Meanwhile, at Justin Vineyards...

The new owners of Justin are clear-cutting old growth oak forests to make room for more grape vines plus a huge reservoir, the filling of which will likely lower the aquifer level of the entire area, thereby impacting the wells of every neighbor they have (which luckily is not us).

They put some bullshit statement on their website about planting 5,000 NEW oaks to replace the century-old forest they ripped from the ground, but those will take 100 years to grow, assuming of course that they CAN grow to maturity amidst fields of water-sucking grapes, which I doubt. 

As for replacing the habitat and ecosystem of an entire oak forest? Ain't gonna happen, people.

If you drink Justin wines, this is the kind of environmental stewardship you are supporting with each bottle purchase. I don't know about you, but I've enjoyed my last bottle of Justin wine.

Actually the one thing I can say about their wines now is that they have unmistakable notes of dead forest on the palate and a very bitter finish. For me, anyway.

Here's a link to the article if you'd like to read it.

http://pasoroblesdailynews.com/justin-winery-clear-cutting/56473/

Fall around the homestead

Fall color in the vines of Big Ag's vineyard and our own olallieberries. Our table grape vines are still kinda green (upper right of second pic).

Fall has meant that chores are much more comfortable to do outside now, and so in addition to continuing our back yard project, we're also pruning, trimming and making the first early preparations for spring. 

By far our biggest success on the property has been our olallieberry, blackberry and raspberry vines down in the pasture. While last year was short on berries, the summer proved very hospitable for growth, so next year's harvest should be a good one.

The year before this, I had such a bumper crop I ended up selling quite a bit to a local restaurant, which was a nice little bit of extra income I was happy to have. I'm hoping 2016 is the same, but since I don't know what the weather is going to do, I don't want to count my berries before they hatch, so to speak.

Yesterday was such a nice sunny day I decided to finish up trussing the vines and clipping the ends off the really long ones, since I'd rather have some nice lateral branches with berries on them than one looooong strand.

Stepford Wife vine/root...can be whatever you want it to be. Spooky

I discovered while down there that there are blackberry shoots with roots on the ends of their vines trying to dig down into the ground, which must be how brambles get established.

I just find it amazing that anything can be so versatile that it was be a root or a shoot, depending on its environment. We should all be so flexible.

Around the rest of the property, we finally have chairs and a fire pit for the back yard. Perhaps we'll actually get around to lighting a fire in it this weekend. 

And Valentina is still happily fostering with us, she has laid an egg nearly every day and since I'm currently getting none from my other girls, she was literally the hen who saved Thanksgiving. She can stick around as long as she likes.

Valentina frolicking among the rose bushes.....

Big Ag and I frolicking among the vines.

Wheelbarrow Raisins

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.

The News

So the big news I wanted to share was that Big Ag interviewed for, and got, a position here locally as a vineyard manager.  Finally he will be working and living in the same zip code!  When we moved here in 2012 he decided he wanted to keep his job, which was a 65 mile drive from our home.  For the most part, it worked out well, except on Fridays when the commute home was bogged down by the many tourists coming in to roost on the Central Coast for the weekend, and then it could end up being a two-hour haul stuck in back of a long line of recreational vehicles and people not used to driving through the curvy hillsides.

At the time we moved, we knew it was a sacrifice and one which he cheerfully made, in fact the commute was not why he left his other job.  But it did occasionally make life more difficult for him, such as if he wanted to schedule a dentist appointment on the same day as he was working, or if we had an event to attend here.  But more than anything, he wanted a new challenge, and I think growing grapes is going to provide that, as well as put him in a place with better air, better land and more water.

So starting next month his commute will probably probably 10 miles, tops.  There are several vineyards he will be managing, one of which we can even see from the house.

The thing I am looking forward to the most is having him around more -- to occasionally be able to meet up for lunch or for him to stop in at the winery during the day just to say hello. And of course with losing the 12 hours per week he was driving to and from here and work, he'll be around a lot more anyway, both in the mornings and evenings.

And now we can both say we work in the wine business; he in growing, and me in serving and education!

In other wine news, the other night we watched the documentary, "A Year In Burgundy," and absolutely loved it.  I highly recommend it, served with a nice Pinot Noir or Chardonnay.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxoExRnzyaI

Surprise late harvest!

I was down in the pasture yesterday spreading around some chicken manure in approach of a coming rainstorm when I found these late harvest red grapes, in perfect condition and ready for picking, two months after harvest officially ended.  They are super-sweet, and a perfect end to the 2014 growing season.  I have no idea when these appeared but am very glad I found them before the freeze sets in.

Sometimes nature gives us a bad surprise -- gophers, disease, or other damage. And sometimes, she gives us a sweet treat long after we thought the season was over and done with.

Makin' Rain

So what's a cloudy day like this good for?  Not rain.  Nope, on this dry but cloudy day, I'm running the sprinklers (which is happening in this picture, if you look to the far left).  Over the last couple of days I've noticed our last stretch of remaining lawn in the back yard has taken on a definite yellow-ish cast, indicative of a lack of water.

It's only March, which in a normal year would usually mean our watering schedule would still be set for winter....a 10 minute sip of water, once a week, just to cover any dry weeks between storms.  You don't usually dare do more than that, because those regular rainstorms provide more than enough potential water to soak your yard nicely.  But in this very dry year, that 10 minutes weekly is just not cutting it, so last night I adjusted the watering schedule on the timer to water longer and more often.  And with a long stretch of clear weather in sight, it looks like we're going to be headed into a very, very brown and dry summer.

It's not a good sign.

While one or two dry years won't change the fate of our world, a longer period would.  Steve, the owner of the winery we like to frequent, was telling us a couple of weeks ago he's already had to start up his wells to water his vineyards, which means him, us and all our neighbors are all taxing the aquifer a little more than normal in this dry year.  And in an area of falling aquifer levels, that's never a good thing.

The other problem is the mineral content of our well water, which is high. In a municipal area, you'd just call it extremely hard water, capable of clogging your pipes and making your glassware opaque.  But in agriculture it's different. Every year, this area counts on some good, drenching rain to remove the built-up minerals from the soil and wash them away, so the rain deficit is a problem here, too, as plants don't grow as well in soil with mineral build-up.

The only bright spot is that, with so little rainfall, the brush around the area has not grown up as green or as thickly as it sometimes does.  This means that we probably have a lower wildfire risk than usual. But unfortunately, it also means that some wildlife, like deer, will have a harder time finding forage.  

But since it's a little late for enough rainfall to bring our totals back to rainfall, we'll just push through and look towards next year for some better rain totals.