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.