Its's a new year in the vineyard!

Lupe Prunes a Merlot Vine

After harvest, November and December were pretty low key in the vineyard. Mostly weed work, erosion control and lots of ranch maintenance. All very important but last week we started my favorite work: Pruning! Pruning is the most important thing we do in the vineyard. Pruning determines the form and balance of the vine. When you prune you decide how many buds to leave where. The buds will start growing in late March or early April and become the green shoots which will bear fruit. If you leave too many buds at pruning time you could have a vine with lots of short shoots which can't ripen their grape clusters. Leaving too few buds could result in a vine with really vigorous shoots and not enough fruit. We want to have a vine that is balanced - the right amount of vegetative growth to the right amount of fruit.

My crew began pruning last Tuesday. We have 138,000 vines to prune over the next two months. That's a lot of cuts and a lot of brush to pull from the trellis wires. Today was a beautiful day to spend out in the vineyard pruning. A warm 70 degrees, Mexican music playing in the background, guys singing, the dog yelping and chasing rabbits - 2011 is looking pretty nice right now.

Salad From The Fields of Home

Chanterelle and Miner's Lettuce Salad

Sauteed chanterelles (I found them under an oak tree here on the property), miner's lettuce (Ashley found it growing wild in the vineyard), soft poached egg (from our chickens, of course), Hobbs bacon and a whole grain mustard dressing. How's that for eating locally?!

Chanterelle Season: It's ON!

A Giant Basket of Chanterelles or a Basket of Giant Chanterelles?

We've found a few over the last couple of months, but now I can tell you that it is officially ON!

More Where these Came From!

More Wild Mushrooms: Yellowfeet!

Ashley Cleans Mushrooms 

Last week we made our annual (well, second year in a row) New Years trip to Mendocino county. On the way up highway 1 we stopped at a state park to look for mushrooms. We didn't have much daylight left by the time we got there, but we did manage to find a basket full of Yellowfoot Mushrooms (Cantharellus lutescens). We cleaned them up on the bed at the hotel that night and carted them home the next day, along with a few cases of Anderson Valley wine!
Ashley got me a great new book for Christmas called "The Wild Table". It It has sections on all sorts of foraged foods, and a bunch of great mushroom recipes. The book is written by Connie "The Mushroom Lady" Green, proprietress of Wine Forest Wild Foods, and Sarah Scott, a celebrated local Chef.

The Wild Table: Seasonal Foraged Food and Recipes

I made a milk braised pork stew with yellowfoot mushrooms inspired by a recipe in the book. It was delicious served with soft polenta and braised greens, and the perfect dish to serve guests on a chilly January evening.

The Beginnings of Milk Braised Pork Stew with Yellowfoot Mushrooms

Meet Mabel and more chicken drama

Mable stares down the camera

As I have said before, most of the drama in our family centers around our animals, which I guess is a good thing. About two months ago I went out to the chicken yard after work to gather eggs. The chickens seemed a little rattled - Gladys and her chicks were out of their little enclosed corner. I was collecting the eggs from the nest boxes and I found Thelma (Crooked Chicken) laying dead under the coop. Maybe the injuries sustained during her encounter with coyote finally caught up with her, or maybe it had had nothing to do with that - we really don't know why she died. I know it happens and maybe we've been lucky with our chickens being so healthy so far but it is still really hard to lose one.
Right before I saw Thelma I tried to catch Gladys and the chicks to get them back in their protected area. In this process I scared Mabel and she flew out of the chicken yard. As I was investigating Thelma I heard chicken yelps and realized that Ouzo had gotten a hold of Mabel. Once again, I go running down the hill (a very steep hill) after the dog yelling like a crazy lady. I was wearing sandals and realized I was moments away from breaking my ankle so I kicked them off and ran down the burr-studded hill in my socks. I finally caught up with Ouzo and got Mabel out of his mouth. I had Mabel in one arm and was trying to roll and scold Ouzo with the other (that didn't work very well) and then trudged back up the hill in my socks. I brought Mabel home and relayed the chicken drama to Matt. Mabel was fine, just matted down with burs. We returned Mabel, closed up Gladys and the chicks and removed poor Thelma from the yard.
Mabel is an Auracana hen (a green egg layer). She's lighter colored and has a beard (I always like the ones with beards). All of the Auracanas (Hazel, Mabel, Fern and Marla) are prolific egg layers and a little timid. The days are getting shorter which is reflected in our daily egg catch. Right now we're down to 2 to 3 eggs per day from an average of 6 during the long summer days. There are many signs of the upcoming winter on the farm and the chickens are just one of them.

Walnuts!

Squirreling away our share

One of the many joys of living here is the giant walnut tree in front of our house. A quarter of it split and fell a couple years ago and it's still huge. Its a beautiful tree and every couple years it produces a bumper crop of walnuts. This is one of those years. We, however, are not the only ones that enjoy the fruit of this tree. We are in a race against the squirrel. I think we're winning so far, but I do have thumbs and buckets so I recognize that it is not a very fair race. We can hear them fall from inside our house and I can see the squirrel rushing out to find the fallen nut before I can get my boots on. We have been gathering them pretty steadily over the last two weeks. They really started to fall with the first big rain of the season. The nut itself is encased in a green husk which is hanging from the branch. When it gets ripe the husk cracks and releases the walnut in its shell. We were so excited about the baskets of walnuts we've been able to gather that I eagerly cracked open a few. The nuts were still a little soft and under ripe tasting. Last time I gathered nuts they didn't taste like this - they were wonderful. I think we might be collecting them earlier this year than I usually do - both because of trying to beat the squirrel and because of the rain prematurely knocking them out of their husks. I think that if we just let them dry a little in their shells that they will be delicious. We'll see. Walnuts are one of those things that I hated as a child and now I love.
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Walnut about to fall.....

Wild Mushroom Season!

First Chanterelle of the year!

Just  as my friend Mary Jo predicted, two weeks after the first rains of the season we have mushrooms! Ashley and I found a couple of pounds of golden chanterelles yesterday, practically in our back yard! (ok, so we live on a 500 acre ranch, but these were just a short distance from the road!) We only just started to forage mushrooms last season, and are quite cautious about what we take home, not feeling like we know enough about these fungi to take any chances with possibly poisonous ones. We are, however, 100% confident in discerning chanterelles. We have both the golden and white varieties around here, and both are easy to identify and delicious!

Hello Beautiful!

We found these guys just starting to push through the leaf litter underneath a live oak on an east facing slope. I've learned that mushroom people need to know these details!

Handful of Yum!

Last nights dinner? Chanterelle risotto and a big salad!