Walking on water (sort of)

The snowshoes arrived and the pruning continues.

Winter (dormant) pruning is not for the faint of heart for several reasons: walking in snow shoes raises the heart rate; it's still pretty cold outside; and the deep snow requires plenty of bending. But mostly, pruning requires courage because once the snip is made there's no turning back, no Undo button to click on, no history to delete.

That's me enjoying an afternoon outdoors not standing knee-deep in snow.

Remember when Andre Agassi had long blond locks? Then suddenly he was bald. Exactly!

Sometimes all it takes is a windless day...

People unfamiliar with grape growing are often surprised to learn that there is much work to be done in the vineyard in what they'd presumed to be our "off-season." The bulk of the work falls under the category of pruning, but it is far different from the pruning we do in late spring and early summer. In winter, we are assigned the task of dormant pruning, a critical task that affects the quality of the harvest we hope to enjoy about nine months from now.

There is a formula one can follow to determine how to prune (30 buds left behind per pound of wood removed) but simply put, we leave as many buds as we think our plants can effectively ripen next season and remove the remainder of last season's growth. As you can see from the photo above, that's a lot of wood to be cut, hauled out of the vineyard, and burned.

Cutting is something we've gotten quite proficient at here as we approach our third growing season. And we've even got quite adept at gauging optimum pruning weather. Hint: we ignore the forecast and walk outside. If the temperature exceeds 20 degrees and there's no wind, we prune.
This winter, though, we've been challenged by excessively deep snow. A walk down one row is currently an extreme cardio workout, so much so that we've adopted a new pruning strategy.
Now, we trudge down the rows, pruner in hand trying not to get stuck or tip over, make our critical cuts, and leave all the wood hanging in the trellis. (It's not going anywhere).
This is all we can manage in knee-deep snow. This way, we can be assured of getting the work done that absolutely needs to get done. When the snow melts to more modest levels, sometime between next week and May, we can get back down the pruned rows to clean the wood out of the trellis.

My children urged me to invest in snow shoes to ease the process. I hedged at first. Then my son reminded me that this probably won't be the only winter I'll prune in deep snow. The snow shoes are in transit.

Who does this?

Months ago, I vowed to stop blogging about the weather. I mean, what is the point of complaining, worrying, writing, or groaning about something of which we have no control. The weather happens whether we like it or not. The only thing we can control about weather is if we decide to stick around and put up with it or not. Some of us not only decide to stay, we invest ourselves in putting up with a future of winters by planting a vineyard. Some of us need to get our heads examined!

Frost on the grapevines...

This is the view that meets my tired eyes as I pull up the blinds in the kitchen. Mr. Blue Sky is back. The rows of vines, at one time nearly too bushy to safely drive a lawnmower through, stand bare. It is easy to see the complexity of vigorous summer growth now that the canopy has withered away. The landscape still offers me a color palette that denies the reality of the season. But I take note first of the crystals covering the ground; yes, it is November. I am still heading toward winter and it is a long journey to the other side. Sigh.

Most of the work of the vineyard now is inside work. Organizing files. Shopping for the best price on bird netting. Scouting winerys for a February marketing push. Making a list of 2010 harvest supplies that need to be acquired. Boning up on all the things that can go wrong, all the ways I can fail, so hopefully I wont. All of these things I can do while I load the kitchen stove with wood (the other stove I load with food) so I may pretend it is still July...winter pruning starts next month.

There's romance in growing grapes

As our second growing season nears its natural end, I've developed a bit of pride over what's become of the scraggly old horse pasture. (I admit this knowing that pride can be a dangerous thing.) The stately vines were swaying in a gentle breeze as I walked the tidy rows today. Most of the trunks are woody by now, and the ones that aren't are browning nicely in preparation for what we all know is coming, like it or not: winter.

I wish I could capture on film the entire vineyard, end to end, but I'd need a wide-angle lens or a daring pilot with a steady hand and neither are within reach today. Viewed from the road, the layout of row upon row of vines set against those quaint out-buildings makes me smile. It's an image of home that conjures those old Rockwell images of a near-forgotten America. The low building is the newest on the property, built in 1940. Before it housed vineyard tools, it sheltered horses and before that, hogs. Behind that building to the left is the chicken house and the tall building to the right is a granary. They are well-cared-for structures; hubby's source of pride I'm sure.
Neither building would have such character, though, if not for the 650 vines stretching to the road and then south, draped in fading sun. It is the vineyard that defines our home more than the lake or the garden or the lawn or even the grand Cedars. This is how this place, this home, has evolved for our family so new to country living.

A neighbor who lives two properties down and raises pigs, planted three-quarters of an acre of grapes last spring and today, on my walk down the road, I noticed another neighbor, living just to the south, has made good on his promise to till up his alfalfa in anticipation of an acre of grapes to go in next spring. Though, it appears he's tilled up more than one acre! Maybe he's thinking long range, working in plans to expand like we had before our hands were soiled by the reality of grape growing. We wish him well.

I was giving a friend directions to our place the other day and I almost told her, once she reached our road, that we were the first vineyard on the right. The first vineyard...

I believe there's a Rockwellian movement afoot on our stretch of country road.

The many shades of grape...

This is Véraison; it represents the transition from berry growth to berry ripening. Changes are afoot in the berries during véraison; most notably, acid levels are decreasing and sugar levels are rising. In real terms, this means the grapes are becoming more attractive to wildlife. That includes me.

Do what you love and you'll never work...

A friend and I recently shared our experiences as new entrepreneurs. Like me, she felt pulled to transform a lifelong passion into a venture she hoped would grow into a profitable enterprise. And like me, she's learning that in order to work "on her business," she needs to work fewer hours "in her business." This means that in order to be successful, chances are she'll be spending much less time on the passion that drew her into business in the first place. That's a tough irony that catches up to all entrepreneurs eventually. Even writers.

This afternoon, I toured a local vineyard that boasts 13 acres of grapevines, a nursery, and opening in 2010, an impressive winery/event center/restaurant. The vineyard, which was established in 2000, was perfect. Every row had vines teeming with ripening clusters, the grass strips between the rows had sharp edges and there wasn't a weed to be seen anywhere. Trust me; I looked hard. I can't imagine there being a better maintained operation in the state.

As I moved through the tour, I listened to the owner talk about his processes and his plans. I also pondered the varied skill sets that will be required to be successful in the venture. It's one thing to be a good grower; being a good host is another thing altogether. I wondered if he'll find planning menus or hiring waitstaff or scheduling events to be as rewarding as growing grapes. Undoubtedly, something will have to give in order to manage it all. And then I learned what his first "something" was going to be: harvest. This fall, at this vineyard, harvest will be done via machine.

We haven't yet experienced harvest here at Four Cedars. But that doesn't mean I haven't planned it all out in my head. It will be a glorious September day. All my friends will drive in. I'll nourish them with food and wine and music and up and down the aisles, my friends will laugh and sing while tossing plump clusters into plastic bins. The day will be less about efficiency than it will be about sociability, yet the work will get done because we're doing what we love so it isn't really work, right?

I could never give this dream up to gain the efficiency of a machine. (Not even if it rains every day in September.) And I'd never want to grow so big that I'd even consider machine harvesting an option. Yet, if I were in the grape growing business in a serious way, the way I witnessed a local grape grower today, I'd have to consider all options in the name of efficiency.

Thankfully, I survive on other skill sets. My grape growing can remain a passion that I can "work in" instead of "work on" for as long as I continue to love the leaves and shoots and tendrils and even (hiss), yes even the weeds.

This past weekend we finished hedging and skirting (pruning those flopped over and dragging shoots). It looks much better after pruning is done. Now it's time for bonfire.

War, declared today...

Allow me to catch you up on events here at Four Cedars; it's been awhile since my last post.

The weather is confusing my vines. The days are sunny and dry, barely breaking 80 degrees. The nights are cool and dry and dewpoints, for the most part, hover in the 50s. My vines think they are growing in the Williamette Valley, not in the American Midwest. They'll get their wake-up call in about two months.

The Marquettes are amazing me with their vigor. I've had to hedge them at the top because they are flopping into the center of the rows. The Edelweiss, meanwhile, have recovered from their springtime frost burn and are looking very much like you might expect a second-year vine to look. Their growth is adequate, which to say manageable. And the weeds, well, they are doing what weeds do best. Annoying me.

Today, I found evidence of an enemy. Yes, there is an enemy afoot...or, perhaps, afeather.

The picture above was taken two weeks ago. One week ago, those clusters went from green to glorious gold. Hubby and I each took a nibble of the not-quite-ripe fruit. It was tart with a hint of green apple flavor. Yummy.

As the gold color got richer, I knew ripeness was on the horizon. I pulled another one. Yummy. This time it was not quite as tart but still there was a hint of green apple. The clusters were wearing gold like an Egyptian queen.

These three clusters were destined to be my bellweather grapes. I was counting on them to tell me much about how sugar levels change daily as grapes ripen. I started browsing for a refractometer. And then...

...tonight on my stroll through the rows, I checked my golden lovelies. They were gone. Every single ball of citrine, gone. This is heartbreak.

There is an enemy out there. It must be stopped.

My one-way conversations ...

A few months ago, I entertained the thought of pulling the plug on this blog. But I didn't and today, especially today, I'm glad I didn't.

There are days when, beyond a few brief cellphone calls, my only connection to other people is found right here. I don't say that to elicit pity. This is the life I chose for myself after months of deliberation; those of you who've followed this blog since 2007 probably remember those cryptic essays I posted while I was talking myself into leaving the familiar and resettling here. And at my age! Then, as now, the blog is my way of keeping in touch with you as much as it is (I assume) your way of checking in on me. The latter is a leap on my part, but the regularity in which some of you post comments tells me it's not a huge leap.

I like this blog because it allows me to share with you the unexpected treasures of living in this wonderful place on the prairie, this place that requires so much work yet delivers so much reward.

Last week, on the long road to Michigan, I was rereading my grape-growing text to bone up on the goals of second-year vine pruning. I'll spare you the jargon and condense things to two words: air flow. In most of this breezy vineyard, air flow is not a problem. And then there is Row 16. This is the row closest to the road, the row that tells passers-by that I am a grape-growing goddess, the row that was planted first. Row 16: It will be the death of me, I'm sure.

I was in Row 16 with my pruners this evening trying to create air flow. If you look at the picture below, you'll see this is no easy task. There's a post in there if you look closely. The actual vines are planted four feet on either side of the post. Keep in mind, these are second year plants. This is Row 16. If these grapes had been planted by the government, I'm sure there'd be some sort of investigation into why these plants are growing like this. Surely, there's be a Senate sub-committee... I cut and pull and cut and pull and toss the clippings into the trailer that hubby has rigged up behind the golf cart. The cuttings in the photo below come from six plants. I know!


And then this... as I examine the growing pattern of Row 16, Plant 2, in order to see where I should cut...this...

A smile washes over me. The little nest is about the size of a teacup saucer and inside, three tiny blue eggs. It's this discovery that reminds me why I love it here, even when there's no one to talk to. Then I remember that I can share this surprise with you here, on this silly little blog that I almost deleted but didn't. Another smiles washes over me. Thanks for listening.

A week away, and...

I returned to the ranch this evening to find the lawn has sprouted a pretty healthy crop of clover. No biggie, though. The Cub Cadet has new blades and a full tank of gas.

More importantly as I reviewed the property, is that the dawn application of Roundup I made early last week gave me the best coming home present a girl can ask for: rows clear of weeds. A quick walk up and down the rows revealed several plants in need of some light pruning, which isn't so much of a chore as it is a lifestyle nowadays. But the chore that is weeding, a true chore indeed, has been taken care of by the good folks at Monsanto. A respite!

Maybe my fingernails will stay clean through to the weekend.

Four Cedars Folly: Three Years In

We celebrated our third anniversary here at the farm this past weekend. Not suprisingly, the weekend went a lot like that first weekend went back in 2006: We worked like oxen from sun-up to sun down then downed a few Aleve along with a few beers.

What were we thinking?
Three years ago, we asked ourselves this question often. Then, most of our energy went toward rectifying decades of neglect. It was easier to get past our aches and pains when we could just blame the previous owner(s) for not knowing -- or caring -- how to maintain a property so its value appreciates. We'll turn the place around, we told ourselves. Once the dirt and debris gets cleared, we'll be in the clear too. Ha!

Then we got an idea to plant grapes; whether it was a good idea remains to be seen.

About a month into farm ownership, we met a nice fellow from town who struck us as the kind of guy who can get things done. We shared our idea with him and asked him if he knew a guy who might have a plow for hire. He did. The pasture needs to be turned, we told him. (We were thinking ahead). He nodded and promised to take care of it, which he did.
We ran into this fellow this weekend. He complimented us on our vineyard. "I always wondered if you knew what you were getting into," he admitted to us. Clearly, we didn't I told him, laughing on the outside but aching on the inside.

The experienced grape growers have told us that we will grow and learn as our grapes grow. This June, I learned that year two requires as much effort as year one. It is a painful lesson.

Last week brought us almost 3.5 inches of rain and temps in the 90s. Good growing weather for anything green. Three days before the above picture was taken, weeds outnumbered vines by roughly 20 to 1. But this post isn't so much about weeds; I spray herbicide to kill weeds. First, though, I had to go up and down the rows getting the robust vines, which were twisted and sprawling in any number of ways, pruned and tied to the trellis.

You can see what I mean, eh? I have to stick my head into this tangled mess and select two straight, upward growing lateral shoots that look as if they have the potential to give me a healthy crop in 2010. Everything else gets cut. It takes about 10 minutes and requires much patience and critical thinking. In spite of the mess of potential in front of me, there is a right path; deciding takes faith. It sort of reminds me of parenting teenagers, except this also requires bug spray.

Hubby told me he'd rather pull weeds than prune. Tony and Shannon spent the day helping with this task and both told me they saw twisted mangled vines in their dreams. They stopped short of calling them nightmares. I'm grateful.

Once the vines are up off the dirt like this one, I just have to wait for the breeze to abate before heading into the rows with the herbicide sprayer. I've discovered the calmest hour of the day is at 5 o'clock in the morning.

Last Thursday as I pruned in the hottest part of the day, I again asked myself: What was I thinking? I know only a few women who, in blistering heat, would ignore biting flies and dirty fingernails in order to create something lasting -- something beautiful. Wouldn't I be happier, I asked myself, if I were in an air-conditioned coffee shop sharing thoughts on the latest best-seller, all manicured and comfy? I push the thought away and convince myself instead that I'm putting my energy toward something special.

What was I thinking? I was thinking grand. I was thinking beautiful. I was thinking legacy.

Fortunately, I have been blessed to know some women who, like me, are willing to work hard and get dirty in order to achieve big things. They inspire me to push ahead down the rows.

Memories as vibrant as surrounding vines

I was in the vineyard pruning earlier this evening, which is my favorite time to be in the vineyard because the angle of the light makes each leaf shimmer like gold.

I've learned there is an art to pruning, which is probably why it's become my favorite chore in the vineyard. I like helping these plants become all that their genetically meant to be, but not more; grapevines, you see, have a propensity to grow and grow and grow and if you've ever encountered grapes in the wild, you know what I'm talking about. They can become a tangled mess if not given the guidance of careful hand, a taut wire and a sharp snipper.

Pruning is also one of those activities that, if you resist the urge to plug in the iPod, allows your mind to drift. Tonight, I was recalling my sixty-something grandmother taking me off a beaten path in search of grape leaves. The beaten path was Mississippi River Boulevard in St. Paul, where we parked my mom's car, then the three of us carefully stepped down the incline that ended in a churning rhapsody of blue-grey water. The hillside was teeming with wild grapevines during the 1960s, and Grandma, not letting the fact that she was neither homeowner nor farmer deter her, figured the city wouldn't mind us helping ourselves to a couple hundred leaves that would end up as part of my all-time favorite Lebanese dish, Stuffed Grape Leaves (also known as Greek Dolmas).

Grandma was a frugal to be sure. She picked leaves from public land and turned them into wonderful treats, she filled ice-cream buckets full of strawberries at the pick-your-own farm in Cottage Grove, she haggled at garage sales and flea markets and always showed us, with pride, her latest treasure picked up for a song. And as I bent to snip shoots off the lower part of each trunk, I marveled at Grandma's ability to climb over brambles and tree trunks with the agility of woman half her age in search of free grape leaves.

I'm sure no one would have cared about her interest in wild grapevines anyway. And like I said earlier, grapes will grow and grow and grow if you let them, and I can't. And so I snipped and pulled, shoot after shoot, some six-feet long with large, lovely leaves evenly spaced. I snipped and pulled and thought about Grandma standing on an incline in pursuit of the same resource that I held in my hand with every intention of heaving into the fire pit.

And then on my way to the firepit, I made a detour -- through the kitchen. It is June after all, the month when grape leaves are young and tender yet some are large enough to stuff and roll with a combination of lamb and rice and tomato and onion and lemon juice. And so I cut short my pruning and headed indoors with an armful of shoots that had been sacrificed for the good of the vine. And then I pruned again, this time with a different art in mind...the art of cooking.

Once all my leaves were cut off the petioles, washed, dried and bagged, I made my way to the firepit with the debris. I'm not sure when I'll have time to actually finish what I started tonight; rolling stuffed grape leaves takes a bit of time. Of course, the effort is worth it...especially when you start the process with fresh leaves.

You can buy grape leaves in a jar and make Dolmas any time of the year. But they won't taste the way they taste in June. That's something Grandma never articulated to me. She didn't have to. Watching her tiptoe her way down toward the river over downed tree limbs told me all I needed to know about the value of cooking with tender young leaves. And here, I've got rows and rows of them. If only I had Grandma here to help me.

The bridge between Spring and Summer...

It's been a blustery spring in these parts, which helps keep me on task at the keyboard. The holiday weekend, however, brought two consecutive days of warm temps, calm winds, and sparkling skies. Under these conditions it becomes clear that I need get away from the computer and get outside to see what's transpired around the property.

We scouted the vineyard and found both good news and bad. First the good news: there's lots of vigor to be seen, especially among the Marquettes. And by vigor I mean that the Marquettes have put out grape clusters, and lots of them. (See the red arrows in the photo below.) While cluster thinning is an annual routine in a vineyard because a vine will always produce more clusters than it can effectively ripen, our year two plan is to remove all clusters so the plant can focus on root and trunk development. We made quick work of pinching them off.

Now the bad news: We suffered frost damage that hit all the plants, but the Edelweiss seemed to suffer the worst of it. If it were a fruiting year, a late May frost could devastate the crop. Fortunately, this is not a fruiting year. So the plants have been set back in their progress. Many of them lost all their shoots. I'll be watching them closely to see how quickly they recover.


Also this week, Heidi was back to finish up the grapevine mural. We are thrilled with her work.
Lastly, we finally got around to burying farm dog's ashes. The family bought me a marker to set above his plot, a nice reminder of the world's sweetest dog. Next week, we're welcoming a cat to the homestead. His official name is Elroy, but I expect he'll mostly be referred to around these parts as "farm cat." I've never owned a cat before; it could be an adventure.

I heard a line at Mass yesterday that seemed especially fitting for Memorial Day. "Live a life worthy of the price that was paid for it." God bless you and thanks for stopping by.

To every task, a season...

There's really only one way to get your grapevines to look like this in September. You have to do this in February.

Hubby and I were blessed with a mild Sunday with plentiful sunshine and calm winds. That meant only one thing: time to start winter pruning. We worked as a team. I moved down the row cutting away tendrils and tape that had been holding unruly vines to the bamboo supports and wire. After giving each vine a trim that rivaled an "Army Buzz," hubby followed with the nifty new tapener, training the vines to grow (come spring) in orderly fashion.

We both started off wearing warm pants, but switched to covering our clothes with rain pants because the task required kneeling in knee-deep snow. (Remarkably, the field across the street had no snow cover whatsoever.) It took us between sixty and ninety minutes to prune and train one row.

Above, plenty of untrained vines await our attention. Below, a pruned vine all ready for the arrival of spring. Us too!

We started before noon on Row 1 and quit after finishing Row 4. By then, the sun had already set and a full, bright moon had risen in the east.

At Four Cedars, there's always plenty of outdoor work needing our attention. It takes just a few long, cold months stuck indoors for us to realize, though, that a day spent toiling outside beats a day of leisure when we're stuck inside the house. I guess we're just restless that way.

A perfect day...

They don't come around often, these days that hint at perfection. So when one arrives, on a Monday no less, you savor each minute. Even if there are chores on the docket.

It's been well-documented (on this blog) that this vineyard has forced us to meet many challenges without losing tempers, enthusiasm or heart. That's what's hard. You can call it viticulture, a ten-dollar word if ever there was one, but at the end of the day it's just farming. Farming, a ten-cent word if ever there was one.

And in farming, or viticulture, there always are set backs. Always. With equipment. With weather. With buildings or fencing or weeds or stray dogs or uppity sheep... . If you want to call yourself a farmer, you must work through them.

And then the sun rises on a perfect day.

You wake, not because there was an alarm set or because the dog barked, but because your body has rested enough. You remember there are people you love in the house. They greet you with coffee and you share eggs and toast from homemade bread.

Outside, the sun is doing its job. It is August and there is heat. But you don't mind because you've expected heat.

In the vineyard, there is a spool holding 4,000 feet of wire. It's heavy. But someone, somewhere, devised a tool called a spinning Jenny by which two men can string wire the length of a football field without injuring themselves or making a mess of things. If you are one of these men, you appreciate the spinning Jenny.

If you plan things right, the wire installation is effortless, even in the heat. But you break often. At 11:00 a.m., there is pie. It is also homemade. Pie and cold water and shade are part of your perfect day.
There are nails that hold the wire and they are hammered into each wooden post. There are 13 line posts and 2 end posts for each row. The end posts get two nails each. That's 272 nails. And two hammers.

When you work in the sun, it's good to have a straw hat. It's even better if you bought the hat in Greece because then you can think of Greece and the person you traveled with every time you wear it. Of course if you're thinking about Greece, but you're standing in Minnesota, you'll probably want to be working in a vineyard. Otherwise, it wouldn't be a perfect day.

To be sure, even perfect days have their weeds. But you can always take a break from bending and pulling to take a call and talk to a friend who is far afield. An office in the sun fits nicely into your perfect day.
A perfect day, especially a hot perfect day, requires an early quitting time and a cool shower. On a perfect day, work ends by 3:30. By 4:00, there is renewed energy applied in the kitchen, where caprise salad, locally-grown watermelon, locally-raised beef (grilled to perfection), and crisp, light wine, are soon to be enjoyed in the shade. All the produce, from the onions to the salad cukes, restore you on this, your perfect day. You give your body time to absorb the food, the breeze, the wine, the jazz standards that drift toward you from the radio. You watch the sun set on your perfect day and still you relax outdoors until, not thirty minutes later, the moon rises on the opposite horizon as large and red as the sun appeared as it bid farewell.

Then your neighbor stops by and puncuates your perfect day with this: "You have to have done before, someplace else." She is talking about your vineyard. Your challenging child. Your farm. Your chase for perfection.

Finding pride in caretaking...

I am the caretaker of what is believed (by me) to be the most beautiful vineyard in Blue Earth County. I know what you are thinking and it’s true. There are others.

As caretaker (or vineyard manager if I’m feeling uppity), I spend a good deal of time toiling along the rows taking care of putsy chores like weeding, watering, tying, and now, pruning. Pruning is a new chore, brought on by lots of summer heat, lots of sunshine, rain sufficient enough for me to shelve my tank sprayer, and fertile soil that also has pushed the corn across the road to towering heights.

My vines have gotten unwieldy, dangerously, snapping off in the wind unwieldy, so I must prune, especially now that I know which leaves contribute to the strength and vigor of their developing trunks, and which leaves detract from the process. With these hybrids that trace their roots to vitis riparia, all leaves are not created equal!

Pruning is not physically taxing but it requires a gentle touch, patience, flexibility, and the ability to forward think the trellising pattern to protect the most likely candidate for the cordon. When I prune, I also allow for the possibility of winter kill and wind damage; the latter having shown itself too frequently this past week. Pruning suits a contemplative nature, which I’ve developed as I’ve walked the rows, grateful for my iPod and whatever breeze God sends my way.

By now, you can detect that my vines and I have developed a relationship. They are like children to me; I am attending to them (even when the dew point is 73) so that they will grow strong and bear fruit for decades. This is my vineyard.

And then, I find a horn worm. Dear readers, the horn worm is without doubt the ugliest creature on God’s green earth. I found two of them in the vineyard yesterday and, with lower dew points, found them to be a curiosity. (One ended up in the compost heap and the other was recycled back into the food chain thanks to the chickens.) But tonight, with sweat rolling off my nose, I was less than pleased to find this interloper clinging to my Edelweiss plant.

My scouting guide for Grape IPM tells me the horn worm likes new vineyards. Well, not in my vineyard, I say as I pull him from the leaf. It’s about then that the pest spews green slime on my gloved finger. That’s when his removal from my vineyard ceases to be a business transaction. Now it’s personal. And it’s a long walk to the chicken coop.

I threw the interloper onto the dirt near where, conveniently, a rock the size of a softball sat. I’ll end the story here because you get the picture. (If not, refer to the Kabul soccer game scene in “The Kite Runner.”)

And thus the sun sets on another day in the vineyard. Tomorrow, there will be more ties, more cuts, more weeds to pull, and God willing, a wind out of the northwest.

[Postscript: I used to read the New Yorker and Harpers magazines for pleasure. Now I read the Pocket Guide for Grape IPM Scouting.]

It's the scale of it that hits them first...

I've noticed a pattern with visitors to Four Cedars.

It first shows itself in the way the car slows just after turning into the driveway. It's hard for them to focus on the gravel drive when their necks are craned to take in the long rows of hybrids shooting skyward from ribbons of black soil.

Then, about 75 minutes into whatever "chore" they enthusiastically volunteered for, it becomes clear to them that commercial viticulture is neither gardening nor yard work. I usually offer them a snack or a nap then, feeling bad that they haven't yet acclimated to my reality: yes, there are 40 plants per row and 16 rows.

It's a lot, I know. Have a cookie.

Finally, after a hearty meal, or two, and a good night's sleep, there's the glow of accomplishment that washes over guests when they realize that perseverence does reap visible rewards. They are then free to assume ownership over their portion of the three year process of turning roots into wine.

Every step along the way is a vital one, after all. And all volunteers are held up as heros around here.

This is Steph, who volunteered to help remove grow tubes. Tony likened the process to taking training wheels off of a child's bicycle. The tubes acted like individual greenhouses for the root stock, giving each plant warmth and protection to get off to a good start. But now the vigorous plants need to start the hardening process before winter hits. So, it was off with the tubes.
Some of the vines surprised us with how much vigor they actually delivered inside the tubes. Here, a Marquette had developed a cluster of grapes. Steph pinched these off whenever she found them.
And, try as we might to get every weed away from every vine, every now and then, Steph found one worthy of noting.
At the end of a weekend, there was only one word to describe it: Beautiful!

With great thanks to Steph (and Amos) and Tony for donating a weekend to the cause.

Hurry up and grow...

I was reading the latest edition of Notes from the North, the newsletter of the Minnesota Grape Growers Association, and learned that Edelweiss is the most widely planted "wine" grape in both Nebraska and Iowa. Edelweiss, originally released as a table grape, makes for a crisp, grapey, fruity flowery wine; not necessarily the style of wine I'd choose to go with lunch.

This was the point of the article, however. As growers, we need to set our personal tastes aside and grow grapes for a developing industry. According to the article, 95 percent of the people who walk into a Midwestern tasting room like grapey, crisp, fruity flowery wine.

Edelweiss has become the No. 1 wine in Nebraska. Not the No. 1 Nebraska wine, but the No. 1 wine asked for in Nebraska, topping wines from California, France, Australia, and others. This is important news for growers who, like me, have rows and rows of Edelweiss in the ground. How far is it to Nebraska, anyway?

Somewhere along row eight...

For all those gracious friends who've asked about the grapes...I offer this representative sample. Note the absence of weeds in the background. That is NOT a representative sampling of our rows.

And the winner is...

It's not a race, of course. But if it was ...

Row 1, Plant 6: Bluebell, would be the winner in our "First of 640 to Emerge from the Top of the Grow Tube," contest.