What a beautiful day we had yesterday! Knowing that vineyard work was soon to begin, we have been doing concentrated schoolwork in preparation to take time off. With the temperature near 70F, we decided to enjoy the warmth. We began laying the drip irrigation tape for this year’s planting. We will be adding 2 1/3 acres of grapes in March, 2 acres will be Petit Verdot and 1/3 acre will be Muscat Canelli. Our rows are 1/3 of a mile long and 3 rows equals one acre, so we will be adding 7 more rows.
What made this year’s expansion even more exciting for us was the fact that we are using our own tractor! John had tried to arrange to use a neighbor’s big John Deere = speed and GPS accuracy. Since our ’54 Ford tractor is not equipped with a GPS system, the rows were first marked off at the 8 foot spacing. (This tractor was generously gifted to us by a friend who got out of farming.) The dry, hard ground was then ripped to a depth of about a foot (broken up with a blade) to make it easier for the tape to go in the ground. The vine rows are 8 feet apart and drip tape will be laid down the center of the rows. The picture below shows the ripped lines where the drip tape will be. The rye stubble protected our land from blowing away in the wind storms. The small green plants are the self-seeded rye that will provide the next year’s protection.
As with most things, getting the tractor set up right seems to be the most time consuming part. The taping rig, courtesy of our grape consultant, is essentially a blade that cuts into the dirt and allows the irrigation tape to be placed at an even depth in the ground. It is first attached to the tractor, then the depth of the plow can be set and finally the roll of tape put in place. The irrigation tape will spin off the roll in the arms above head clearance and feed down through a tube at the back of the knife blade into the ground.
At the start of a new row, the tape must be held in place by a lucky volunteer until the tractor is far enough ahead so that the weight of the dirt prevents it from being pulled out by the tractor.
I know our tractor is old, but I really do not think it needs to be pushed along! Then again, a little help never hurt anyone  
Normally, someone sits in the seat or walks beside the rig to prevent the tape from twisting. (Did they put sunblock on?)
At the end of the row, the tape is cut. These cut ends will be connected later to the vineyard irrigation system.
The tape at this point is flat with emitters, or holes, every 2 feet. When it is all hooked up, water will fill the tape and evenly come out the holes for the grapevines. Each of these holes drip at ~0.24 gal/hr. Every now and then, a gopher will make an extra hole in the tape, but their holes leak quite a bit faster!
Once all the rows are finished, the boys will go back over each one with the tractor packing the dirt down. Gophers are very prevalent here in west Texas and they love to dig in fresh dirt. Packing the dirt down will hopefully keep them from digging and chewing through the drip tape.
We have a new toy in the vineyard! It is the Pellenc AP25. What, you might ask is that? It is a battery powered tying machine used to anchor grape vines to either a bamboo stake (for new vines) or wire for older vines. This little baby was not cheap but it is already proving its worth!
Soon, we will be going through the vineyard with a pre-pruner. The pre-pruner will cut off and shred last years growth from the vines. The amount cut off is adjustable and we will leave 2 buds per spur. Our vines are trained up to 4 ft and then 2 arms are tied down horizontally in opposite directions on a wire forming a cordon.
Each arm is allowed to grow 2 ft along the wire. From these arms, upward growing spurs have the buds for the new growth.
Each bud should produce two bunches of grapes. Optimally, we want 20 buds per plant – 10 evenly spaced over each 2 ft arm. These will yield 5 to 15 lbs. of grapes per vine. You can see the fuzzy white bulges in the picture below.
With the pre-pruner we will cut the vines back so that each spur has 2 buds. We will then come through and hand prune, cleaning up each vine to achieve the 20 buds per plant.
Before pre-pruning, it is important to replace any dead or weak arms. This is done by pulling down a healthy looking arm from last years growth to replace the compromised one. The Pellenc AP25 is used to tie down the arm to the cordon wire.
You can see from the picture below, the bulk of the Pellenc AP25 is worn at the back of the waist. (The jeans are designer, by yours truly – call for pricing!) This back part holds the battery pack and the roll of ties. For tying down mature arms, we are using a standard tie designed to last 12 – 14 mths. They look much like bread bag ties. When training our new planting, we will be using paper ties designed to degrade in 8 – 10 mths so that they do not girdle the fast growing young plants.
The handheld part of the Pellenc AP25 looks like a space age gun. You can hopefully see the line of brown ties coming from the back pack and feeding into the rear of the gun.
The open tip of the gun is positioned over the vine and cordon wire (in this case) and the trigger is pulled.
The Pellenc AP25 does the rest. The tie is extruded, twisted and voile!
Until now, we have all had our own hand tapers and done our own pruning (or training, as the case may be) and taping as we go. The old tapers, pictured below, just didn’t last even the season – we went through 19 of them!
To date, we are finding the Pellenc AP25 to be very fast and feel that while 6 or 7 of us are pruning, 1 person using the Pellenc AP25 will be able to keep up with the rest. Pellenc proports one person can do 12,000 ties per day. We will see!
“Use it up, wear it out, make do or do without!”
—— My husband
At the end of 2009, I posted “My Top 40 Frugal Living Tips.” Now, 2 years later, it is encouraging to review it. If you have been reading Dimes2Vines for a while, you know the last 4 years have been challenging, to say the least! Starting a 20 acre vineyard from scratch is a lot of hard work. Hard work without an accompanying paycheck!
With a large family, frugal living has always been a part of our lifestyle but became significantly more important. Now after our first successful harvest, we are continuing our frugal lifestyle. Why? To be good stewards. I am not talking about a miserly lifestyle. Rather, we are continuing to work together for our common family goals.
These goals include expanding the vineyard – we are planting another 2 1/3 acres of grapes this year – and finishing our house which overlooks the vineyard. Hopefully, we will continue the Insulated Concrete Forms (ICF) upward after this year’s havest in Oct. 2012.
Many items on my top 40 list seem to be common sense things but they are also easy to forget about, such as, #16 adjust your thermostat, #17 turn off lights and #18 turn off ceiling fans when leaving a room.
In fact, as I review the list, we are still practicing them all – from tithing (#1),to writing down all expenses in my budget book (#2) to using VoIP as our phone rather than cell phones (#40).
Don’t underestimate the power of the “little things”. The little things can quickly add up! Each of the 40 tips alone may seem insignificant, but, together they can amount to great savings.
While many may not see beauty in a vineyard during the winter, I do. Vines which are growing so vibrant and green during the summer, are now brown and gnarly. I’m not sure “gnarly” is a word but it definitely describes the dried, brown, bare vines.
I guess when I look at the vineyard this time of year, I see promise and the hope of things to come.
Or maybe …
I see a vineyard that does not require work right now … ie… a rest period for us!
Time leading up to and following harvest has certainly flown! We harvested the Roussanne, Montepulciano and Aglianico successfully and with much help from family and friends. Because of the extreme heat which causes problems with the harvester, harvesting began anywhere from 10pm to 3am. Before dawn there is an amazing beauty in the vineyard. Lit up by the harvester, with the stars shining overhead, it is an atmosphere made for romantics!
Given the hard winter, unusually high summer temperatures and drought, we had very good yields. Praise the Lord for His provision!
Although we began work on the house as soon as the vineyard work slowed, we still found time to glean the vines for our own wine-making fruit! Remember the “I Love Lucy” show when she and Ethel stomped the grapes with their feet? Well, everyone got in on the action:
From children:
To grandchildren:
Everyone wanted their feet to be a part of it:
Note: Every pair of feet which stomped were properly cleaned and disinfected. However, according to our grape consultant, micronutrients provided, whatever the source, actually help the yeast!
If you remember, we had begun an insulated concrete form (ICF) house. Working on the house which overlooks the vineyard consumed our time once vineyard work was finished. Each morning we packed lunch and dinner to take with us. We even carried school work to the new house and studied in our bedroom which had become the makeshift dining room. Naps were taken in the boy’s bedroom on a rug with blankets. Doing all the work ourselves not only saved quite a bit of money, but has also provided many learning experiences, as well as, great memories.
During this period, I have had a very difficult time physically. My rheumatoid arthritis decided to rear its ugly head. It was aggravated by two plus days of texturing all the walls with sheet rock mud to give a stucco look. Anyway, I am excited about dietary changes that have made an amazing difference and look forward to sharing them with you in the new year.
We moved into the new house the weekend after Thanksgiving (I will be posting pictures soon). Slowly and surely, we are getting settled. Everyone is looking forward to our first Christmas here. Our traditional trim the tree party was a success and our tree appropriately trimmed!
Buttercup handled the move without a problem. The chickens on the other hand have dropped their egg production by half. Squiggles and now our new dog, Bob, are also glad to be here on a permanent basis and not have the 1/2 mile walk one way to work everyday!
With temperatures over 100F for most of June and July, we expected the grapes to shut down. Thankfully, that has not occurred. Instead they are thriving and it appears that harvest for us will be a month earlier than last year. This means that we will begin as early as Thursday!
Having drought conditions this entire year, we have had the water on daily since February. The underground drip tape that we have between the rows is a very efficient way of watering – we lose no water to evaporation and it does not encourage weed growth as above ground irrigation would. The drought has not hurt us as it has other farmers. In fact, without rain there has been no need to spray for fungus or molds and no weeds means no hoeing! I prefer to get my upper body workout another way. Another concern with the storms here in west Texas is the threat of hail. Invariably the rain has hail with it which can devastate a vineyard as well as other crops.
How do we know harvest is near? First, the appearance of the grape, they change color. Then the amount of sugar in the grapes is tested. This is called the Brix. Brix is tested by taking a random sampling of grapes, crushing them to extract the juice and then either a hydrometer or a refractometer is used.
Wineries like a balance of sugar content and pH. We will be shooting for a Brix of 23 -24 on each of our varieties this year. Our Roussanne is at 22 and the Montepulciano is around 17. The Montepulciano was a test of only purple, ripe looking berries – so it was not precise but gives an idea. The Aglianico is a bit further behind the Montepulciano so we have not yet checked it.
Normally, as the Brix increase so does the pH which can present a problem for the wineries. Acidity is needed in wine for it to be stable. To balance the pH and obtain the proper acidity, the wineries add tartaric acid. There is, however, a legal limit to the amount of tartaric acid that may be added. If the acidity is too high and can not be controlled by tartaric acid, the wine is again unstable. This year however, the sugar content is gaining much faster than the pH, which is great!
Guess what is being carried and stored in the blue shirt.
I think they look guilty of something!
You might assume that with 20 acres of grapes and working in the vineyard every day, we would be tired of eating grapes.
Nope, no way.
In fact, I am convinced that our yields are going to be low because we eat so many!
John reminds me of the verse in Deuteronomy 25:4 “You shall not muzzle the ox while he is threshing.”
Now, we are not oxen and we are working in the vineyard and not threshing but the principle holds. Besides, those grapes sure are good!
I would like to give you a glimpse into the routine of our daily life.
Every morning we wake, eat breakfast and walk the half mile to the vineyard (we are saving money and getting exercise!). Most people walk their dog but we walk our cow. Yes, you read it right. Buttercup walks with us every morning to the vineyard where she is staked in the rye which surrounds the vineyard.
Squiggles is not to be left out. She walks with us but being the smart corgi that she is, she walks in Buttercup’s shadow to avoid the sun. You can see her in the picture below, to the left of Buttercup
Buttercup’s preference would be to have free reign in the vineyard. She absolutely loves fresh grapevines! But, she settles for the rye. At lunchtime we take her some fresh vines from the ones we have de-budded, fill her water and we walk back home for lunch.
After lunch and a power nap, John and the older children walk back to the vineyard to finish the afternoon work until milking time. Buttercup is walked home for milking, her grain and bed.
I stay home after lunch to allow the younger children longer naps (code for my nap!) and catch up on everything I did not do in the morning (read, housework, make butter, cheese, prepare lunch for the following day, laundry…)
After milking we eat, everyone showers, read as a family, go to bed and …. wake to start all over.
This may seem a bit monotonous to some, but it is very fulfilling. There is definitely a lot to be said for a simple lifestyle!
You may not be able to understand my enthusiasm, but after walking and pruning 20 acres of grapes, we celebrated the completion of pruning. It just so happened that we finished early afternoon on the birthday of our 6 yr. old son, so, our celebration was complete with cake and ice cream (that is, homemade coffee ice cream from Buttercup’s milk)!
Unfortunately, I did not take any pictures of the vineyard before pruning began which showed all of last year’s growth. But, hopefully the pictures I do have will give you some idea of the pruning process. Ideally, you begin with the variety having the latest bud break – meaning the vines which begin to bud out last. So, we first pruned the Roussanne (7.3 acres) then the Montepulciano (5 acres) and finally the Aglianico (7.7 acres).
With the Aglianico, we used a machine to pre-prune the vines. The pre-pruner is pulled by a tractor and 2 men sit on the pre-pruner trimming the vines on either side of the row. Below you can see vines that have been pre-pruned. While you still must go back through and hand prune the vines, the big advantage to using a pre-pruner is that it pulls most of the growth from last year out for you thus saving a lot of time.
Optimally, you want to be left with about 10 buds per arm when you are finished pruning. Hopefully, in the picture below, you can see the little white bulge on the spur to the left. You should definitely be able to see the green bud opening to the right.
Below is the same vine completely pruned. Each of the buds left will produce blooms which will then produce grapes. There is a delicate balance between leaving enough buds so as to have the greatest amount of fruit but not to over stress the vine with too much fruit. If the vine produces too much fruit, either it will drop fruit on its own, you must thin the fruit yourself or the fruit will be poor quality with uneven ripening.
Do not think that because the pruning is finished the vineyard work is done! We are now debudding which I will explain later. :)
The fruit is off the vines and at the winery. Everyone is breathing a big sigh of relief!
Friday we did our final machine harvest of the year, the Aglianico. The day began with the bins being delivered at 2 am. John and the boys met the trucker at the vineyard to unload them. The actual harvest began between 5:30 and 6 am. It is amazing how different the vineyard looks and feels in the light of the stars. It would have been romantic if there were not so much work to be done!
I won’t bore you with the technicalities again – you can read “Our First Machine Harvest” for a few more details. I would like to show some pictures though, so you can see the difference between harvesting in the dark and in the daylight.
Our oldest son drove the harvester again and this is the beautiful view from the top. 
Hopefully you can see the grapes dropping from the arm into the chase trailer.
I would love to share with you the sweet flavor of the Aglianico grapes. The brix on these reached 25 meaning they are at 25% sugar – that means, they are wonderfully sweet!
Once the harvest was complete, the bins were loaded into the truck which has returned from another vineyard’s harvest.
There were some precarious moments with the loading, a couple of “almost” mishaps, but thankfully, no bins were lost and no serious injuries sustained.
As you can see, John is very serious minded while moving and loading the bins. Each bin can hold up to 1400lbs so there is a lot of danger.
There was also much speculation as to the total ton-age we were shipping off. We ended up with 14.5 tons which is very good for third leaf vines.
As I watched the truck pull away, I was reminded of a children’s book I have read so many times, “Follow That Truck”. The book follows different trucks, from log to milk trucks, on their journey from picking up the raw product to delivering the sell-able goods. I wanted to follow that truck! Instead, we celebrated by making (and eating) doughnuts!
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About Me 
God has amazingly blessed me, Dina-Marie, with a wonderful husband and 10 beautiful children. Moving from our "secure" life in Alabama to the "exciting" life of starting a vineyard in west Texas has been challenging to say the least. I have had the opportunity to take a crash course in frugal living and become a real farm girl - complete with milk cow and chickens. I hope to encourage you to make the most of where you are and what you have. |
