Chronicles of the Long Shot Farm

Grape

Getting Ready for Grape Planting

Posted on
We spent most of the day cleaning the upper fence row from the “grape” field, burning brush and sticks too small or dead to use for firewood.  While Lars and Tina worked on the fence row, Jeff continued plowing the field – the ground is just soft enough for the tractor to easily pull the plow through (in third gear even).  It is already looking so much better than last year at this time!

All week long, Jeff has been working on pointing in the barn and on Friday, he and Jens finished replacing the remaining old supporting posts with new posts.  They jacked up the wall with the windows facing the road and got it ready for the next big project:  replacing all the large windows and rebuilding that wall – which is not stone, but wood construction, so we should be able to do it.

Snowtober Weekend: Saturday

Posted on

All  plans for landscaping and planting were delayed as we got hit with a real snow storm in October this Saturday:

Marigolds: after first hour of snow

Marigolds:  3 hours later

My “late blooming” rose

Blackberries – with leaves – in the snow

Grape vines in the snow

Corn Harvest Part 1, Berry and Grape “Maintenance”

Posted on

Our early corn variety – Sugar Baby – is all picked…it took us a week, a few “buckets” each day during the work week, and then the remainder on Friday and Saturday.  Alltogether, this resulted in – we think – about 65 quart bags of frozen corn.  Not too bad, even though we lost count and were to tired to go back to the garage, where our extra freezers are, and do a recount.  This was the first time we had planted an early variety and we were surprised to find rather large ears of corn on these relatively short, stocky kind of plants.  (We had planted 2 lbs of this bi-color variety).

The Silver King corn is almost ripe – we are hoping for some rain to help the kernels fill out, but this is our project for the next weekend.  Expecting lots of relatives to comes and help pick and take corn with them 🙂  We planted 5 lbs of this one  (not sure what we were thinking).

Also spent time throughout the week to continue tying up bramble canes for next year’s fruit.  We are getting some blackberries off this year, although we had tried to cut back the plants a lot this Spring to discourage fruiting and encourage the growth of fruiting canes for next year.  Still, managed to make 2 pies and freeze 2 gallons of berries so far. We are irrigating the berries, since the weather has been extremely hot and dry.
Pretty much did the same “maintenance” on the grapes – continued tying up the vines, which are still growing at amazing rates, and continued irrigating.

Trellis for the Grapes

Posted on

By Saturday evening we had the first two rows of trellis posts in the grape patch (only 3 rows to go).  It actually went rather quickly, since Jeff had already drilled the holes and sharpened (with a chain saw) the fence posts.  With the help of Zach’s tractor – which is still parked at our house, and which is a bit larger than our tractor – Jeff sank the posts by using the hydraulic front bucket.  The ground is still soft enough from all the rain, but the grapes have grown a lot, and are touching the bottom of the tractor, so we need to get the rest of posts in this weekend.

Jeff checking the first couple of posts

Chambourcin Grape Patch

Posted on

Our long awaited plants finally arrived this week – all 200 chambourcin grapes.  We started planting the same evening, using the small rototiller to loosen up the soil in the already dug holes, we managed to plant about 25 vines each evening.  The final 100 vines were planted on Saturday – not much to see yet, just “sticks” poking out of the ground.  Hoping this will work!