A Lesson in Physics in the Vineyard

I have come to realize that energy is quantized, that is it comes in discrete packets. On a certain day, I may have two quanta of energy available to use, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, but after repeated use, there is no more energy in the tank. Not only does my body follow the laws of physics, it also evokes Newtonian motion. For example, the goal when working the vineyard is to do an activity for one entire row which is approximately 800 feet. The activity may be weed wacking, picking rocks, pounding in line posts, you get the picture, and the reward is the picnic bench at the north end of the field which contains the best tasting water in the world.

On a certain day, during the second shift, when I had run out of gas in the wheeled line trimmer, I met my husband at the picnic bench and had a cold one (best tasting water, that is). The sun was slowly setting and the heat of the day had abated.

After a few minutes had passed, my husband said, "Ready to finish up the last little bit?" and I replied, "No, you see, a body at rest tends to stay at rest." I was of course, invoking Newton's first law, which properly stated is: "First law: When viewed in an inertial reference frame, an object either remains at rest or continues to move at a constant velocity, unless acted upon by an external force."¹ My husband had a laugh and I got out of doing "the last little bit". Laughter in the vineyard is a good thing.
Reference:
1. Wikipedia, Newton's Laws of Motion.

Star Washers in the Vineyard: The Spined Soldier Beetle

There are still about an acre's worth of vines in our vineyard that we need to take care of and we are still in the process of weed wacking and removing rocks. We're about two-thirds of the way through this process. A few evenings ago, when my husband and I were working side by side he shouted to me to come over to where he was working. So, turning off the Husqvarna wheeled trimmer, I made my way over to where my husband was. He pointed to a pencil rod to show me what he had found. We saw the adult form of this insect earlier in the year and we recognized these shiny metallic things as the eggs of the spined soldier beetle. We saw these eggs last year and destroyed them without knowing that these were eggs of a beneficial insect so this year we were more careful. I took the artistic liberty of rotating the photo of the eggs on the pencil rod:

Just before we began weed wacking, at the start of one of the rows was another cluster of these eggs and some of the nymphs had hatched!

I emailed Pamm Cooper at the UConn Home and Garden Education Center and asked if we had identified these eggs correctly and she wrote back, "The eggs have a look similar to an external star washer, unlike most stink bug eggs which are barrel- like." What do you think?
Pretty cool!
For a really good article on the lifecycle and why the spined soldier beetle is beneficial, please refer to this link: University of Florida Featured Creatures: Spined Soldier Bug

90% at the School of Hard Knocks

We had our first budbreak this year around the middle of May, and knew from our friend, Dave, the vineyard manager for Saltwater Farm that mid-May is typical for vine wakeup around here. We were very excited! We noticed that most of the plants that were pushing were located in the south portion of our vineyard which is rectangular in shape and runs north-south. We rationalized that the south portion of the field was getting sun exposure earlier than the north which seemed to be more in shade, so we waited for more vines to push. We have to admit that the waiting game is now over and around 90% of our vines are still "dormant". While some of our vines that pushed in May are very healthy looking, most of our vines are sad looking sticks.
We spoked to our vineyard consultant, Fritz, who was kind enough to give us a quick call after we emailed him and he spoke with us at length. There are many mitigating factors as to why this might have happened and we went over them:

• When our vines arrived in May, 2013, they were etiolated, meaning that they had sent out their primary bud in the darkness and during planting those first shoots fell off, so our growth was from the secondary buds
• We experienced a heat wave in the summer of 2013 with July being extremely hot and humid and we had no way to give the young vines the water they needed
• The vines began to be infected with black rot and we did not spray a fungicide
• We saw an influx of Japanese beetles that began in late June, feasting on the grape leaves that lasted until September and we choose to use soapy water to pick them off the vines
• Concurrent with the beetle invasion was the occurrence of powdery and downy mildew, again, we choose not to spray the vineyard
• In January, 2014 we were hit with a polar vortex that brought unusually cold temperatures to our region

Those are only some of the reasons that we could invoke to try to understand why 90% of our vineyard did not make it through the winter. I have to take the major responsibility for the lack of vitality in our vineyard because I really wanted to grow our plants organically, that is without any use of chemicals whatsoever and my husband, reluctantly went along with my plan. When the Japanese beetles came, we went out into the field with soapy water and picked them off the vines. The result was the 90+ attrition in our vineyard. We are overachievers at the School of Hard Knocks.

In our region, it is possible to grow grapevines without herbicides, pesticides (some would disagree), nematocides, etc, but fungicides are an absolute necessity given our climate. This year, with guidance from Fritz, we have been using fungicides to control the powdery and downy mildews as well as black rot and our plants that have survived are in very good shape. We are still seeing late budbreak so we don't really know the true extent of the devastation. Yesterday, during our lunch break, we went to pick up Chinese take out and our fortune cookie contained the following message:

2006 Westport Rivers Brut Cuvée

Our friends, Barry and Mary came on Sunday to help us pick rocks from our vine rows. We had them over for dinner to thank them for their hard work which resulted in 6 more rockless rows. We started the evening with this 2006 Westport Rivers Brut Cuvée and paired it with sliced Fuji apples and cheddar cheese. It went very well. Our meal was a butterflied leg of lamb which my husband had marinated overnight in olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, and rosemary. He then seared the lamb on the grill and then wrapped it in foil and cooked it off the heat for another hour. It was delicious! We paired the lamb with a 1998 Chateau de Beaucastel. (How many more of these do we have, I wondered?) The side dish was a tabouli salad which was a refreshing complement to the lamb. The leg of lamb is a very nice substitute for lamb chops, at 1/3rd the price. We finished off the meal with figs topped with goat cheese and balsamic vinegar. It was a delightful evening with friends willing to sacrifice their relaxing Sunday to pick rocks out of a vineyard. Barry came again today, for another dose of rock picking!

There Will Be Rocks

During the spring, we went to hear Robert Thorson, author of Stone by Stone: The Magnificent History in New England's Stone Walls speak about the geology of Connecticut. He mentioned that southeastern Connecticut is home to the countless tons of rocks that the retreating glacier deposited. He also mentioned that man's activities, especially clearing land without putting on a cover crop leads to the perennial eruption of the endless rocks that are stored under the earth. My husband and I gave each other a knowing look.

Recently, we took receipt of a grape hoe, a generous loan from Hans of H&W Vineyard and Winery Equipment. The catch-22 for us is that we have to (1) put in all our lineposts, (2) put in our trellis wire, and (3) fix our pencil rods to the fixed fruiting wire so that the sensor on the grape hoe will meet a resistance and hoe around the grape vine. We have indeed been working on the lineposts but at such a snail's pace that we needed to beat down the weeds and clear the rocks before we could put in more lineposts. Recently, my husband with the help of our son, Brett made a significant dent in the weed wacking, so yesterday and today, Barry came to help us remove the rocks from the vine row. This photo is our dump trailer at the start of the row. The left side of the tractor are rows that have already been cleaned of rocks and the right side is what remains to be weed wacked as well as de-rocked.

With Barry's help, we can go down the row and pick rocks from both sides of the alley and be done with 2 rows in about 45 minutes. His help yesterday spoiled us because after he left, all we could do was one row before we called it "finito!" The photo on the right shows all of the rocks that came out of just one row. Last year, I calculated that we removed approximately 60 tons of rocks! A photo from exactly one year ago shows where we were at that time with rocks in the vineyard.

There will be rocks! But maybe there will be less rocks and they will be smaller.

Russell Demos the Post Pounder

Yesterday, during a break from working in the vineyard, we paid a visit to Rick and Russell Holmberg of Holmberg Orchards in Gales Ferry, CT. They have a beefy post pounder that is based on the Wheatheart Post Pounder which they purchased from Finger Lakes Trellis Orchard and Vineyard Supply Depot. Rick and Russell were impressed with the post pounder which they initially rented from the Finger Lakes Trellis Supply company and when the time came, they decided to purchase one. Russell is the fourth generation Holmberg to grow vegetable and fruit crops. Russell has branched out into planting grape vines and he has a award winning Pinot blanc as well as fruit wines that are available for tasting on the weekends.
Russell was showing my husband how this post pounder worked and mentioned that they were able to pound in 500 posts with very few needing to be re-pounded. When we get to that point, we have "only" 72 posts to pound into the ground so we may be in the market to rent this post pounder from the Holmbergs. Between Rick and Russell they have a lot of knowledge as well as experience which they share very freely with us and we appreciate the time they take to give us new kids on the farm block many good pointers.

Brett in the Vineyard

No, not the dreaded Brettanomyces of wine spoilage fame, but our son. Coincident with the purchase of the wheeled trimmer was the arrival of our son, Brett from Seattle. He came a few days in advance of his engagement in Boston, to help in the vineyard and to visit with his friends. So, on Wednesday and Thursday, I had extra help and mustering my best imitation of Tom Sawyer a-la-whitewashing-fences, said, "I think weed wacking with this trimmer is fun!" Our son took turns with me and gave me a break after weed wacking each row. He had to admit that the wheeled trimmer was much more fun than say....the holstered weed wacker that his father was using. Point well taken!

The end result of going through the vine rows is the following "before" and "after" photo:

What the above photo shows is that we would still have to remove the rocks in the vine row before we can use the grape hoe in the way it was intended to be used.

Grape Hoe: Catch 22

Recently we were recipients of a grape hoe, a loan from Hans of H&W Equipment for Vineyard and Winery. The grape hoe would be a great tool to use but it requires that our trellis posts be up so that the pencil rods that are currently holding our vines upright can be attached to the trellis wire. This configuration is necessary because there is a sensor that is triggered by the rigid pencil rod that protects the vine from being hoed under by the grape hoe. Pretty ingenious!

Our problem here is that at the rate that we are putting in our line posts, the weeds have gotten a good foothold in the vineyard row. So, my husband, okay, please don't tell our vineyard consultant because he specifically told us not to bring a weed wacker into the vineyard, is weed wacking the weeds that are growing. He has been very careful about the weed wacker but did confess to wacking one vine. We took that as an opportunity to see why that vine wasn't sending out a shoot. The trunk, which in our case is our scion, due to our tall grafted (some would call it uber vine) was rather dead. There was a portion of the scion that looked green. We also checked out the root system and it looked like new roots were being formed. Back to the Catch-22. At the rate that my husband is weed wacking, when he reaches the other side of the vineyard, the rows that he has already cleaned will have grown weeds again. So, he said, "We are going to get you a weed wacker!" I'm no stranger to weed wacking, but the last time I used that Husqvarna, my arm was vibrating even though I wasn't holding the weed wacker. Undaunted, I gamely said, "Okay".

So on a rainy day earlier this week, we went to see our John Deere dealer, Tim Marvin of D. H. Marvin and Son, Inc to get another Husqvarna weed wacker. After choosing the weed wacker, Tim said, have you thought about the Husqvarna HU625HWT 22in Briggs Wheeled Trimmer? We went outside to look at this trimmer. It was my dream come true! I can push it and not have to wear a holster to carry the weed wacker. I was in! My husband needed just a little convincing but we came away with the two wheeled mower! Stay tuned for how we are using it.

Grape Pest Management Third Edition

We recently ordered and received the third edition of the book, Grape Pest Management, a University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources Publication 3343. It is a paper back book of approximately 600 pages filled with valuable information and more importantly many pictures and diagrams.
You can preview the book in Google books: Grape Pest Management, to see the Table of Contents. It is quite a comprehensive book.

Grape Hoe

On Friday, Hans from H&W Equipment for Vineyard and Winery came with his friend Doug, to bring a grape hoe for us to test. Hans is loaning us the grape hoe to see if it will work for clearing our weeds that grow up in the vine row. This is an alternative and more automated way to remove weeds in the vine row than what we currently do, which manual hoeing. They were on Long Island to retrieve the grape hoe and took the early ferry from Orient Point to New London and arrived on our property around 9:00 a.m. Hans configured the grape hoe and explained how the hydraulics would hook up to our tractor.

Hans made sure that my husband knew how to connect up the hoses and I took a movie of the instructions. He will be shipping us a duck foot plowshare that would go before the grape hoe to make sure that there are no obstructions that would hit the grape hoe. Before sending Hans and Doug back out on the road for their trip home to Ontario, we went to The Dog Watch Cafe so that they could be properly fueled for their long trip home.

2012 Adelsheim Auxerrois

Even though we are too tired to cook a proper meal at the end of the day, we still have enough energy to drink some wine! Last night, we had a 2012 Adelsheim Auxerrois. A glass of white wine of an unpronounceable variety poured by James Morrison was my introduction to Auxerrois. We learned that James had poured me a glass of Clos des Rochers, a wine made in Luxembourg. We have enjoyed many bottles of the Clos des Rochers, enough that we have planted 945 Auxerrois in our vineyard. In reading the back label of the 2012 Adelsheim Auxerrois, I learned two things: (1) that you pronounce Auxerrois "oak-sair-wah" and (2) that Adelsheim helped to bring the grape to the United States from Alsace in 1977.

The third bit of information on the label was that Auxerrois is a cross between Pinot noir and Gouais blanc. This was something that I knew from reading an article on DNA typing done by U.C. Davis Professor Emeritus Carole Meredith. There are few growers of Auxerrois in the United States, besides Adelsheim the only other vineyard that we know of is Bel Lago in Michigan. Auxerrois does very well in cool climates so we are hoping that this variety will thrive in our vineyard.

Ferri in the Rye

We could not ignore it any longer. The rye was getting to the height where it would soon go to seed and you could see how tall it was in the previous blogpost. So, my husband changed the tractor attachment to the Ferri mower and made fast work of cutting down the rye.

The result after mowing the rye looks like this:

This was only the beginning of the next phase of work because the next attachment that my husband put on the tractor was a Rankin three in one cultivator. He used it to clear the not-rye rows, which were planted in the fall with oats, nitro radish and crimson clover. This was in preparation for putting in grass in every other row. We did that on Saturday.

We think that it is slowly beginning to look like a real vineyard!