Hello and Welcome,
This is the Climate Update for
the month of April 2013.
April has turned out to be a fine
month indeed. While the numbers are clearly subject to interpretation, we can
report with great confidence that everything felt just about right as we
entered the 2013 growing season.
The equipment is also looking for
a little preventive maintenance, or percussive as the case may be. The flail
mower is a piece of equipment that has a very hard life. The flail mower, while
not an independent agency, is responsible for mowing all of the vineyard rows,
headland spaces at the end of the rows, all roadways, open ground, small and
sometimes large tree branches, and the front yard. This implement is also
responsible for the majority of Ernie’s repairs and maintenance budget. It eats
grease, bearings, flail blades, nuts and bolts, diesel and time, lots and lots of
time. But when the flail is dialed in, it can really put down a nice trim.
After a recent gearbox seal
replacement Ernie had to refill the gearbox with gear oil. Of course the fill
plug is on the side, not the top of the gearbox. Apparently, this is the
preferred design of Bondioli
& Pavesi. At the same time, the “3 Point” mounting brackets were being
reattached and reinforced by a really great friend (people who know how to weld
are, by definition, great friends.)
Ernie is now scouring the shop
for a funnel with a 90 degree bend and 3/8” outlet. But much like the Grinch
searching for Reindeer, there were none to be found. However, after 14 years of
farming, Ernie has seen this movie before. As if standing at the top of Mt. Crumpet
“Hey, I just made a funnel out of an old business card!” The reply
was delivered dry and in perfect cadence: “Yeah,
we’re really farmin’ now.”
Which leads us to this
inescapable axiom: Farmin’ is what you are doing when you are not growing great
wine.
Another curious thing happened
this Spring, the vineyard grew! In size that is. Yep, after wishing and waiting
and farmin’ all of these years, Ernie finally pulled the trigger and planted a
wee little bit of the very fine Gewürztraminer. While this is all very
exciting, it will be another 2 years (or more if the deer discover it) before
we have wine to enjoy.
As is par for the course, the
grassed vineyard rows have received the brown canes and shoots from last year
where the flail mower found them and promptly returned them to the soil along
with some nice green grass clippings. The “Alternate” rows are where we plant
cover crops to feed our vines.
That process is a bit more
involved and includes not only the obligatory flail mowing but a pass with the
chisel plow as well to open things up. We then hook up the roto-tiller to turn
last years cover crop back into the soil and prepare a nice fluffed-up seed
bed. The last step is to fill up the seed drill with a summer blend of
Buckwheat and Vetch and drill it in. Then there is a bit of tried and true
farmin’ – we wait for rain.
These are Buckwheat and Vetch cover
crop seeds before and after being drilled into the “Alternate” rows. We
consider the soil to be the plants’ stomach. By planting cover crops that add
nitrogen to the soil and promote overall soil health, we can avoid the use of
chemical fertilizers. These cover crops also provide a nice habitat for beneficial
insects (think carnivores) that can help manage the populations of non-beneficial
insects (think dinner.)
However interesting these acts of
farmin’ may be, the vines are dedicated to a singular purpose: Making us work
for it! And that is what’s up next. Each of these precious little “wine makers”
are in for a little shoot thinning and trunk suckering. Then we start bringing
up the catch wires and clipping their fruit bearing shoots into place. This is
followed by more farmin’ as we hope for nice weather while the vines are
flowering and hopefully setting a nice crop of wineberries. Wouldn’t that be
somethin’?
Well, here are the farmin’
numbers so far this year.
We entered the growing season on
April 19 (day 109 of the Julian Calendar) with Budbreak. This is the first
marker from the season that lets us know that harvest is happening in the
southern Hemisphere and we are a scant 6 months away here.
We look at April in two halves
because the first half is usually pretty cold and we have the technology to
separate the data. The first half of the month gave us 0.0 degree days, a high
of 68.8 (told you it was nice) and a low of 34.9 degrees F.
The second half of the month gave
us 51.7 degree days, a high of 80.6 (How’s that for April showing off?) and a low
of 32.4 degrees F. Rainfall for the month was 2.22 inches.
Here’s what we had to say last year: “We have recorded about
52.9 degree days from April 1st through April 30th. All of this heat
accumulation occurred in the second half of the month. We checked at April
15th, but we had nothing. We reached a high of 81.5 and a low of 31.9 with 3.12
inches of rain directed mostly at Ernie as he drove his crawler through the
vineyard.”
Hmm, seems like we may have seen this farmin’ movie before.
If you missed the 2013 Spring Cellar report, you can find that right here: Amalie Robert 2013 Spring Cellar Report
Kindest Regards,
Dena and Ernie
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