July 4: I am under the impression that our recent dry period has come to an end. We forget so quickly what the advantages of one thing or another when they are gone. Drought requires irrigation, which requires digging for water, plumbing, mechanical maintenance, etc. but there are few mosquitoes. Wet periods, on the other hand, do not require irrigation.

This last winter was wet and cold, and had few of the small but precious respites we usually enjoy. This spring burst onto the land spreading the incredible, luxuriant (until it becomes rank and impassible) growth that I was unable to even imagine as a child in the desert that is Southern California. I finally lost my first grape this winter (I had been told to expect up to 10% per year) but these are patented grapes so getting a replacement will have to wait until I am near a licensed wholesaler. Other than that, winter went well in the vineyard. I had set up the snow fencing right next to the grapes this last fall so the snow tended to cover the whole vineyard, with only a few bare spots. I had not mowed the grass north of the driveway however so the drive was filled with snow all winter too. Not that I needed to get out there. The snow was well over 5 feet deep at times, or so I thought, because the tops of most fence posts were not visible above the drifts. While this was indeed the case over some of the vineyard, in other places this was due to the weight of the snow on the lines and grapes actually setting the posts deeper into the ground! Some are a scant 4’ high any more. My intent at the moment is to add more posts, nearly doubling the count I have now, but I may start replacing steel with wood if this continues to be a problem. Most posts in the newer vineyards are pushed into the ground with heavy machinery though, and I do not want to run that kind of weight over the ground. I hope that I am not in a hurry.

I made a decision in April to focus on pruning first, leaving lawn and weed issues until later. This was probably a reaction to my lack of oversight last year. By the 12th of May I was a third way through the vineyard, being the brutal husband the literature demanded, pruning for shape and limiting the number of live buds to what each vine “should” have to support maximum grape production. The night of the 12th we got a very hard frost that killed most of what I had left on the spindly, individual central stalks, and certainly all of the flower buds on those, no longer leafy vines. Also, the weeds and interlane grass got out of hand quickly, to the point where at its worst I was hacking through armpit-high brome and thistles. OK, so next spring I’ll try the reverse strategy, mowing and weeding until all possible frost has passed, and then pruning. Still, I expect a fair crop as the unpruned vines managed to hold onto their blossoms, which were more protected by leaves and extra branches. Unfortunately, much of that fruit will be low and difficult to harvest. I suppose that I am still two years away from the structure I want in the vines.

Deer have been the biggest issue. Mothballs have helped but need to be placed every dozen feet, I saw a couple of plastic shopping bags used as a scarecrow in a couple of local gardens and put one on a piece of rebar. The wind catches it and it does dance and make noise pretty reliably (more so than the can lids set to bang into each other in the wind). Double rows of twine or marking tape work (one at 5’ another at 2.5) , but they are always in my way too. (The marking tape I got this year to tie up the vines seems to be maybe ¾ as thick as the ostensibly identical tape from the same retailer last year. I find my self having to double it to get the strength I need about a quarter of the time, which is no longer cost effective.)

I built a cupola above the tuli kivi and put in the horizontal chimney. I added a clean-out door on the far end and should be able to get to the near end of both channels from the firebox. I still need to build the replacement brick chimney before it gets cold. I was very pleased with the fireplace last winter but felt that I was losing too much heat up the chimney. This should solve that. I am teaching a tile workshop at the Swedish Institute (http://www.americanswedishinst.org) this fall and I made a few stove tile molds to use as examples for the workshop. One pattern is plain with a flat raised border and then a bullnose raised above that, but with an open square in the center. What I intend to do is to make low relief items that I can put in the squares of some of the tiles when they first come out of the molds. The imagery will be things from the farm, redwings, chubs, frogs and herons, wheat and grapes, apples and bees.

I also managed to break one set of arched windows so I think that this winter will build a leaded glass set to replace them. Again, using what I can that is farm-related in color as well as from.

That’s it so far, but the season is till young.