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!

At last... we've finished harvest!

We finished harvest on the vineyard I manage at 5:00 this afternoon, November 5. I'm happy and tired and relieved and I think my crew feels the same. My crew did an amazing job picking 148 tons of grapes. Some of those tons in very hot weather, some in rain. At one point the tractor slid sideways down the hill in the mud - not a good thing. We had three days this week of 75-78 degree weather and it was beautiful. Just what the vines needed. The skins softened and the red color bled from the grapes as you squeezed them. A little bit of mold - hopefully that mildewy smell in the last couple lots of grapes will dissipate. I just talked to my neighbor who manages the ranch down the road and he says this was the most unpredictable and difficult year he has seen in his many, many years (well over 20 just on this mountain) of farming.

The winery will still be busy processing the grapes and helping them to become wine over the next couple weeks. In the vineyard, we can relax a little and mostly just worry about erosion control and the upcoming rains. Now we can put our trailers to rest and our picking pans in the barn for storage. Put away the picking shears and get out the rain boots and shovels!

Food and Wine Pairings on intowine.com

I've been asked to come up with a few food and wine pairings for intowine.com, and the first one has been published! Check out my suggestion for lamb shanks.  http://www.intowine.com/best-wine-pair-lamb-shanks

Harvest Report

Ashley with a bin of zin

As much as I love Fall I sometimes forget how busy we get. From our lack of blog posts you might think we've been sitting on our butts watching baseball for the last month (well now we have been doing that for the last week and a half - Yay Giants!). We have been very busy picking grapes, cooking many delicious meals, harvesting my dad's grapes, picking figs and apples, gathering walnuts, attending music festivals and concerts, and generally being really tired from working so many long hours. Harvest in the vineyard has been going strong. We started on September 30 and picked pretty consistently for the next three weeks. The weekend before last we got over 8 inches of rain here - and at least five fell all on Sunday. Last week it was cold and it rained a little more. So it has been a very difficult harvest, which seems only appropriate after such a tough growing season. It is November 2 and we still have about 30 tons hanging out on the vine - this is very late - we rarely ever pick in November. Hopefully we will finish harvest this week, but there are a couple blocks of Cabernet that just aren't quite ready yet. Will they get any better if we let them hang out for another week in November? That's the big question. The days are getting short, the weather is risky, and there is a lot of water in the ground from the last rains (more than what I would irrigate in an entire season). However, it could be 80 degrees on Wednesday, maybe it will be enough sun and ripening weather to just bump up the sugar, lower the acid a touch and soften those tannins. So far, most of the grapes we have harvested this year have had ripe flavors at lower sugar levels, which we love. In general, the 2010 harvest is following that of a typical cool climate growing area - sugar on the low side, acid on the high side, and nice flavors from a long easy, cool ripening period. I am definitely looking forward to this harvest and this growing season ending - its been pretty rough. Then it's mud, rain, scotch and cozy fires in the wood stove.

Matt picks grapes at the Anderson vineyard

Ashley in the Napa Paper

Ashley's friend Catherine writes a wine column in the Napa Valley Register. Ashley was featured last week. Check it out! http://napavalleyregister.com/lifestyles/food-and-cooking/wine/columnists/wine-tales/article_2fdf5fd8-e303-11df-bfaa-001cc4c03286.html

Meet Pearl

Pearl

Pearl is another Light Brahma - one of the large, fluffy white ones with feathers on her feet. She is the middle Brahma - Thelma being the largest and Bernie the smallest. But Pearl is special - Pearl was, unfortunately, a favorite of the roosters. I try not to anthropomorphize the chickens, but sometimes its hard not to. We used to have two roosters (Cornelius the red rooster (the more docile) and his brother the white rooster(the aggressor)). The roosters would tag team the hens and sort of gang up on them. Initially it was very disturbing, but then I thought - now Ashley - they're chickens - don't go putting your human emotions on them. They're animals, its just what they do. Sex among animals is different than among humans, so don't go feeling bad for the hens with the two roosters all over them. But then we noticed that two of the hens, Pearl and Rhonda, had wounds on their necks. The rooster usually grabs on to the hen's neck when it mounts. Rhonda's neck wasn't too horrible, but Pearl's was awful. That's the day we decided that the white rooster would be dinner - our first attempt at harvesting a chicken - and that the red rooster would remain as the sole rooster and be named. I got home from work the day that we discovered just how severely wounded Pearl was and Matt had turned our kitchen into an operating room. The lamp, sutures, bentadine, scissors, were all ready for me. Matt held Pearl and cleaned up her wound and I sutured it as best I could. It had been many years since my short-lived wild bird rehab career, but I managed. It took her a little while to completely heal and for her neck feathers to grow back, but she is doing just fine now. I think all the hens are happy to just have one rooster 'taking care of them'.

Harvest!!!!

Finally! The first day of harvest - September 30 (oh, and my birthday too). Yesterday we picked two and a half tons of Merlot from our mountain vineyard. We picked a ton at the top of one block, a ton at the top of another block and half a ton at the bottom of a block. We still haven't picked an entire block yet. The corner of this block is ripe, the bottom of that block - this is how it usually goes at the beginning of harvest. The soil and sun exposure is so variable that it makes for uneven ripening. After we finished picking the grapes at 10:30 in the morning, the vineyard crew went up to the winery and we toasted to the 2010 harvest. We collected a little juice from the first bin of grapes as the winery interns were crushing it and added it to some sparkling wine. Our own kind of harvest mimosa. We will continue picking Merlot, a little Malbec and maybe a little Syrah next week. The weather has been HOT this week which has certainly helped the ripening process along. It started late but those grapes are tasting great. It finally started to feel like harvest in the valley this week. The energy changes at harvest time. At the beginning the air is full of excitement and anticipation. After another couple weeks the mood is nervous, tired and crabby. Its no fun going to the grocery store - everyone is on edge. Right now I am very excited to starting harvesting the grapes we've been farming all year.

Here's to a safe and happy harvest!

Meet Marla

Marla

        Marla, oh Marla the mysterious chick! February 11, 2009 a box of day old chicks arrived for us from Murray McMurray Hatchery. Matt and I drove down the hill to the post office so excited about the arrival of our new babies. With an order of 25 you got one extra mystery chick. We had ordered Black Stars, Araucanas, Light Brahmas, and Mottled Houdans. We brought the day old chicks home and put them in the half-ton grape picking bin-turned chick brooder that we made in our shed. We kept them warm under a heat lamp and made sure they had food, water and nutrients. We picked the poo off their butts when they needed it and generally spent a lot of time the next few weeks in the shed cooing over the little chicks. We figured out which chicks were which varieties but then there was one chick that was different from the rest. She was much bigger, fluffy and bright yellow. She must be the mystery chick! We looked in our chicken books and on-line trying to guess what breed she was - buff orpington, maybe? We just called her mystery chick for the first few months of her life. No one got names until we were pretty sure they'd stick around for awhile. We gave eight away to a friend; twenty five was too much for us. We didn't know what breed Marla was until she laid her first egg. It was green! Marla was an Araucana. We had three other Araucanas, Hazel, Mabel, and Fern and they were not fluffy and yellow, but more mottled tan, brown, gold - beautiful. After reading more about Araucanas we realized how varied they are; some are even white. They are one of the few breeds that lays green eggs. So we were happy to have another Araucana. It's fun giving away green eggs, sometimes they are more blue in hue - it's like Easter all the time.

Fall

                  Today is the first day of fall. That used to mean football and apple orchards (and apple orchard doughnuts!). Then it mostly meant harvest. Now there are so many signs of autumn and the changing of the seasons in my life. The chickens have started to lay fewer eggs and they go back to the coop to roost much earlier in the evening. The yellow star thistle is almost bloomed out and my bees are not as noticeable buzzing around during the day. The maple leaves are turning an east coast yellow and orange. My grapes are ripening (very slowly this year, but they are indeed ripening). We have been harvesting bushels of apples (and will gather more this weekend from my folks' place). We are still enjoying local tomatoes but are conscious of the eminent end of the season. The geese from the irrigation ponds have flown away. The leaves are long gone from the buckeyes. The figs are teasing us - not quite ready yet. We are thinking about getting our wood pile ready for cozy fires at home. Every morning when I start work at 6:30 it is a little bit darker and harder to get moving. Grape trucks are moving through the valley. Straw bales (to protect our soil from the approaching rains) are stocked at the ag supply stores. The young, foreign winery interns have arrived and wander the aisles of the grocery store and hang out in front of the one bar in town. The September moon (always one that has an effect on me) is almost full tonight and beautiful hanging over the pond below our house. The frogs are singing, welcoming the cooler days and the promise of rain. Tonight I smelled harvest for the first time this year. Every year along the main stretch of the valley the smell of ripening, fermenting (....and composting) grapes fills tourists and locals noses alike.

To a happy fall! I wish everyone a healthy and productive harvest this year - no matter what the earth may be giving you.
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Dirt! The Movie

We are going to see the Napa Premiere of this film next weekend at the Napa Valley Museum in Yountville. The screening is sponsored by The Napa County RCD, The Napa Valley Museum, The Napa Valley Grapegrowers, and Napa County Farm Bureau.

Everyone in the area should come... its free! If you can't catch it in Napa, be sure to keep a lookout for the film in your area. It looks like it will address some important issues. Here's the site:  www.dirtthemovie.org

Another Week in the Vineyard

Dropping Clusters on Short Shoots.

It is September 20 and I still have green grapes out there. What a year! Late rains (which is mostly good), cold, late budbreak, slow growth, late bloom, shatter, powdery mildew, hundreds of thousands of procreating voles, late, uneven veraison, intense heat and sunburn, oh, and yesterday it rained. Yup - cold, foggy, and drizzle. Perfect ripening weather. Seriously, when will the grapes ripen? It is mid (almost late) September and my sugars are barely creeping up. I don't anticipate picking anything until the first of October. For all those potential wine buyers out there, 2010 will be great - don't worry. Everything I mentioned above just adds character.
 The Cabernet Sauvignon looks good. It is all red and we have been dropping clusters on short shoots that won't ripen up as well as clusters on nice, strong, tall shoots. We've been through the Merlot, Malbec and Cabernet Franc dropping green and pink clusters. The Petit Verdot? Well, we will keep dropping green fruit until it is all red. We've already been through it once but there is still a lot of green fruit. And, it's September 20. That's just not ok. This will be my twelfth harvest at this vineyard and I'm pretty sure this is the hardest growing season yet. We'll see how harvest goes. I am hoping for warm, sunny weather - and how can we make the days get longer instead of shorter?

Dropped Fruit.
Dropping the very green clusters should help the ones that are further along ripen up.

Meet Cornelius

Cock of the Walk

Our rooster - Cornelius. He is a gorgeous bird! He wakes us up every morning before the sun comes up and crows off and on throughout the day. Cornelius is the son of Gladys (a Rhode Island Red) and Barnge (an Auracana). Last summer we lost our most wonderful dog, Robo. Robo used to protect the chickens and after he died the wild life moved in incredibly quickly. The week after Robo died we lost three chickens to a coyote, including Barnge (named after Matt's brother Andrew's pretend character). At first we thought it was a fox, but after the Thelma incident we were pretty sure a coyote was the culprit. Gladys disappeared and we were so upset - assuming a predator got her. A couple days later, our neighbor said there was a chicken in her bushes. I asked if it was Gladys but Maria hadn't asked the hen it's name. It was indeed Gladys and she was in the bushes sitting on five eggs. So we moved her and her eggs to a bin to protect them and about 3 weeks later two of Gladys' eggs hatched. They were adorable chicks and Gladys did a great job raising them. When the two roosters grew up they were too much for the chickens and the white rooster became dinner and the red rooster became Cornelius. The same day we decided to keep only one rooster, our new puppy, Ouzo got hold of Cornelius. I heard chicken wales and saw Ouzo over the side of the hill with Cornelius in his mouth. So once again I go running like a crazy lady after the dog yelling and screaming. I was able to get Cornelius out of the dog's mouth and other than a couple very small wounds on his back and neck he was just fine. We still have hopes that when Ouzo grows up he will protect the chickens like Robo did but right now he still wants to eat them.

Drying Apples

Bring on the Apples!

We are already blessed with an abundance of apples this year. Last night's project was getting a basket ready for drying.

Automation.

I've always been skeptical about devices like this. I'm pretty fast with a peeler and they look kind of rickety. Nevertheless I picked up one of these Apple Peeling Machines at the hardware store, knowing we have a full season of preserving ahead of us. This thing KICKS BUTT! It peels, cores, and slices an apple in about 5 seconds. Great for preserving. This baby enabled us to get a whole basket of apples ready for the dehydrator in about 15 minutes. A guy at the hardware store called it an "Apple Lathe".

Ready to Dry

Why Dry?
We will surely be making apple butter and apple sauce this fall, but wanted to get some dried apples put up. Why? Ashley's Great Grandmother's Apple Stack Cake, of course! Recipe to come...
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Voles in the Vineyard

Girdled Grapevine

My nemesis.

Meadow voles.

They are basically field mice. and yes, they're fuzzy and plump and cute but I would really like them to go away now. So here's the problem: they chew around the base of the trunks of baby grapevines, thus girdling and killing the vine. Why do we have this problem? Lots of spring rains, organic farming, and terraces. It rained over 20 inches here between March, April and May. Therefore the grasses (wild oats, barley and native grasses), clover (which we plant on purpose as a cover crop), and weeds (bristly ox tongue, yellow star thistle, fluvellin, and many others) grew like crazy. We mowed four times! My grapevines are planted on terraces. Therefore we can only get to one side of the vine with a tractor (and mower, cultivator, etc.). We farm organically and because there are no effective organic herbicides we don't use any herbicides at all. Hence, LOTS of weeds. We weedeat all the terraces (by 'we' I mean my awesome crew and some temporary farm workers who work so hard) and under the vines. After weedeating, there is a lot of dried grass around the vines. This acts as a mulch preventing a lot of further weed growth but it is also protection for the voles from predators. We have many hawks, kestrels and owls living in the oak woodland surrounding our vineyard and they do eat the voles, but all the excess vegetation this year makes hunting difficult. We have put up some perches for the hawks throughout the vineyard and i definitely plan to put more up in the next few weeks. This past week, the vineyard crew spent a couple days shoveling out weeds in a 3 foot swath under the vines. The hope is that this will give them less protection from predators. I have had 150 mouse traps on the ranch for the last two months (we bait them with peanut butter). They work, but catching 20-30 voles a day doesn't make much of a dent when there are thousands and thousands. I need to find birth control for voles. Or an organic, less toxic bait would be good. I did finally have to put out vole bait in one area - it works. The bait I use is not toxic to secondary consumers so birds that eat the dead voles should be fine, but I hate putting poison out in my vineyard. But I also cannot let my vineyard be killed by these buggers!

Baby Vines in their "Second Leaf"

Meet Thelma (aka Crooked Chicken)

Thelma

It was a rainy day last October and I was home sick from work. I was in the kitchen doing a few dishes when all of a sudden I heard a huge commotion among the chickens. I looked out the window and saw a big fluffy tail saunter by. I ran outside (in my slippers and monkey pajamas) in the rain and saw a coyote with a big, fluffy, white chicken in its mouth run off. I took off after it like a crazy mad woman in my pj's screaming at the coyote. The coyote took off in the brush and I lost it. I ran down to the coop where the chickens were hanging out and did a count. They were all there. I counted again - one, two, three white chickens. Everyone looked fine at first glance. I was very confused - I knew the coyote had one of my Light Brahmas. When Matt came home I told him about the chicken drama and asked him to help me look at the chickens because I knew the coyote got one but yet they were all accounted for. Matt noticed that Thelma, the biggest Light Brahma, was looking rather odd. Upon closer inspection we determined that the coyote did have Thelma but must have dropped her when the crazy lady ran after it. There were no open wounds, no blood, but her keel bone was no longer in the center of her chest. We think the coyote must have crushed some bones and moved around some others. We were worried and watched her carefully for a while, but Thelma was totally fine, just crooked. She's still funny looking but lays eggs and pecks and scratches and does all the normal chicken things. Over the last three years of raising chickens I have been amazed at how hardy they can be.

This Week in the Vineyard 3

Bring on the Zinc Oxide!

So I've been complaining about all the cool weather this year and this week it got up to 107 degrees! Tuesday and Wednesday both got over 104. Up here on the mountain on Wednesday it was already 90 at 8:00 in the morning. I was very happy to get some hot weather, it felt like summer had finally arrived (for three days anyway), but this heat resulted in severe sunburn in many vineyards. My vineyard has areas that just fried. You can see what happens to the fruit from the pictures, and in some cases, even the leaves get scorched. This fruit will most likely dry up and fall off or in some cases we will have to remove burnt clusters or individual burnt grapes. A few sunburned grapes are ok, there are always a few, but if there are too many it can give the wine an undesirable cooked flavor. A burnt berry will not fully ripen even if it doesn't desiccate. I am not going to remove all the burnt grapes right away because I don't want to expose the rest of the fruit to possible future heat waves. Usually the grapes can acclimate a bit and don't always get burned but this year has been so mild and it turned so hot very suddenly that the grapes were very sensitive. Also, in some cases vineyard managers leafed much more than normal (because of the abnormally cool season) and the grapes were therefore more exposed to the sun. We did this in our vineyard, but only on the morning side and it was the afternoon sun side that burned. My vineyard, and many others as well, will lose a significant amount of crop due to this sunburn. So the saga continues - a very difficult growing year indeed.

Aftermath of a Heat Wave

Sticky and Happy

Cap on and Cap Removed

Ashley wrote this post last Sunday evening.  -Matt


Bee day today! We worked with the hives today - including extracting honey! Hive #1 is the more aggressive of the two and some of the comb they make is a little funky and harder to work with. Hive #2 is calm and very orderly compared to the first. Both the hives are doing really well and were getting too full - of honey and brood. So, we took out five frames of honey from hive #1 and added a queen excluder and a honey super on top. We took seven frames full of capped honey from hive #2 and added another deep brood chamber under the queen excluder and honey super. So now both consist of two deep and one honey super.

            Each time we do this we a learn a little more. This time I brought the honey frames up in two passes (while Matt was finishing getting the new frames and supers ready) because I always forget how heavy the honey is and getting it back up the hill to our honey shed is not an easy task. We also closed the door to the shed this time trying to stay mostly free of bees while we extracted the honey. The bees did, however, find the frames (in a covered bin) and eventually there were several hundred buzzing bees right in front of our house cleaning up all the honey we dripped. It is a little nerve racking having all those bees around but we both remained calm and I didn't get stung at all (which is odd for me) and Matt only got stung once.

            We extracted close to three gallons of beautiful, amber honey. In order to extract the honey we take the full frame and with a hot knife we cut off the wax cap that the bees make to cover the honey. We then put the frame with cap removed into the honey extractor (just a simple centrifuge that holds three frames at a time) and spin the honey out of the cells. Then we flip the frame over and do the same to the other side. It goes through a strainer when it leaves the extractor and fills up the bucket. I have been amazed at how much honey these bees have produced this year. This batch should be mostly yellow star thistle and probably some blackberry and who knows what else mixed in. Right now there is still plenty of yellow star thistle around (as a vineyard manager I hate it but as a beekeeper I quite like it) so the bees should have plenty of pollen and nectar for a little while. Come fall, things get to be a little leaner because its usually pretty dry and there aren't very many flowers in bloom so we have to make sure the bees have enough honey in the hive to get them through a couple of tough months. This might be the last time we extract honey until early next year but who knows - these bees have been very busy indeed!

Honey Flow

This Week in the Vineyard 2

Woo Hoo! More Red Berries!

We have been sitting above the fog the last couple days and it even got up to 89 degrees yesterday (rare this year) so my grapes are beginning the ripening process. There has been a really big difference in the red to green berry ratio just in the last two days. You can almost watch them change color. They still have a long way to go - no color at all in the Cab Franc or Petit Verdot and the Merlot and Malbec are pretty slow but that Cabernet is speeding right along and making me happy. Other than waiting for grapes to turn red we have been doing some more leafing in shady, vigorous blocks. Next week we will start to crop thin. Unfortunately, I will probably end up dropping more crop this year than I anticipated at the beginning of the season. My vines are not over cropped. However, because this year is so late I am afraid of not being able to ripen the grapes before unsettled weather comes in the fall. If I leave a good amount of fruit on the vines I run the risk of it not being able to fully ripen. If this were two weeks ago I wouldn't worry about it and I probably would not drop very much. In a normal year we would have no problem ripening our small crop. This year is not normal. Its funny though, farmers are all complaining about what a crazy year this is, but I kind of feel like we say that almost every year. Here's to never having a normal year - how boring would that be.

Bats in the Belfry

Bat, foreground. Our kitchen ceiling, background.

We had bats in the house last night. Two at once! We aren't the types to be scared by this kind of thing- We live in the country and appreciate all of the creatures here. It's just when a couple of them are flitting around in the house we get a little jumpy. I did manage to snap few pictures using the turn on flash, turn off auto focus and point camera towards flying bat method. They are fast! After closing a few doors and opening another, one of our visitors flew outside on its own. The other was captured and released unharmed into the wild by my wife, who is skilled with the broom and strainer.

Ashley the Bat Whisperer

Lone Pine

Solo Piña at Newton Vineyard

Here's a cool picture of the vineyard at Newton known as Solo Piña. See the lone pine tree? This was taken while on a hike along the Napa/Sonoma county line a few weeks ago. Newton Vineyard grows great wine!

Meet Rhonda

Rhonda

Rhonda is a Black Star Hen. Black Stars are known be egg laying machines! I'm not sure if I would go that far, but she is a great layer. She lays brown eggs, a shade darker than the brown eggs of the Light Brahmas and Rhode Island Reds. All of our chickens are very friendly and come running up to the door of the chicken yard when they see us coming but Rhonda is the only one that routinely eats out of my hand and lets me pet her (when she's in the mood that is). The chickens tend to stick together but Rhonda will often be off on her own pecking and scratching and is usually the first to go after the leftover veggie scraps Matt brings from work. Rhonda is named after a woman I worked with 15 years ago at a dry cleaners in the suburbs of Detroit. She and Bernie ran the machines and were a hilarious pair. Rhonda is a large black woman and Bernie is a teeny tiny little white woman and they were great friends and their back and forth jabbing of each other made those hot days go much faster. Rhonda was more of the mother hen to us young counter girls and was a stain removing wizard. I hope they would be happy know I have a Rhonda/Bernie chicken pair in my coop. You'll meet Bernie in a later post.

Rhonda's is the Darkest

Camp Chef Pro 90 Outdoor Stove

Why heat up/stink up/mess up the kitchen?

We love our Camp Chef Pro 90 outdoor stove! We got it as a wedding present and have been using it a lot. We haven't taken it camping yet... but anytime we don't want to heat up or stink up the kitchen we use it. At our house the smoke detector and the dinner bell are  often synonymous... I do a lot of high heat searing and that can  mean a bit of smoke... OK when under a commercial vent hood, but not such a good idea in a little home kitchen. Searing fish, canning (above), stir frys, Ashley has even used it to make biodynamic teas to use in the vineyard. 3 big 30,000 BTU burners! It will be great to take camping, but is serving us quite well on the back porch!

This Week in the Vineyard

first berries turning pink

I am waiting, not so patiently, for my grapes to go through veraison (when they turn from green to red and start accumulating sugar). This week a few berries here and there are turning pink. Normally at this time at least half of the grapes on the ranch would be pink or red. It was has been so cold this year that the growth and development of the grapes is quite late. Because of the cold, foggy season we have been doing things a little differently in the vineyard. Right now, and for the last two weeks, my crew has been removing leaves and lateral shoots right around the fruit on the morning sun side of the vines. We have to be careful not to remove too many leaves so the fruit doesn't get sun burned in case we do happen to get some hot weather soon. However, we need to take enough off to open up the canopy and let more light and sun on the grapes to help speed along the ripening process. So I will keep hunting for my red berries and hoping for warm weather.

Padrón Peppers

 pimientos de Padrón

There are so many things I love about summer in Northern California. Most of them, of course, are centered around food. One of them is the Padrón pepper! Oh my goodness, they are delicious. The key is to pick them when they are pretty small - about two inches long or smaller. When they're older and bigger they are much spicier and you lose a little bit of that fresh, full flavor. All Matt does is fry them up in a some hot olive oil and throw a handful of coarse salt on top. That's it! And I am convinced that they are the perfect beer snack.

A Late Welcome to Tomato Season

Ashley shops at the St. Helena Farmers' Market

It took a while to get started this year, but tomato season is upon us! In the words of Guy Clark:

 "Only two things that money can't buy-

 That's true love & homegrown tomatoes"

The next best thing to the homegrown variety is the Farmers' Market variety! We can't get enough of them. We don't have to do much to them- We recently served them with just a handful of field greens and a light splash of balsamic vinegar, good olive oil and a little S&P. They are delicious of course with fresh buffalo mozzarella and basil. or buratta and... I could go on and on...

Go out and enjoy some love and tomatoes! We sure are!

Heirloom Tomatoes and Field Greens

Foggy Morning on the Mountain

Napa Valley from 1600 feet

This was the view from our deck this morning looking down into the valley. We are at about 1600 feet elevation and were sitting just above the fog. This is a typical summer morning - the valley socked in and us bathing in sunshine. It often looks like we're looking out at the ocean. Up here on the mountain, our afternoons don't get quite as hot as the valley but we also don't get the huge fluctuations in the day time and night time temperatures. This year has been rather atypical with the fog layer often up to 2000 feet or higher and chilly nights and mornings - so it was very welcome when we started sitting above the fog layer last week. The grapes need all the sun they can get this year.

Honeybee

Apis mellifera

Just a cool picture of a honeybee taken up near the winery last weekend. They are hard at work on our (their) next batch of Spring Mountain honey!

New Honey!

Ashley goes in after it!

Ashley put in two new colonies of bees in April. Last week we had our first honey harvest! Almost two and a half gallons. Wow. We are saying that it is probably mostly from blackberry flowers, but there are certainly  a few fruit trees on the property that were in bloom, and a bit of lavender too. We put it all into sterilized Jars and have started to dole it out. 4 ounce jars for acquaintances, 8 ounce jars for family and friends! Maybe next year we will have a little table at the farmers market?

Meet Gladys and the Chicks

Gladys and The Chicks

Most of the drama in our family is centered around the chickens. Gladys is our oldest hen. She was one of the first group of chickens I raised. My friend Debra raised her for the first two months, along with Edna, Wanda, Bertha, Bula, Carolina, Henrietta, and Raeline. Then I took them and put them in the coop my dad and I made. This was April of 2007. She is the only one left from that group. Anyway, Gladys got a little broody while Matt and I were on our honeymoon in June - she must have missed us. The neighbors were taking care of the chickens and let Gladys sit on the eggs, so excited that she was going to have little chicks. So three weeks later Gladys successfully hatched two little chicks. One was totally fine and healthy, the other had tons of energy and fight but had splayed legs and couldn't stand. We made a little brace for her and propped her up in a little cup under a heat lamp and made sure she got food and water. We all tried our best but she didn't make it through the night. The other chick did great for a few days until all of a sudden one afternoon (when she was five days old) she disappeared. As we could find no evidence we figure a hawk got her. I swear this story has a good ending, so keep on reading. So I went to the feed store and bought Gladys one giant black cochin chick and one buff orpington chick. That night, Matt and I snuck into the chicken yard and slipped the two new chicks under Gladys. In the morning - poof - she had two new chicks and she is raising them as her own. Thank goodness for tiny chicken brains. The family of three now have their own corner of the chicken yard protected from overhead predators and are doing fine. Today they got their first taste of cherry tomatoes and leftover corn. Lucky chickens! The buff's tail is developing and the cochin already has feathers on her feet. We haven't named them yet but will soon. We will post updates as the chicks grow. They are pretty freaking cute.

Meet The Chickens

Ashley started keeping chickens about a year before we met. I quickly became very enthusiastic about having chickens 'in the family'. We now have a total of 12 birds, spanning 4 generations. 8 laying hens, 1 rooster, and 2 chicks. We haven't bought eggs at the store in years, and there are usually plenty for our family and friends nearby. We plan on introducing all the chickens to you over time, starting with the following post.....

Blackberry Time

Wild Blackberries

The blackberries are in prime condition for picking up here on Spring Mountain! Ashley and I picked about a gallon and a half a few days ago. They are wild, sweet, and super seedy, so they took a trip through our Food Mill. Now we have a gallon or so of very juicy , mostly seedless blackberry puree, ready for the next step....Jelly! Stay tuned....

Grilled Zucchini

Grilled Zucchini- A Summer Favorite!

One of our favorite things to throw on the grill in the summer is squash. Zucchini especially. Ashley makes a marinade with soy sauce, balsamic vinegar and olive oil (some, some and some.. make it taste good!). We let it soak for about a half hour, and then I grill it over high heat (note professional grill marks) for 3 or 4 minutes a side. It's a delicious compliment to anything else from the grill!