Still

A view from the footbridge, across the frozen lake.

Yes, it's happened:

This winter is colder than last.

In fact, it's the coldest February on record.

Last year, our coldest temperatures recorded were -14 degrees F.

This year, on more than one occasion, our vineyards have registered -17 to -20 degrees. (Depending on elevation. You never realize how much temperature varies until you start recording it on multiple sensors across several acres!)

And so, the vineyard remains still, quieted and muffled under a thick blanket of snow, as winter pruning carries on, and summer planning continues.

Each day the temperature plunges, the snow sparkles all the more, beneath a prism of dazzling ice crystals.

Although cold, this winter has been exceptionally bright: a banana tree I grow at home as a foliage plant, perched in a sunny window, produced a cream-colored flower cluster for the first time ever, bursting open mid-February and blanketing the house with the scent of hyacinth, on the coldest day of the year.

The coldest February on record, but, also one of the sunniest (clear open skies contributing to the plunging mercury.)

Frost paints the banks of the old sawmill creek.

Another season for the record books.

Another winter unlike the one before.

Cold, but dazzling.

Each year's weather is registered in the flavors and aromas of the next year's vintage: I anticipate some dazzling, and unprecedented, wine for 2015.

Februa

Calendar illustration for February, from a circa 1500 Dutch manuscript.

With the turn of a calendar page, we find ourselves in our shortest month, one which derives its name from the Roman feast of purification, Februa.

In the vineyard, February remains a time of cleaning, of preparation.

February is the month when most of our vineyard pruning takes place, a brief midwinter lull to prepare the vines for the flush of luscious growth that will drive our labors from bud burst through harvest.

Crunching through snowy vineyard rows, cutting away last year's ripened canes, we take comfort knowing that we are following the rituals of an ancient calendar.

Medieval prayer books and calendars frequently had illustrations depicting appropriate seasonal agricultural tasks for each month.

For Februa's month, more often than not, the calendar scenes depict ruddy-faced laborers gathering wood, warming themselves by a fire, or, out in a vineyard, cutting vines.

The sturdy vinedressers in the Medieval calendar illustration above also provide an answer to perhaps the most common question those of us who work in a vineyard still get asked today: what do you do in the winter?

The rows of vines, the tools employed, the layers of clothing: immediately recognizable to anyone who's worked a vineyard in February, despite the passage of so much time.

If winter vineyard work remains remarkably consistent, February itself is ever changing.

Some winters, our February fields look remarkably similar to the Dutch scene above: grass a dull green, the soil soft and friable. (Although our vineyard rows are tilled with a restored 1953 Farmall tractor, not the sturdy Dutch ox depicted.)

Our North Vineyard, after a first round of pruning. Photo by Tonya Fields.

This winter and last, cold has prevailed in Canton, Ohio.

February's earth remains frozen solid, the tracks of deer and muskrats etched into icy ruts of wintry perambulations.

A mantle of snow has cloaked the vineyard since mid January, doing exactly what we want it to do: regulating the ground temperature, insulating the vines.

A persistent blanket of snow warms the North Vineyard.

One of our vineyard thermometer probes fell from the trellis wire into a snowbank on January 17th: ever since, it has recorded a temperature range of between 32.043 and 32.093 degrees Fahrenheit, with no variation, for each of the days.

Going about the rhythm of our February pruning, at times the only sound is the stainless steel snip of our pruner blades, with occasional chirps and chortles from our (supposedly) mute swans.

Despite the silence, we are a little less anxious than we were last year at this time.

Our sturdy vines survived last winter's unprecedented cold exactly as we had hoped, with the nectar of last summer's bountiful harvest perfecting itself in the safety of our winery's stainless steel tanks.

Last February 2nd, Bucky our vineyard groundhog failed to rouse himself from the warmth of his den beneath a Petite Pearl vine.

This February, the snow above his warren is untrodden again, on the cusp of Valentines Day.

We'll take Bucky's slumber to mean we expect the gelid conditions to linger, although with each passing day, the sun, when it reveals itself, feels just a bit warmer on our cheeks, and the chatter of mute swans grows louder.

Cold temperatures linger, but there is a new warmth to February's sun.

Heat

A small observation on a cold winter's day:

Although the temperatures on the thermometer may register subzero, it is a great time to witness, first hand, the awesome power of solar heat.

Pictured above are bits of vine prunings, resting on top of our insulating blanket of vineyard snow.

We pruned these vines yesterday morning. 

Despite the arctic temperatures, in the course of a January afternoon, each rosy brown twig absorbed enough solar energy to melt a little depression in the snow around it.

(You witness the same thing at the base of the young vine on the right side of the picture.)

Solar energy, absorbed from the sun, stored in the tawny bark of the vine, and radiating back out onto the snow, melting a depression.

The things that cross your mine, trudging through the vineyard on a cold winter's day.

Denizens

It's a little quieter on the grounds this time of year.

The tables on the Piazza are stowed for the season.

No festive pavilion weddings.

So the swans seemed a little curious about this new vineyard denizen.

He must have arrived last night, staying in the farmhouse,

Although statistically, we don't get a lot of snow in November, and to some this seems early, in the vineyard, we welcome it.

Our vines need cold weather early in the season to "put them to bed."

And at this point in the season, before the vines are fully hardened off, the snow is a welcome blanket, insulating the roots just a bit, until they achieve full dormancy.

Cold temperatures in November, and a bit of snow, are exactly what the vines want to see.

The swans, on the other hand, aren't so sure.

Tasks

One of the most persistent misconceptions about vineyard work is that most of it takes place in summer.

Entirely understandable, since grapes, with their luxurious green leaves and delectable sweet fruits, seem the very essence of summer.

But truth be told, in the fall, winter, and spring, a LOT of behind the scenes work goes on.

Most of the summer, we are highly visible in the vine rows, attempting to wrestle rampant vine growth onto an orderly trellis.

In all the other months, our work is more varied.

One small task after the harvest, all of our row netting needs to be removed from the trellis and stored.

To expedite the process this year, I devised this contraption:

Like many of the world's great inventions, it started as pallets, scrap lumber and threaded pipe.

Five acres of bird netting, now spooled, neatly stacked, and stored.

What's on board for November?

Record keeping, trellis repair, equipment maintenance and inventory, weed control.

In December, we'll prune the orchard, and in the vineyard, prune and weigh canes from a random sample of vineyard vines across all six vineyard blocks, to assess this past season's growth, and plan dormant season pruning, which begins mid-January in earnest.

Tomorrow

Late summer days in a vineyard, the bounty borne by years of patient nurture drips from the vines.

Aromella clusters in the South Vineyard, September 2014

Clusters of amber, bronze, apricot, and deep purple bear a perilous, and transitory, prosperity.

With each passing day under a slanting September sun, the color deepens.

The fruit sweetens.

As the crop ripens, birds circle overhead, menacingly.

We worry about our perilous prosperity, borne as fragile fruit.

On misty vineyard mornings, a doe and her speckled fawns seek to breach the bird netting, and sample forbidden fruit.

As the poet observed, nothing gold can stay.

And that goes for September, which swept in with a blaze of goldenrod along the creek bed, and the transitory bounty of the crop this golden month bears.

Before we turn the page to October and autumn’s demise, all of the fruit, or that which does not succumb to the appetite of the creatures with whom we share this temporary paradise, will be harvested from the vines.

Frontenac Gris in the North Vineyard, September 2014

Our winged and hoofed friends sweep in to glean what remains.

There comes a day, after the last harvest, when we walk the denuded vineyard rows, where the jeweled tones of the crop we nurtured are replaced by lemon yellow leaves, with the first crinkles of brown fringing their edges.

The skeletal remains of rejected grape clusters, stripped clean by crows, litter the vineyard turf.

We’ll allow ourselves our moment of melancholy.

And then we shift gears to next year, the bounty of future harvests, the rich nectar now safely aging in winery tanks.

A sign on a piece of aged barn wood in my backyard reads: to plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow.

In the vineyard it is perpetually tomorrow.

No sooner are the last grapes plucked from the vines, than attention turns to next year.

Furrows are tilled.

Bird netting rolled.

Nursery orders placed.

Canada geese, flying in a perfect wedge, migrate overhead. Their somber call dissipates into the horizon.

On these October days of fading goldenrod, something about the plaintive wail of migrating birds makes me think that they understand what we ourselves have come to know:

Each tomorrow brings us closer to another golden season, a tomorrow in which we dream of another bountiful harvest, dripping from the vines, in extravagant jeweled tones.

The bounty of our acres, on display at our harvest festival, September 2014.

Tradition

2014 Festa Gervasi Wagon

If you do something twice, it's a tradition, right?

And so it is with our harvest wagon.

Last year, for Festa Gervasi, our grape harvest festival, we had great fun putting together our inaugural harvest wagon.

Building on Italian grape harvest traditions, we thought it would be fun to transplant the tradition to Canton, Ohio.

Everything on the wagon comes from our acres:

Scrap lumber left from construction, wild flowers from the meadows, bedding plants from our grounds, grapes from our vineyard.

I don't think anyone would ever guess that below our inaugural wagon was our aluminum airboat trailer.

Well, for this year's wagon, we started inauspiciously with pallets.

And loaded it up!

We look forward to continuing this tradition each year.

Each harvest, like each season, has its own personality and traits. And we look forward to each wagon looking different from those that came before.