Old fashioned ingenuity is now 'en vogue'

Three generations ago, during the hard times of the Great Depression, I'm told my great grandfather would walk the streets of his neighborhood and drag home odds-and-ends that had been discarded by others. Once home, he generally was able to give these cast-asides new purpose. In his own way, reusing or repurposing items was just part of being prudent, this decades before terms such as "recycle" or "green" became part of the venacular.

Well, the spirit of Betros lives proudly in hubby, who like my ancestor, can't pass an abandoned piece of wood without seeing it be repurposed in some yet-to-be dreamed up project here at the farm. Case in point, our recently completed chicken coop/chicken house.

The A-frame coop used to be part of the roof of an old hay building. The door to the coop is an old chain-link fence gate. The roof was a discard from Amery, Wis. In the chicken house (which was an unused shed found on the property) the window came from a client demolition project, the wire-covered walls were lying on the side of the road during "clean-up" week, as was the formica shelf that will hold the nesting boxes. The hinges on the door also came from a client demoltion. And, most of the nails were reused from some older project.

Betros would have been proud.
The chickens are pretty excited too.

Thoughts on commitment...

Maybe it’s odd considering my activities of late, but I’ve been thinking a lot about marriage.

Maybe it’s because the vineyard is, in part, a tribute to my brother’s late wife and thus her name has surfaced often as we’ve toiled in the black soil. It was her idea, this vineyard, and we joked often over the last weeks about how she was probably looking down on us from Heaven, either laughing at our ineptitude, or simply shaking her head muttering, “I was kidding!”

Or, maybe I’ve been thinking about marriage because Dick and Anne celebrated their 31st wedding anniversary by helping us on planting day – he with a sledgehammer in his hand helping my hubby set posts; she on her hands and knees fashioning roots in a long row of dark, damp holes.

Probably, though, I’m thinking about marriage because this venture — or adventure or, perhaps, misadventure — this process of taking a large piece of ground and turning it productive without the benefit of a tractor or farming experience has required hubby and I to apply ourselves to a commitment larger than ourselves. With it, has come both joy and frustration as we’ve faced adversity together and overcome. This project, this commitment to our vineyard has, as I look back on the last several weeks, seemed as epic as entering the covenant of marriage.

In both cases – in establishing a vineyard or in committing to another for life – it’s clear: a half-hearted effort doesn’t cut it. And in both cases, in farming and in marriage, expect sore muscles, dirty fingernails, flared tempers, setbacks, and sunny afternoons in which to eat pizza on the grass.

The most likely reason marriage has been on my mind of late, though, is that in the middle of the most intensive part of building or planting this vineyard (both verbs apply), hubby and I celebrated our wedding anniversary; we both remembered but he was the only one who thought ahead and planned a gift. Hubby is like that.

On our anniversary, May 4, 2008, hubby gave me the sign above which is now planted outside the vineyard. It was a great gift, but not his greatest. Twenty-nine years earlier, on May 4, 1979, he gave me a life.

Movement in the 'vine garden'

If you peer down into any of the 440 grow tubes that have protected our new grapevines (planted last weekend with the help of so many friends) you’ll see bud swell. That’s great news because even though we followed every procedure by the book when embarking on this agricultural adventure, we still had to rely on faith because when you farm you quickly realize so many things are just out of our control.

The bad news for us this weekend is: all our friends are elsewhere; 210 plants remain to be set in the ground; and the vines in the plastic bag waiting to be planted also are experiencing bud swell. That means on this long memorial weekend, hubby and I had (have) our agenda pretty much set. We’re getting down and dirty. (And boy could use a manicure!)

Saturday was a brutal day in the vineyard, with winds gusting to 35 miles an hour all day long. We got a late start as there was compost to acquire and holes to dig. Still, we persevered through sore muscles and gale-force gusts to get two of the remaining five rows filled. We were setting bamboo poles and grow tubes through a stellar sunset until inky darkness and then sharp rain droplets forced us inside at 9:30 p.m.

Sunday, the weather was completely different. It was sunny, humid, and about 20 degrees warmer. Unfortunately, a late-morning stroll through the vineyard revealed a new challenge: gnats. They were everywhere. We opted to spend the hottest hours of the afternoon watering rows 16, 15, and 14, the first three planted a week earlier. It took us most of three hours to deliver buckets of water to those 120 plants.

After a late lunch (eaten at 4:45 p.m. so we figured it also qualified as dinner), and with a breeze pushing the humidity away, hubby and I headed into the vineyard with a plan for the three empty rows that awaited us. Instead of attacking the length of one row, we decided to partition the last three rows by section – that’s nine plants per section. Our first goal was two sections but we pushed on to tackle three. The last was a bear since the flying gnats where swarming us – and biting too. (It was biblical, I swear!) I never thought I could plant so fast but we finished and abandoned the vineyard as fast as possible.

So tomorrow, which is Memorial Day, there’ll be no parades, no visits to a cemetery, no picnics in the park or bike rides or boat rides or naps in the hammock for us, because there are 90 budding vines sitting in a bag in the stable waiting to become something magnificent, if only allowed to wallow in the things we seem to have here in surplus – black dirt, sun, water, and prayer. If you have an opportunity to relax on Memorial Day – enjoy it and be grateful. We know we’ll get our chance to enjoy a day in the park soon because this project, which we embarked upon two months ago (18 months, really) is almost over. Just 90 more holes to dig and then fill.

We realize, of course, the vineyard will require much of us throughout the coming years. We’re hoping, though, that it will not be the endurance challenge that it has been, consuming every moment of every weekend since the beginning of April. Because if it does, these grapes, this “vine-garden” as someone recently called it, just might be the end of us.

Hubby and I took possession of this land on June 30, 2006. The craggy field shown above had been a grazing haven for five horses before we arrived. Now, it is Four Cedars vineyard.