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!

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"