Been a long time

Wow, a lot has happened since I last wrote this up... I'll skip the really intricate details; but in summation; it finally stopped raining at the end of May and the sun came out for a little bit, the vines, having stressed and suffered their way through the cold wet weather, finally shot upward and the caps came flying off the flowers.  We all watched anxiously to see what wold become of the highly fertile start to the year, and overall, much to our delight, most of our blocks and clones set up very well.  It has been an absolute whirl-wind ever since.  The canopy was growing, seemingly, out of control.  As fast as we could make the rotation, we would have to double back and start the next round of tucking shoots and moving wires, and as soon as we could finish with that, bloom/set was over and it was time to start clearing leaves and laterals out of the fruit zone.  Then it was a delicate dance with when to hedge the vines.  The canopy was beginning to double over on itself... too early and we would be right back doing it again, too late and we would begin to loose light on the shaded side of the canopy and leaves would begin to drop.  With just the right balance of hand hedging and tractor hedging, we were able to knock out the entire estate in an organized timely fashion and the growth slowed precisely at the right moment.  As growth slowed the canes began to lignify and the fruit has begun to show some color.  Some of the soil moisture sensors started to show adequate drying and the time was right for a quick blast of water.  We are watching closely now as the fruit is slowly moving through veraison and when the time is right, we will remove the last 5 to 10% of the fruit that remains green at the end. 

Every now and again the sun visits us for the afternoon.  The theme of this year has been and continues to be long morning fog layers and low clouds hanging around into the afternoons.  It would be best if it would warm up, just a touch, but not too much at once.  With Pinot and Chard out there, I'm not too concerned about the late harvest, it should lend itself nicely to the acidity in the wines.  But, I'm feeling that we will be in a rush again after harvest to get the cover cropping done and erosion control in place, bird netting gathered up and put away, before, what is likely to be, an early fall season.  I'll let you know.

Rolling On...

Oh man, the new tractor is here.  It is a beauty.  John Deere (runs like a deer) 5325 Narrow.  This is about 48" overall width, fits down our 6 foot rows like a dream.  It is 55 HP so it is big enough to run a full sized flail mower, etc.  What a cool tool.  Of course, it showed up yesterday, let me tell you, we've had about 4 weeks of absolutely perfect weather, weeks of daytime temps hovering in the mid 60's to mid 70's, sun shining, glorious top down (or in my case, open cab) driving weather.  So, in the mean-time this tractor has just been poking along on its way down from Oregon and then they had to change to the narrow wheels at the shop, and schedule delivery, well yesterday about 5 minutes before he pulled in, it started dumping.  I mean, really raining hard.  You know, my weather station console was scrolling across the bottom "It's raining cats and dogs..." (it thinks it really has a great sense of humor).  We got about .8 inches of rain between tractor arrive o'clock till about 6 PM, right about the time I finished installing our weather station in the middle of this downpour.

  I mean it, right in the middle, how do I know?  I recorded .4 inches of rain after I got it out there.  So here is that link.  Lynmar - Quail Hill Weather  I'll be adding our soil moisture sensors within the next week so those will get added to the Summary page.  They are showing now, but they are sitting in my office transmitting to the base station, so they are not at all accurate.  Well, take that back, they are accurate, because they are sitting in a beaker of water, pre-soaking, but they are not an accurate reflection of our soils.  Well, actually, they may be, considering that we took on another near inch of rain over the last 48 hours.  But, after all this, I was able to get out and get some mowing done on our better draining sandier soil blocks this afternoon.  Another day at the office.

Spring is Here

A beehive of activity.  The vines are stirring, and there are tiny little leaves poking out.  The Chardonnay was first, but some of our hill top Pinot blocks are right there with them.  We are now on frost alert.  If it is threatening to freeze at night, I will be up, turning valves and watching the sprinklers anxiously. 

We ordered our new narrow row tractor and should see it by the beginning of next week.  However, the tall grass and leaves are not a good mix in cold weather situations.  Tall grass will trap cold air, not allowing it to drain to lower elevations in addition to shading the soil surface and not allowing for radiant heat to warm the soils and thus the immediate area.  In these situations, frost can become an issue in areas where it normally is not and are exposed, without frost protection, to the deeper freezes.  Therefore, check my Twitter post for a video of this, but I got out on our old workhorse tractor and got started mowing some of the wider rows.  But this tractor has old balding tires and tends to want to side slip on some of our side slopping rows.  This puts the vines in perile as a tractor with a mower is formidible foe for rows of grapevines.  It is also very long, so it wouldn't take too much of an angle to cause the dreaded "tractor blight".  Narrower profile and new tires should help the cause.

Gopher Bashin' or Caddyshack Redux

Which is it?  We are inundated by Gophers, a problem that we take very seriously around here.  The soils at Lynmar Estate are part of the bigger picture that make growin' Pinot Noir so good.  They are primarily sandy loams.  Well, just as it sounds, this makes for ideal digging, burrowing and tunneling.  Combine that fact with overarching sub-tropical climate and drip irrigation, high density of juicy vine roots, and you have some pretty happy Gophers.

I'm not stopping there...  If you've ever had the chance to BBQ over grapevine, you know that it can impart a sweet, caramelized finish to the flavor of your favorite cut of meat.  I would imagine that cruising around in the dirt, the chance encounter with a grapevine root would be pretty enticing.  Well you know it and so do I, Grapevines produce a damn fine beverage.  In the summer around here it gets pretty dry (something I'll elaborate on later when I write about climate and microclimates).  We have to keep the vines happy when the roots have started to deplete the moisture in the soils, and we can.  Most vines these days are set up with drip irrigation (so many different types), and we can meter the water out in exacting amounts (a mathematical equation can determine this based on daily weather patterns, watch for that entry later, also).

Where am I going with all this?  Although the sap from the vines is not directly tapped for wine production, it does translocate the carbohydrates to the different parts of the vine, so essentially it ends up in our glass, just via a nice little fruity morsel.  Gophers can appreciate this, too.  In fact they rely upon it.  The water from the drip system is picked up by the vines, the gophers eat the roots and absorb the moisture, or make incisions in the trunk of the vines and lick at the exudes from the bleeding vines.  In most cases this will lead to reduced production.  In a new vineyard with vines less than an inch in diameter, it often times results in death.  You can be cruising along the rows and you'll occasionally see a vine that for no other apparent reason has begun to dry up and get crispy.  I've seen enough of these to know exactly what that looks like, from very far away.  And when I see them, without fail, I can grab the trunk and pull the entire trunk, sans roots, straight out of the ground and there, just below ground level will be a gnawed section of the vine that went straight through the small, fragile vine.  Killing it.  So we must defend ourselves (read my previous entry where I discuss the economic decision making process).

In any other situation, I like Gophers for their natural action.  They are nature's deep tillers.  Mixing soils, breaking compaction and aerating anaerobic layers.  Burrowing as deep as 6 feet before coming back up and building their main dens around 3 feet deep (like the P-Trap under your sink, which prevents flooding of their main den (crafty)).  Then they create a series of tunnels, mainly around a foot deep for the purpose of feeding.  An adult male gopher can and will establish and defend a territory covering about 2000 square feet.  Gophers are also highly solitary and territorial.  They will fight each other to the death.  Males and females come together only for the purpose of mating (for a short window of time their tunnels will join, then after mating, they go back to their respective burrows and close off the connection.  Females will kick out the young when old enough to fend for themselves.  They will have to cover open ground to find a new territory, or an abandoned tunnel system.  This is one of the most vulnerable times, obviously.  Enter our favorite predator.

So far this winter we installed 14 owl boxes and 2 perches.  We have another 10 boxes and 10 more perches coming within the next two weeks (read: as soon as the weather breaks) (for more info about the boxes see http://www.wildwingco.com/) .  Owls will be looking for nesting sights in March.  We are looking to knock the gophers out of commission and lower back below the economic threshold.  A sceptic was saying that all this investment in owl boxes will maintain current levels, at best, while all but rolling their eyes at the effort.  On one hand, I understand that owls are not burrowing creatures (with the exception of the burrowing owl), and the owl we are designed to host is the Barn Owl.  So they will get the ones that come up.  Gophers  do come up at night to move to new areas, or if they are forced out in a territory battle when tunnels and feeding zones come together.  They also poke themselves out to grab vegetation around their feeding holes.  So, I don't necessarily agree with is that they will have little impact on reducing our gopher pressure.  And here is why.

Owls mate for life, so when they come to nest, they come as a pair.  Occasionally a nest can support two fledgling Owls, but typically, out of two hatchlings, only one will survive.  By the estimates (based on pellet counts in and around boxed owl nesting sites, in the time it takes to raise that fledgling to juvenile status, each owl will account for ~1000 small vertebrates.  Granted, these won't all be gophers, as there are plenty of voles, moles, rats and other small vertebrates running around here, but where gophers exist, they will be in the mix.  So let's stay conservative and say that 33% of the diet will be gophers.  that means 1000 gophers per box per brood.  Then let's say we only get one brood per year, and not 2 as is often the case in high gopher population areas.  With 24 boxes, we are accounting for 24,000 dead gophers.  If a full sized adult gopher can dominate 2000 sq feet and an acre of vineyard is 43,560 sq feet, then, if all were full sized adult gophers, we would be looking at 22 gophers per acre.  On the assumption that not all gophers full fill the specs and only cover half as much space, then let's account for 44 gophers per acre.  One occupied Owl box with a successful fledgling in the family should have a significant impact on ~22 acres.  We have set ourselves up with 1 box for every 3 acres.  Hmm.  I think there will be an impact.

Let's now take a multi-pronged approach.  Lets get to trapping, as well.  The same contingency telling me that owls will have a marginal impact on reducing numbers also tells me that trapping is a maintenance activity at best.  Let's revisit a meeting I had with Gregg the Gopher Guy the other day.  First I should introduce you to Gregg the Gopher Guy.  He is one of those guys who not only knows about gophers because he thinks about them day and night and studies them 24/7 and relies on them for a living, and is quite proud of his success with that, but he is actually capable of thinking like a gopher.  I think this is critical.  So, one walk and talk with him through a gopher riddled vineyard and I observed him sniffing the air, stopping suddenly and pointing out a fresh gopher feeding hole.  The picture at the top is of what we call a lateral.  This is a large mound left behind because the gopher is on a mission and digging to go somewhere.  Very rare to find them actually open as gophers prefer and survive by living in a closed system (keeps the scent at home, not out wafting around the noses of foxes, skunks, coyotes and other digging carnivores, like Gregg the Gopher Guy).  But he was pointing out small very inconspicuous, freshly plugged up holes.  Do I believe he is actually smelling the gophers?  No (given the fact that when I showed him that same photo that I have at the top of the page he did the same thing), but I do think he knows what he is talking about.  He showed me what he calls the feeding zone, and showed me how to recognize the stunted growth in the cover crop that would indicate the full range of one individual gopher.  He showed me his modified traps and how and where to place them.  Look, I'm saying I learned a lot.  And I'm no slouch when it comes to trapping gophers, but I learned how to do it with probably less than half the effort.

I learned and believe, in the difference that his Gopher Goner trap makes in your success.  I learned that when the pessimist tries to tell me that trapping 127 gophers in one summer had no effect on the overall population on an 80 acre site, I believe that, and know that it didn't.  Because compared to successful trapping, that is a pathetic performance.  Gregg the Gopher Guy, using his methodology and equipment trapped 83 gophers on 6 acres in one 8 hour day.  Back to our math, if we are counting on 44 gophers per acre, he wiped out a third of the of the population in a single pass.  Check him out, he IS the Gopher Guy.  End of story.

Making the Cut

So we are here, it is time, the guys are fixing it up. After a lengthy conversation about historical practices, vigor, philosophical approaches and future direction on Monday with Eugenio and Dave, we finally put on the green light to start pruning. The only caveat being that it then decided that it should open the tap and start raining for a day and a half. Well that subsided, and quite literally with a couple of the nicest days in the past 3 months, the sun was shining and the shears were brandished. 14 guys showed up on Thursday got the 7AM lecture about technique as it had been quite clearly defined and began to roll. Of course, you can stand there with 14 guys and look at 2 or if you choose even 4 vines pruning while you explain the process and explain your goals and so on and so forth, these guys may be the most knowledgeable and experienced pruners available, the kind of guys that you would like to have representing you at the County Pruning finals and likely to go all the way and walk off with over $2000 in pocket in cash and prizes (don't believe me? search Sonoma County Pruning Contest, it is very, very cool), but as soon as you roll every one out to their individual rows, you better start walking (and understand Spanish) because there will be questions. Because every vine is a different puzzle in itself. And when you are pruning a difficult scenario like double Guyot in a young vineyard and still developing the vines, there are all sorts of puzzles to figure out. In this case there were questions for almost 2 hours before guys really got humming along.

You see, pruning comes in all different forms. The form we are chasing, at current, is called double Guyot. In Pinot Noir we are going for the full translation, meaning two canes and no replacement spurs. Pinot Noir likes to grow. It is a varietal that will cause farmers that don't anticipate this to spend long spring hours removing unanticipated growth from the middles of their vines in an attempt to aerate the fruit zone. With this knowledge in hand, one can set to the task of utilizing these basal buds as fruiting positions, eliminate the competition for sun, air and water by dropping the spurs, foster healthy growth at the base of the canes and take healthy replacements from the most ideal of scenarios in the following year.

This is definitely the way to start because it makes the cordon trained spur pruning blocks so much more rewarding. Yes we have those as well. I'll elaborate more when we get into those a little later.

Now, once again, rain is immanent. It is actually taking the form of a line of storms about to pound us for at least a week straight. We will spend a couple of these days tying down the vines we just got finished pruning, but then we will have to sit it out until the rain subsides. We don't prune in the rain. Why?

We walk around in constant fear of what may land on our tender open wounds on the vines after we cut them. There are certain molds and fungi that seem to love to pray on wood, believe it or not. One example, Eutypa lata, from the Diatrypaceae family of fungi, happens to love grape vines (who can blame it? I totally understand.). Well, Eutypa loves it when it rains. Feeding and habitation of Eutypa takes the form of a small (I mean really small) pocket on the wood which they've infested. When it rains, the water fills the pocket displacing the dry powdery spores that have built up, pushs them out and they take flight in the stormy winds and fly around in some random hope that they come up against some freshly cut exposed sweet delicate wood. So if we are out cutting vines in the rain, chances are pretty good that at least some of those cuts get infected with some type fungus. The wood around this colonization begins to die back as cells are compromised and the entire vine can soon find itself sucking air, and in a matter of two to three years, it is just out of production. Believe me, when you are farming these established vines, and you first see it you are in denial, and you try all sorts of pruning tricks to try to ward off the pending death, replace pruning, dead arm cutback, etc, costly and time intensive techniques to attempt to save your vine. Sometimes they work. But usually, after suffering for a few years of sub par performance most are doomed, and end up upside down in farming cost, or it just up and dies. GREAT! Then we begin to wonder how many more vines have been infected, in the meantime, from spores from this vine floating around, remove it, destroy it, and replant it. After three years of special, usually hand, nurturing of the replacement vine, we may get this space in the vineyard back into partial production. Then eventually into full production. In the interim, we've lost 6 years or so of production. If a vine was supposed to be cranking out 5 pounds of fruit per year, then we're talking 30+ pounds of fruit in 6 years. If this fruit is designated for a $100 bottle of wine, you've just lost yourself $1100 in wine from that spot going down for 6 years. Let's say you have a 4% failure rate (high) because you've been out pruning in the rain, on a 6' x 4' vineyard, you are talking 72 vines, you do the math. The hand nurturing of that space back to life also cost you dearly. And the first year back into production (year 7 on this timeline) you can expect 25% production, second year 50% and maybe, just maybe by 3rd crop (year 9 on this timeline) you'll be getting your 5 lbs back. So is it worth it to take a day off when its raining and reduce your risk of exposure? Yes!!

Anyhow, we got two good solid 10 hour days of pruning in this week, probably a week before we get back out there. 2 blocks down and only 30 more to go before March 1. Let's hope for some sun.

Data-Wise

There is a certain wisdom to be gained from watching the numbers, and rest assured that we do it all. We count nodes, shoot tip index, pressure bomb, weather data log, collect pruning weights, record berry weights, etc. But how good is that information, how do we validate it? There is only one really certified way to make any sense out of what is happening in your vineyard, and that is to go look. How do the best farmers in the world farm their grapes? They go out there and do it. Sitting at this computer terminal entering the numbers looking at indexes, great. What does that look like in the field? When the french talk about terroir, how do you think they know it so well? They go out there and live in it. It's been said; the best fertilizer for any farm is the foreman's boot prints. Exactly the foundation for my farming policy.

Digging In!

Happy New Year!!

Here you will find my regular growing updates and be able to track the 2010 Lynmar Estate vintage, play by play.

Check back soon for my first field report of the new decade.