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!

Plum Jam

Vividly Colored Plum Jam

Last Sunday morning's project was making plum jam. We had a huge basket of plums that we picked on Saturday from an overflowing tree up by the winery. Here's what I ended up putting in:

12 cups pitted and cut up (8ths) Plums
6 Cups Granulated Sugar
3 Packages Low Sugar Pectin

I brought the whole thing to a boil, let it roll for 3 or 4 minutes, then into the jars it went. Finally, the jars spent 12 minutes in a hot water canning bath. The color of this stuff is just amazing! It ended up tasting pretty tart. Good, but quite tart. I think there must have been a bunch of citric acid in that low sugar pectin. Lesson learned?

Useful stuff for this project:
Granite Ware 9-Piece Enamel-on-Steel Canning Kit
Back to Basics 286 5-Piece Home Canning Kit

Welcome us to our blog!

Matt & Ashley

Hello reader(s)! Please join us in welcoming ourselves to the world of blogging. We are Matt and Ashley, and we live and work in California wine country. We have a lot of neat things to write about- Food and cooking, wine and grape growing, trying to become a little more self sufficient with our chickens, gardens, fruit trees, and wild flora (and the occasional fauna). We will try to update the blog on a fairly regular basis, so check back soon and often!