I am trying a new method in drying raisins this week. Since we've had coastal fog in the mornings almost every day, it hasn't been the best weather to successfully dry grapes into raisins. And so my solution is this old wheelbarrow we keep in the pasture, with bird netting clipped to the top, which I can take in and out of our very warm and dry garage into the sunshine each day. Garage at night, sunshine all day long. It sounds like a winning combination to me, but we shall see.
When I lived in the San Joaquin Valley, the grape-drying was done on the ground, on paper trays. I'm sure it works well, but it's ecologically awful. After the grapes are dried and picked up, they burn the paper trays and it truly fouls the air for miles around. I do envy them the 24-hour dry weather that allows them to dry their grapes outdoors though. But not enough to move back there. While the morning fog may be bad for drying raisins, it makes wine grapes taste better, and human beings extremely happy. To have cool mornings to offset the hot afternoons is a blessing I'd never give back, even for raisins.
But hopefully this method will work. Red Flame Grapes, allowed to turn into raisins, are simply the best raisins EVER. So it is totally worth wheeling them around the property a little to get them the optimal conditions to "raisin up." I'm already tasting them in some December oatmeal raisin cookies and smiling at the thought.
Last night the weather guy was warning of a strong on-shore flow and marine layer making its way in from the beach, and he wasn't kidding. This morning we were wrapped in fog that smelled like the sea. It was heavenly.
Our homestead sits at about 1500 feet, which means that our "fog" is really just low clouds to those who live down in town, which is about 15 miles away and sitting at a much lower elevation. But in our neck of the woods, the clouds hug the hills and fill up the canyons, making everything damp and very quiet.
The marine layer also helps winemakers in the region grow some of the more temperamental grapes, like Pinot Noir. Some grapes, like Mouvedre for example, don't mind the heat, but for others (like Pinot), without the coastal cooling, their flavor would never fully develop. Indeed, the marine layer seems to help everything grow by giving it several hours of damp, cool weather, which often juxtaposes days which can be quite warm, even at this time of year (the daytime high yesterday was 78 degrees). I'm sure my new ollalieberry, raspberry, blueberry and and boysenberry bushes are happy with the cooling dampness as well this morning. I know I am.
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| Cheerful, no? |
Here in the Central Valley of California, it's not unusual to have a sky this color from November to about March, from dawn until dusk. It's a grey bowl that hangs over the entire valley, covering it in a thick blanket that doesn't go away. Get enough days of it in a row, and you will slowly begin to lose your mind, longing for visible sunrises, sunsets, or even an actual storm ... anything, other than slate grey low clouds that never lift or change.
I'm not at the point of madness yet; we've had a fair amount of sunny days but today was a classic winter day for this area. But I can't honestly say I'm OK with it. We were actually going to take pictures of the house today for the real estate listing and both my agent and I decided this was not a good day to take an inviting picture. The sun was almost out this morning (a temporary, freak occurrence), but it was a watery, anemic-looking sunshine which did nothing to enhance whatever it shone on. Blech.
Here is my greatest problem with The Valley... it's like this a lot in winter, forcing you, out of sheer tedium if nothing else, to seek a different kind of weather -- at the coast or the mountains. In the summer, it's hot every day and night, from May through October, and so you again flee for the coast or mountains, seeking some relief from the 24/7 heat.
I won't even talk about the bad air that builds up when clouds like this hang around, never letting any pollutants out. It's worse in summer, when a clear bowl of inversion layer does the same thing. And we have the asthma rates to prove it.
So all that being said, the bragging rights to this area center mainly around the fact that it has such good proximity to places of beauty, like those I just spoke of -- the lovely Central California coastline (2 hours away) or the snow-capped Sierras (also about 2 hours away). Yet, I've come to believe that living in proximity to a beautiful place without ever being able to pick up your mail and have your morning coffee there may not be hell, but it has got to be a kind of purgatory. You can visit paradise on a day pass, but you must always pack up and go back home to your purgatorial haze or fog at some point.
Luckily, no one spends their eternity in purgatory. According to the faith tradition which believes in purgatory, it's the temporary place you reside in before moving on to heaven. And so, we pray, it will be the same for us here, those whose current address of residence is under the Grey Bowl of Winter.
