Someone once said he thought there wasn't much for us to do on our little vineyard besides pruning and harvesting. Another time, someone said our 3.75-planted acres of Pinot Noir fruit wouldn't be enough to keep us busy. Let me tell you, they were wrong. Even in the winter, there is little downtime in the vineyard. Between fighting gophers, mowing, hoeing and pulling weeds, we don’t seem to have the slow-paced farming life we’ve heard so much about. We’ve kept busy repairing trellis and irrigation lines, maintaining farm equipment, building fences, managing erosion and maintaining the rest of the property. A couple of weeks ago, we cleaned out disorganized piles in the barn with a promise to never let it get that way again.
Yeah, we’ll see…
In the last month, we’ve also been evaluating scion material for the quarter acre at the back of our property and negotiating a contract with a top-rated producer of Pinot Noir who’s interested in purchasing our grapes from the 2013 harvest.
When we say we’re wine grape farmers, people picture glasses of wine, plates of cheese and soft breezes over a shaded piazza. “Oh! You make wine!” they say. Well, yeah, but farming is farming and it’s no easier simply because your product is romantic.