Easy Sunday: Baby grapes

 I scared people with this photo a week ago.

The photo wasn't staged or cherry-picked. It was me at 11:29 a.m. on a day that was already heating up. I had been working in the vineyard, putting floppy, unruly vines in between wires that shaped the plant into a narrow, vertical one. I had been out there for about five hours by then. I was quitting for the day.

People called and texted me and said I looked "terrible." One said I looked like "death warmed over," a phrase I hadn't heard for decades. Their point was that I needed to take it easier.  

Here I am five days ago, also at end-of-day, at 11:23 a.m. I am doing the same job, but going through the vineyard now on a second pass through. It is lighter work now that the job is dealing with only the previous week's growth. I think I look OK, i.e., not killing myself.

Yesterday I took photos of the grapes in progress, photos to create a record and for analysis by the vineyard operators at Valley View Vineyards, who have been supervising my vineyard from the beginning. 

Each variety of grape plant is different in the vigor of the plant, the natural shape of the vines, the shape of the leaves, the shape of the canes, and the size of the grapes and how big the harvest.

The varieties are on different clocks, too. Pinot Noirs bud out and blossom early; Cabernet Sauvignons are about three weeks later. Malbecs are in the middle. The frosts we had in April damaged the Pinots and Malbecs, because their buds were out and vulnerable. The Cabernets were still dormant and apparently unaffected.  Toward the season's end, I picked an exploratory crop of Pinots on October 6 -- enough for Valley View Vineyards to buy on spec to ferment, barrel, and age for a year to see whether 100 percent pumice-grown conditions are as good for grapes as they are for melons. These are Pinots:

There were negligible Cabernets to pick in that third year. But my Malbecs were advanced and they bear a heavy crop; it was going to be a giant harvest even this first harvest-year for the vineyard -- except the starlings which had not noticed my Pinots discovered my Malbecs and ate the entire crop in two days, just before we planned the harvest. I will put up nets this year, another expense and bother.

This is what Pinot Noir grapes looked like yesterday, June 27.

The Pinot Noir vines are vigorous -- if anything, too vigorous. I am avoiding watering my grapes to try to keep the vine growth manageable. The roots are finding the water and nutrients they need without my help.

My Malbec vines shown below are even more vigorous, again without fertilizer or water. The giant growth we see in the new floppy canes has all taken place in the last week. My nephew, Liam Flenniken, who is helping me all summer, is six feet, three inches. These canes have grown out of the top pair of wires at five feet off the ground, and need to be clipped so they don't flop over and shade the plant. It will be fast work, but there is a lot of it, because every plant in the two acres planted to Malbecs looks like these. 

Liam and I decided to take Sunday off. We will get to the Malbecs and Cabernets next week. Then back to the Pinots, which we just finished. The work continues all summer.

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