Swell

The flowers are come on the earth; 
the time of cutting the vines is come, 
and the voice of the dove is sounding in our land.
~Song of Songs 2:12


It's a time of pregnant expectation in the vineyard.

A pair of elegant mourning doves has produced the first brood of the vineyard season, and all around us, expectant ducks and robins and killdeer and blue birds flit about building and tending nests.

Amidst the vines, it's positively raucous at sunrise, even on mornings when frost paints the daffodils.

But our vineyard birds aren't the only ones anxious and expectant these long awaited first warm days of the season. Those of us who tend the vines are also carefully monitoring our "babies" (4,178 of them to be exact.)

Since the first vortex we've been carefully monitoring the buds on thousands of individual vines.

Each new plunge of the thermometer sends us crunching through insulating snow to gather representative sample canes from six grape varieties, in eight vineyard blocks, spread across almost six acres.

Our historic farmhouse, April 15, 2014

We bring them into the warmth of our vineyard office, adjoining the circa 1830 farmhouse on our historic farm,  to thaw out. We then patiently slice each compound bud open with a razor blade under a magnifying lens, to examine the primary, secondary and tertiary buds contained within.

One hundred compound buds sampled, from each of the eight vineyard blocks. We do this each time the temperature plunges. (I'm an English major, not a mathematician, so I will let someone else do the math as to how many buds we looked at over the course of this frigid winter.)

So lets just say, ballpark, scads of buds examined.

And we are reasonably confident that our hardiest Minnesota hybrids came through with a 97% bud survival rate. In a winter of dismal vineyard news from across the Midwest, a glimmer of hope from our young vineyard in Canton. (Although anything can yet happen, and any grape farmer would be foolish to predict a crop in our climate until at least June.)

So, we are not out of the woods yet.

A week ago, the morning of the Full Blood Moon, we arrive to find the old farm under yet another blanket of snow. Overnight vineyard temperatures were logged at 19 degrees, at a time when the grape buds had already started to swell.

So out we go once more to sample, this time gathering canes from vines dripping with "sap sicles."

"Sap sicle" from a pruning cut in the South Vineyard, April 15, 2015

A week after the blood moon, the buds are still alive, and continuing to swell. Any moment now, we will begin to see the pink and green foliage emerge from the earliest buds to break.

Grape vines exhibit apical dominance, which means the highest buds on each plant break dormancy first, and leaf out before the others.

For this reason, in our micro-climate, which is subject to heartbreaking late spring freezes, we leave longer spurs than are necessary on each plant when we do our winter pruning.

If anxious grape plants decide to break dormancy before winter decides it is ready to release us from its frosty talon, apical dominance ensures that we will have reserve buds lower on the plant to produce a crop.

This strategy of double pruning also means double the pruning labor, but is a necessary provision in our viticultural region.

A carafe of grape canes, forced to break bud.

A few weeks ago, as one dismal report after another rolled in from vineyards throughout the Eastern U.S., I stuck a few pruned grape canes in a wine carafe of water. We'd examined the buds multiple times, tabulating the number of kiwi-green live buds we encountered on each sample cane.

We knew the buds were alive. But still, just to be sure, we couldn't relax until we saw leaves emerge.

And so the other day, that hot house vase of grape canes broke bud.

Pink and green leaflets emerged first.

Then fully fledged leaves.

Now, a few days later, long green shoots, each with several leaves, emerging from the top bud on each cane, as apical dominance decrees.

Any day now, we hope to see the same thing happen on our vineyard vines.

And just like Betty the brown duck, who nests under our hydrangea bushes each year, as soon as our babies hatch, we will puff ourselves up a little bit and show them off.

Betty shows off here on our spring-fed lake, displaying her handsome brood in a neat row on the v-shaped wake she forms through sun-warmed water.

We in the vineyard will show off our equally handsome brood here on the interwebs. Any day now, once the buds break. Stay tuned...

(And we promise, this will be the last of the icy vineyard posts! I think we also said that in February. But this time, we really, really, mean it!)

UPDATE April 28th: 
One of the interesting things about growing grapes, is how localized conditions and micro climates can affect a particular vineyard. Interesting story in our hometown newspaper today about how the same conditions have had different effects at some of our neighboring vineyards:

CANTON REPOSITORY: Ohio wineries realizing effect of harsh winter

Janus

Snow Rollers in the North Vineyard

A new year dawned in the vineyard with a bracing seasonal chill, with just enough flurries to flock the landscape.

Ever since, January hasn't been nearly so benign. The first week sent the meteorologists scrambling to the far recesses of their textbooks, to come up with a name for the sudden and drastic temperature dip. Suddenly "Polar Vortex" was on the tip of all of our tongues.

Aptly named winter storm Janus followed not long after, blanketing much of the country under substantial snow accumulation, as temperatures plunged yet again.

This week a second Vortex descended, and despite our overnight temperatures plunging to -14 degrees, a stroll through our acres of grapes reveals a world of startling beauty, with just a little bit of mystery.

Frigid January sun casts blue shadows on our thick blanket of crystal-flecked snow. It is remarkable how subtle shifts in light and temperature can alter the laws of optics. Snow that days ago seemed gray or blinding undifferentiated white, is today crystalline and sparkling, with blue shadows and highlights.

Trellis poles and Marquette vines cast blue shadows.

Our familiar vineyard denizens leave their usual tracks.

The fawn family transects the South Vineyard along their preferred route. Our Canada geese have departed, perhaps for warmer climes, but not before leaving behind a complicated choreography of webbed footprints in the snow. Mr. Muskrat seems to have roused himself from his lodgings beneath a particularly gnarled willow. Apparently he found conditions not to his liking, and circled back from whence he came, not even making it so far as the lake.

His cousin, Mr. Groundhog, has apparently yet to stir from his rocky warren beneath one of our Petite Pearl grapevines. His biggest day of the year is just days away, and apparently he is still sleeping off his autumn grape feast.

Other markings are more mysterious: various prints and traces that start and end abruptly, deep snow and high winds obscuring useful identifying shapes.

These snowy perambulations are not just a pleasant nature walk.

We are out gathering grape canes, a random sample from eight separate vineyard blocks spread across five acres. These we will take inside and cut open the dormant buds, to examine the effects of extreme cold on next year's crop. So far our very hardy varieties are faring well, but each new drastic temperature plunge sends us back out to gather more samples.

Stark contours of a pruned vine.

Along the North Vineyard, windswept terrain slopes down toward the lake, and here we encounter fantastical formations: snow rollers, formed by the unique weather patterns of the past few days.

It is eerie to suddenly encounter them, because everywhere else the snow is so even and still. But here unseen forces have rolled the snow up, into formations resembling millstones or Swiss rolls or magic winter carpets.

Our vineyard remote data logger tells us that Monday morning at 2:42 AM we recorded a balmy high of 38 degrees. Fourteen hours later, just before Tuesday's dawn, we recorded our low, -14 F.

Somewhere along the way, just enough ice formed a crust on top of the snow, so that any softer snow that blew across it did not stick, but continued to roll, rolling along with other soft particles until they adhered themselves into a formation, that subsequent lower temperatures froze into place.

Another unusual January occurrence in a most peculiar month.

Fantastical formations

The ancients named this month after Janus, a god with two faces, symbolizing beginnings and ends. He ruled over gates and doorways, passages, endings and time.

With just a few days left, what further surprises, and what little mysteries, might January bring to us yet?

Balance

Petite Pearl grapes in the South Vineyard, August 2013

These deep days of winter, with the vineyard blanketed in snow, we think ahead to the warmest days of summer.

We contemplate the fruit these now bare twigs will bear.

The foliage is long gone. A few shriveled grape clusters cling through wintry gusts. Sometimes it is hard to remember the verdant abundance of a few months ago.

But summon those summery scenes we must, for decisions we make now will affect the yield of September.

In winter we prune.

We cut the prolific growth of last summer back to a few stubby spurs, short woody stubs sprouting from (increasingly) gnarled trunks below.

We place last summer’s canes—brittle tawny twigs, still kiwi-green in the center—in yellow plastic harvest totes that in the fall held sweet fruit. We weigh them.

Pruned Marquette canes in a harvest tote, to be weighed.

There is a formula for balanced pruning.

The weight of the canes removed from each vine gives us a sense of that plant’s vigor. The vigor of last year’s growth lets us know how much energy is stored in those bare trunks and hidden roots to feed next year’s crop. The formula lets us know how long to leave the spurs on top of the permanent trunk.

Two, three, or four buds per spur? The weight of the prunings and the grape varietal they come from will help us to know.

The goal is balance: curbing the vine’s prolific tendencies. Producing the best yield, without stressing the plant’s permanent health with too much fruit.

Balance: just enough vigor, but not too much.

Balance: visualizing prolific growth that will emerge from the buds that remain, projecting how many buds might be lost to late season frost.

Contemplating autumn’s sunny abundance, on a frigid January afternoon in a snow capped vineyard: its own form of balance, I suppose.

The Vineyard Sleeps

For several months we have had occasional hoarfrost in the morning, crystalline frost on dying foliage, a smattering of flurries and squalls.

But one day the first heavy snow of the season arrives, and stays, and the vineyard finally slumbers.

There is something remarkably peaceful about the first snowy vineyard sunrise of the season. The snow muffles all sound, the ground is covered, the lake partially frozen.

That is our signal that the post-harvest work of the vineyard is mostly finished. What did not get accomplished will wait until another season, for these are the days when we start to look ahead.

In a few short weeks the crucial work of pruning begins, when last season's growth is removed and we choose how many buds to leave on woody spurs. Latent in each bud, is next years's life: rampant shoots, lush foliage, delectable fruit, for these few months slumbering in a quiet, snowy vineyard.