immensely!

It also, hasn't rained in almost a month. We've been very diligent with our watering, however. Normally this time of year, we have to winterize the well and blow out all the irrigation lines. We haven't had the opportunity yet because we keep needing to water the garden about once a week!

Despite the rough weather, the winter garden is really looking great. Thank you, knowledgeable employees and dedicated customer/volunteers! The garlic is in the ground, our crops have been fertilized, hoed, and mulched, and we're getting ready to start construction on two new high tunnels. Due to the high demand of butter crunch lettuce and swiss chard, we need to be growing those throughout the winter. I'm also going to try putting in a few rows of pink-eyed peas so that we'll have fresh peas for New Years Day!

After we get the high tunnels built next week, we'll begin clearing the dead Vidal blanc vines out of the vineyard and preparing it for our new arrivals in the spring: Villard blanc. I can't wait to try this grape and develop a winemaking style for it. I have never had it before, so it's a huge risk in planting. But most importantly, I know that it will grow in our conditions, so I'm confident that we can make an excellent wine from it. It should take us about a month and a half of steady work to clear off the landscape fabric, cut down the plants, and dig the holes.

It might be winter now, but we still have produce for sale. If you're looking to buy our produce, here are the three ways to do so:

1) On the farm: Saturday morning at 4758 Poplar Tent Rd from 9-12. We will have veggies, eggs, meats (from Big Oak Farm), canned goods, and Uncle Scott's Rootbeer.

2) Via email: Saturday morning on Elizabeth Avenue in Charlotte at 11am, we run orders to Charlotte for our loyal customers. email us to receive the order form

3) Special order: Call 704-782-2117 to order food any time!

Farm Tour Time! and an update on the wine

It's time for the Know Your Farms Tour. There are tons of interesting farms on the tour this year. It's two days, so you can fit the tour into your schedule. If you're trying to eat locally, this is the way to learn all about the many things that we grow in the Piedmont. We are a scheduled stop on Saturday from 1-6 pm.
Here's a link with the details. We'll have cookies and wine to taste and produce, canned goods, and Uncle Scott's Root Beer for sale.

Hope to see you there!!

On a different note, the wine is going well. It had a sluggish fermentation, but once it got going, it went! I tried to get it to go about 2 Brix/day, but it ended up going about 4 Brix/day. It's through fermentation now, been pressed, and is sitting in a tank, settling, and going through malo -actic conversion. We're still waiting on the numbers to come back from the lab for alcohol, pH, TA, etc, but if taste is anything to go by, there's plenty of acid still in the wine. That is good news for a southern wine! After it finishes malo, we'll put some of it in barrels.

Thanks again for your support!

Winemakings

The fruit is picked!! Thanks so much, volunteers. You really make owning a small vineyard not only possible, but fun. I might not make as much money as a doctor or lawyer, but thanks to your support and encouragement, I feel enough respect to make up for it.

After the fruit was picked, we took it up in a refrigerated truck (sans refrigeration cause it broke) to Mocksville. We crushed and destemmed and pumped it to a tank where it macerated for approx 4 days. Yesterday, I turned off the chiller to let the must warm up to prepare it for inoculation, but by the time I was pumping over this morning, it still wasn't very warm. I put the yeast in, along with some nutrients, and pumped over for 5 more minutes. When I left the winery this afternoon, the thermometer still said 59, and that's a little low for my tastes. I hope to come in tomorrow and see proof of inoculation. It could take a while to get going because the final spray we put on (3 weeks before harvest) was still quite visible on the grapes.

But I'll keep you update. Pictures to come I swear!