Midway

We have reached the midpoint of winter.

February 2nd, halfway between the winter and spring Equinox, is traditionally a day for farmers and those who tend the earth to pause and look forward.

In North America, ancient traditions have coalesced into Groundhog Day. Somewhat tongue-in-cheek, we look to our largest native North American rodent to prognosticate about what the future may hold.

Few animals in our region truly hibernate, even in the coldest of winters. There is a surprising amount of animal activity around us all winter long as we perform our winter vineyard tasks. In fact, in seasons where we have consistent snow on the ground, the volume and variety of tracks in the snow reminds us that open fields and woodland edges are heavily populated with a variety of creatures, most of which we never see.

And though our vineyard groundhogs have been with us all winter, we nevertheless have a little fun each season trudging out to their burrows, to see if one emerges to see his shadow on this particular day.

These latter days of winter are a fabulous time for shadows. Winter skies are often clear, ever increasing light comes down in a dramatic slant across an austere landscape.

The shadows of unpruned vineyard sections inscribe something that looks like a fantastical musical staff.

Our own trudgings are thrown in sharper relief, as are the slithers and scampers of vineyard denizens.

Trees cast long shadows across the lake.

The familiar profile of wild turkeys foraging crabapples in faint pre-dawn light is a familiar morning sight.

The rhythm of animal and plant life is fairly consistent across the seasons.

But of course, each winter can be very different than the last. The winter of 2014 and the winter of 2015 were especially memorable.

This year, snow has been rare.

By all accounts, this has been a very wet, and very warm winter: not ideal conditions for the grapevines, as it can stimulate them toward growth in the month when they should be most dormant.

There is a lot of winter still to be had.

For those interested in the prognostications of our resident Marmota monax: our vineyard groundhog did NOT see his shadow this morning.

A band of snow showers blotted the sky at sunrise, and briefly dressed the mud in a thin layer of flakes.

Which, the oldtimers contend, means warmer than usual conditions may well continue through these waning days of winter.

Our vineyard denizens will increase their activity as the days grow longer. As for our grapevine buds, we hope they remain fully asleep at least a few months longer.

Bud burst May 2015

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.

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.

Vortex

Today's high temperature, 1:00 PM.

The "polar vortex" descended on North America, and the news media is abuzz.

Dire warnings of frozen pipes, frost quakes and frost bite.

But what about the vines?

For the most part, our grape vines don't seem to mind too much (yet.)

They are at their full dormant stage at this point in the winter, the time they are best suited to endure such conditions. In fact, our Minnesota and upstate-New York bred plants wouldn't mind terribly if it dipped double digits below zero. (The coldest reading our vineyard thermometer recorded last night was a relatively balmy -4 F.)

"Wind Chill" is a warm blooded mammal concern, and our vines are unconcerned with these dramatic numbers the weather media trumpets. (Even our swans seem to have missed the Polar Vortex warnings, as they swim contentedly in a circle of open water on an otherwise frozen lake, water kept open by current created by the paddling of their enormous webbed feet.)

For now it is calm and quiet in the vineyard. The snow crunches crisply underfoot.

Although, if you stand around long enough, you will hear some disconcerting cracks ("frost quake" in the locust vineyard poles) and eerie squeals (galvanized trellis wires tensioning and vibrating as they contract.)

Clarity

One of the remarkable things about tending these acres in all season and conditions, is getting to experience the subtleties of each season.

We often perceive winter in Northeastern Ohio as an undifferentiated blur of salt-stained gray.

But a shift in the clouds, however fleeting, can reveal startling colors and clarity, especially on a single digit December afternoon, when ice crusted snow sparkles beneath a startling clear blue sky, and the competing textures of flowing water and solid ice create a stunning backdrop for our avian vineyard friends.

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.