Chronicles of the Long Shot Farm

Grape

Pruning and Seeds

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It got warmer – even 41°F seemed balmy enough to work in the vineyard all morning.  We nearly finished the Chambourcin patch #1 with basic pruning and if it would not have been for the gusty wind, we would have gotten even further.  Instead we started pruning the upper blackberry patch, which we never finished last fall – this is our newer, not yet bearing, patch of Triple Crown berries.  Hopefully, we can get ahead of the weeds by starting early.  Unfortunately, half of this patch was still snow covered and the ground was frozen so hard, that we could not get all the weeds out – so the pruning was limited to certain sections of the patch.

And – we started our first seeds:  Bell Pepper, one seed packet of a mixed variety (that did really well last year), and a second packet of just red roasting peppers.  Probably should have started these a week or two ago, so I am hopeful that they will get strong enough by mid May to plant outside.  Also started some Marigolds, just for fun!  It is so nice to see flats of seeds on the windowsills.

Chardonel Vines Ordered

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We did just order more grape vines to plant this fall:  some Vidal Blanc vines to replace those that did not grow last year, and more importantly 200+ Chardonel grape vines.  
Chardonel is a cross between the  popular French American hybrid Seyval and the classic vinifera Chardonnay.  The initial cross was made in 1953 and the plant was first propagated in 1960 as NY 45010 by the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station at Cornell University.   In 1992 Plant Patent 7860 was  issued and the variety was named – making it the fourth wine grape cultivar to be named by the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station.

Chardonel is similar to Chardonnay, but the vines are much hardier – which is important considering we are located in southern Pennsylvania.  Chardonel grapes can produce a dry, full-bodied superior white wine with hints of melon and citrus. Wines can be fermented and aged in stainless steel to produce fruit forward wines, or they can be barrel fermented.  We shall see in 3 years or so how it turns out!


Hello 2014!

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Happy New Year – and best wishes for a wonderful, exciting and healthy 2014.

We had a great first day and spent several hours in the vineyard this afternoon pruning vines and imagining the possibilities of our 2014 vintage :).  Temperatures were right around freezing and there was hardly any wind – we could not have asked for better winter pruning weather.  But…frigid temperature are in the forecast, dropping as much as 20 degrees by Thursday night.

“Before”
“After”

Chambourcin Harvest 2013

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It only took us one day to harvest our grapes, with some helpers, a perfect day and an early start!  We alternated between  picking and crushing, then cleaning up – and started over.  In a way, this was a “test” year, since we don’t have that many vines bearing fruit yet. 

We started with picking:

Brought everything to the “crush pad” by the barn:

 
Where we weighed each container – and also weighed some of the larger clusters (some weighed over 1 lbs):
 

 
We used our cider press – minus the actual press part – for crushing the grapes, and the we manually did the de-stemming.  In addition to pulling out all the stems, we were also paying close attention to spiders, stink-bugs and all sorts of other critters.  We were closely on the look-out for Asian lady bugs (the yellow kind), but did not find a single one.
 
 
The crushed berries were dumped into one of our fermenters:

“Harvest Eve”

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This afternoon we finished final preparation for our grape harvest.  We had already cleaned up the barn and the press, but we got all our food grade buckets and picking tubs ready and found all our clippers. We also brought our old platform scale down from the top of the barn, because are going to weigh what we pick this year! 

And we finally took down all the pretty strung lights that have been hanging in the barn since Jens and Gracie’s wedding over a year ago. 

The last thing we did, right before it got dark, was remove the bird netting on just one row to give us a head start for the morning.  We used the same winding tool that we use for fence wire – it worked beautifully for the netting, which we may be able to re-use next season. (It also worked great for the strings of lights)