Vineyard Update: Six a.m. on Friday

I set the alarm for 4:20 a.m. again today.  

I want to be at the Vineyard promptly at 6 a.m. so I can join my nephew to work in the vineyard. I want to get started in then the cool of the morning because the forecast is for 90 degrees in the shade by mid-afternoon. The vineyard has full sun. 

The immediate job at hand is to unhook the two wires that are currently attached in notches on the T-posts that suspend the trellis wires that support the vines. The wires are three inches apart when in the notches. The job is to open up that space and shove the rangy grape vines up into that space between the wires, and then re-attach the wires, which squeezes the vines into a slender, mostly-vertical plant, at least temporarily. Grapes are enormously vigorous plants, at least in the pumice soil at my farm, so vines will burst out of their confined space as the season progresses, but they are still somewhat contained and supported.

Wire in the notch

Before

After

How they look end of season. No longer looking squeezed

In posts I published last summer I mentioned my nephew, Liam Flenniken. He is age 18 now.  He is staying at the farm house this summer, once again doing vineyard labor to earn money to pay for college at Oregon State University, which he will start this fall. He is the 6th generation working on this property, purchased from a Donation Land Claim owner in 1883 by my great grandfather, Stephen Nealon. That makes Liam the great, great, great grandson of the farm's founder, a Union Army veteran. Liam does not aspire to being a vineyard worker. He wants to fly airplanes.

Buried in the mass of leaves are the two wires

A experienced vineyard worker from Valley View Vineyard, Adelberto Paz, gave Liam and me a lesson on the best way to do this job. It is hard work, but not complicated. Like much farm work, it is repetitive. One lifts up the floppy vines and pushes them toward the middle, re-hooks the wires. Again and again. There are 6,000 plants on my eight acres.

I last reported on the vineyard describing the April frosts. The plants looked pretty rough on April 21 with the frost damage to the Pinot Noir buds and leaves, but the damage was spotty, and in two weeks the plants had ample buds. It turned out to be a false worry. The fans that stirred the air did their job. It turns out that the bigger problem I face is managing vine growth. My soil may be too fertile. Workers needed to thin the nodes that would bear fruit -- 12 person-days of work. Ideally the fruit-bearing nodes are spaced four inches apart to give room for the grape clusters and until they were thinned they were too close together.

On May 22, a son of the owner of Valley View Vineyard, Colin Wisnovsky, came to the vineyard and did the first of two fungicide sprays. He is conscientious about suiting up to avoid the sulpher-based spray.

I don't have photograph of me at 6 a.m. yesterday, nor this morning, nor for the next six or eight days working with Liam to squeeze the vines between the wires. I am writing quickly and pushing Publish.

I also lack photos of me mowing the weeds so there is a "lawn" of green between the rows of grapes for most of the vineyard. Nor do I have photos of me covered with pumice dust from tilling the dozen or so rows that I need to till rather than mow. Nor do I have photos of me spraying an herbicide at the base of the plants to control weeds. (The herbicide is an alternative to the Roundup brand herbicide I want to be able to tell grape buyers that it is a Roundup-free vineyard.

Classmates at the college reunion asked me about my Pinot Noirs. Willamette Valley Pinot Noirs have an international reputation and wine connoisseurs wondered when they could buy a case of my wine. Answer: Not for at least a year, and probably two.

Some Willamette Valley Pinots have a small mixture (under five percent) of Southern Oregon grapes because our hotter summers create riper grapes and therefore dark fruit flavors and color which improves their wines. Wines labeled being from "Oregon" not "Willamette Valley" can have any amount of Southern Oregon grapes. My hope is that my grapes will stand alone labeled as coming from the Rogue Valley -- a wine region with a still-small, but growing reputation. My hope is that my wine will get labeled as being grown on100 percent pumice soil, a point of distinction.

I will ask Liam to take a snapshot of me this morning at 6 a.m. to send to the Oregon Department of Revenue to send with a message, "darned right it's work."

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