Young Oak Vineyards: Volume 37: Summer Doldrums!

Hi all:

Hope you are all having an enjoyable summer!  The grapes keep basking in the sun and only require a little water about once a week.  Which is good, because I am recovering from my hip surgery, I am only able to do a little around the house.  I actually can do the dishes & clean the kitchen, but I have to be careful!  I have advanced from a walker to crutches to the cane in record time!  Now my therapist is now having me walk without the aid of anything.  After I have re-mastered walking, I hope to be able to do some serious projects around the house, but unfortunately, I can't rush things.  It typically takes about three months to recover from this type of hip surgery.

Thanks to my Number One Son, Scott, his good friend Frank Gage and two wonderful young ladies visiting from Finland, the vineyard is looking really well groomed!  Scott & crew hand pulled, roots & all of most of the insidious weeds from the vineyard!  Scott has headed back to his current digs in Helsinki, Finland to work away in the Nordic sunshine.  We look forward to his next visit very soon!

If you are wondering what's with all the girls with goats pictures, in the quiet of the late morning this past July 29th, with everyone out and about on errands & such, Ellie started her delivery.  We lost one little one, but two little guys survived.  Still un-named, I went for the obvious like "Salt & Pepper", "Blackie & Whitie", however, I have been vetoed as to just being lame!  I have really enjoyed having the goats as part of the vineyard management.  However, we need to curtail our growing numbers (i.e.:  Big Mac gets fixed!)!

On the bee front:  Hey, we just received our first installment of honey, about 20+ pounds!  This represents the work our bees have done this Spring.  Our beeman, Alan, has placed another "super" on top of our hive, sort of a top box condo with frames for the bees to store even more honey.  We should see another 20 pounds or so from the summer months as well.  Since bees range about 2 mile in radius, the type of honey is considered to be a "mixed flower", but that would include pollen from my cabernet grape flowers, my bottlebrush, the star thistle & other weeds about, my pepper tree, not to mention my neighbor's eucalyptus and many others.  So this is a great mix of all the local pollens that would really get your allergies going, especially if you live near us!  If you are interested in trying our honey, drop me a line!

With delicious sticky fingers on my keys,
John

Young Oak Vineyards - Volume 36: YOV Toasts the Fourth of July!

Hi all:

Hope you all had an enjoyable Fourth of July! We are popping out with all kinds of leafy growth up here! Our grapevines are loving this moderate, coastal, cool, summer weather pattern. Great for long term summer growth!

That is generally the idea behind our vintage producing California wine regions.  Along our California coasts, on the eastern side of the Coastal Mountains, are many areas that get evening & morning cooling from the coastal climate.  Imagine Carmel or the Mendicino coastline with its fog, moderate ocean breezes, etc.  A little ways inland we find areas like Napa, Sonoma, inland Mendocino, the Livermore Valley, Santa Cruz Mountains, Solvang (remember the movie "Sideways"), inland Santa Barbara, etc.  But our California Central Valley just does not get that coastal cooling, because it is too far inland and it is generally hot there all summer long.  Therefore, the grapes in the Central Valley tend to ripen quickly without slowly developing further complex flavors.  Think of 100 degree Fresno heat, Seedless Thompson's, the Raisin Capital of the World!

However, I just had a Central Valley 2007 "Old Vines" Zinfandel (Zymmestry, Lodi, CA), courtesy of my good friend Tim Chou, that was just fantastic!  (Not to mention Tim's Fantastic North Carolina BBQ & Sue's amazing cole slaw & potato salad!)  The 2007  California Zinfandel harvest is being heralded as the best ever over the two recent 2006 & 2005 best ever award winning years, making for a perfect "trifecta"!  So, that begs the question, how are they growing such complex, flavorful wine grapes in Lodi, CA, smack dab in the middle of the Central Valley, not to mention other areas like the Sierra Foothills and even Fresno!  

Tim's zinfandel was grown on "Old Vines", which has two different meanings.  One is that the grapevines are old, 25, 50, 100 years old or older.  Mind you, there is no regulation of how old "Old" is in the wine industry!  At about 50 years old, grapevines output diminish, but the quality of these grapes tend to be very high.  Some large production vineyards would consider replanting these vines at this point to maintain the high volume output of a younger vine.  Interestingly though, there are many small vineyards dotting California's Central Valley, that were planted by California's European-Americans' need for wine in response to our 1920 - 1933 U.S. Constitutional Prohibition of Alcohol.  Originally for personal wine consumption (which was legal), many of these vineyards have survived, have been re-discovered and are now producing very high quality wines today.

Another aspect of these personal Prohibition vineyards was that they often used un-grafted rootstock (the original European grapevine rootstock), another definition of the term "Old Vines".  These grapevines have survived Phylloxera, because our little soil louse doesn't like the poor sandy, rocky soils that these Prohibition vineyards were typically planted in.  There are some in the industry that say these un-grafted European rootstock produce better wines than the American grafted rootstock, citing wines of un-grafted rootstock still producing in the American Northwest (Washington, Oregon), from Chilé and from the California Central Valley! (See Young Oak Vineyards:  Volume 4 - Rootstock, for further information regarding Phylloxera.)

So, although these Central Valley grapes are ripening faster due the heat, their "Old Vines" may be imparting high quality flavors to these grapes either because they are "Old" in years and/or because the grapevines have original European rootstock!  Check out some of these California "Old Vines" for yourself!  They are delicious!  And thanks again, Tim & Sue!

I wanted to take some pictures of my vines for this blog post, but I am still on crutches after my hip replacement surgery and I cannot get down in the vineyard just yet.  Hope you had a wonderful Fourth of July weekend!  Best wishes to all your families and friends for a great summer!

Regards from up in my bed, flat on my back, John

Young Oak Vineyards - Volume 35: More Summer Fun!

Hi all:

Well, summer is in full force here at Young Oak Vineyards! That means almost everyone has "flown the coop", leaving only Kris & I to tend the vines. Suzie, our youngest, is currently at Camp Full Belly Farms, an organic farm up in the Capay Valley near Davis, California. Katie, our older daughter, is making up for past sins at summer school in between runs to the beach, a couple of summer concerts and hangin' with friends. Scott, our oldest, visiting from Finland for a friend's wedding, has extended his holiday stay stateside for a couple of weeks playing "Man Versus Wild" at survival camp in Utah! Can't wait to hear about gutting the sheep with his new Laplander knife and then roasting mutton under the stars!

Goat Update:  As you probably can tell, Ellie is pregnant, again!  Yes, Big Mac has had his way with Ellie and we are expecting the arrival of another batch of goats in July or early August. We have currently separated Big Mac, so as not to impregnate the little ones, which are 7 months old now, old enough to be very young mothers! I will be talking to our vet about tying some tubes, so we can avoid this in the future. We are going to limit our herd to 6 (or even less), so if you are interested in a pet goat, give me a hollar!

I'll be going under the knife tomorrow for a hip replacement (some congenital developmental joint problem), so wish me luck!  My daughter, Suzie, has put a great positive twist on my situation as I have let my beard grow out a bit for the summer and I will be using a cane for a while after my operation as I limp around.  Given my ascerbic sense of humor, I can play "House", that is "Dr. Gregory House", the grumpy, insolent diagnostician we all know & love!

Wishing you a great summer, John

Young Oak Vineyards - Volume 34: School's Out For Summer!

Hi all:

Happy Summer everyone!  You'll never meet an happier person than a teacher after the last day of school!  And especially one that is not teaching summer school!  Woohoo!!

Well, lookey here! My hand is behind a couple of baby bunches of verdant grapes!  And every grapevine in the vineyard has dozens of them as well!  So, it looks like we will be getting a substantial amount of grapes this Fall, assuming we protect them from the birds! Hey, this means there maybe some grape stompin' at our Oktoberfest!  But what we really want to happen this growing season is for our newly established grapevine trunk to put out those lateral cane shoots we call "cordons".

If you didn't see it, my good friend, Keith Newman, posted a comment on my last post about goats & vineyards.  Keith says, "Michel-Schlumberger Vineyards in the Dry Creek Valley hires a shepherd with pygmy goats/sheep for weed control. The animals are too short to reach the cordons, so leave the grape vine undamaged. When Stacie and I took the vineyard tour we found some little tufts of wool snagged on the grape vine stems."  

Hey, thanks Keith!  I love it!  It sounds like they planned the whole scheme.  I do see that big commercial vineyards tend to construct their trellises very tall, over six feet high to increase the vine growth volume.  We got our goats as an after thought to starting our vineyard.  And unfortunately, I had already installed our trellis's first wire only three feet off the ground.  Also, my so-called "pygmy goats" can reach branches that are four feet or higher off the ground by standing on their hind legs, jumping, climbing on top of each other or on their poor mother's back!!  (I can never get my camera fast enough to catch one of the kids standing on all four on top of Mom!)  I'm just going to have to play with this idea a bit more!  Hmmm!!!  Might have to get taller grapes, ..., or, ..., shorter goats!

From down in the vineyard, Maaaaaaa!!!!  Hey, get out of here you pesky goats!

P.S. - My good friend, Keith Newman, is training for a marathon team to help raise money & awareness for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS).  Keith is well on his way towards his goal, but every penny helps.  If you can help out, please use the link below to donate online and to learn more about the great things LLS does for cancer research, patients and their families:

Team in Training

Perhaps your employer has a matching gift program?  If so, please consider that option as well.  Donations to LLS helps accelerate finding a cure for leukemia, lymphoma & myeloma. More than 823,000 Americans are battling these blood cancers!

Thank you, John

Young Oak Vineyards - Volume 33: Mother's Day Edition

Happy Mother's Day All You Mom's Out There!

Hope all you Moms got pampered with breakfast in bed, spa days, flowers, chocolates, nice dinners, gifts, etc. for all the hard work you do all year round!  

I am finally over the worst cold ever!  I lost my entire spring break laying around being ill and I have had bronchitis every since (no fun!).  But hey, that didn't stop from being in the news again.  This time I'm in the San Jose Mercury about losing my current teaching job (getting pink slip'ed) due to an $11 million cut in my school district's budget (East Side Union High School District):  Mercury Archives

But back here at the vineyard, since we live in a grassland/oak forest area with a lot of housing in and around, we have to be concerned with fire safety.  Remember the Oakland Hills Fire back in 1991, which killed 25 people & injured 150 others.  Over 3,350 homes burned down, 437 apartment/condominium units were lost and more than 1,500 acres were destroyed. The economic loss was estimated at $1.5 billion.

Weed-wacking^tm is a way of life up here in the hills.  You have to maintain a clearance of any flammable materials around your home.  And this series of rain storms followed by warm weather, as in "April showers, bring May flowers", has also brought a whole bunch of new weeds!  So even though we have wacked down everything around our house & vineyard earlier this Spring, the weeds are back & as tall as ever!  Above, you can see my new crop of thistle, mustard grass & miscellaneous weeds!

This time, as we wack down the weeds in the vineyard, we will prune off the spare trunk of the grapevines & stake the remaining trunk up to the trellis wires. Additionally, we have already trouble shot our water system, so now, all we have to do is sit back and watch things grow!

Speaking of growing, take a look at this picture of the vines on Concepcíon Road in Los Altos Hills that I took on my way to the grocery this afternoon.  A month back you could see the bare spurs on the cordons, and now the fruiting canes are growing out of the spurs with a lot of vigor!  I have not seen how they keep their weeds down, but notice how they keep them closely cropped to the ground.

Quite a few posts ago, I mentioned that there are beneficial weeds that can be seeded between grapevine rows.  This is known as "cover cropping", which suppress the more aggressive weeds, while protecting the soil & inhibiting destructive insects.  Well, thanks to Mark Vernon, COO of Ridge Vineyards, my neighbor extraordinaire, I have received an thorough report on the practice of "cover cropping" by David Gates, Ridge VP of Vineyard Operations (David also made the rootstock/clone recommendations for our vineyard).  This is something I am going to try over the next winter, so that a "cover crop" sprouts up for the 2010 Spring!

David uses this and other sustainable methods at the Ridge vineyards.  Checkout Ridge's website for further information about sustainable vineyard management.  It is very impressive website with lots of information about their wines, vineyards and facilities.  I have added a link on my side-bar as well here in this blog post:

http://www.ridgewine.com/

So, now that the growing season has started, all I have to do is watch the grapevines grow, right?  That will give me a little more time to do a some work on "This Old Damn House!?" (Isn't that the name of the show?)  However, I do have to fit in a hip replacement operation on June 24th, so the length of my recovery will determine when things get done.  My project list for this summer runs something like this:

*complete installation of track lighting in master bedroom

*install pocket door in master bathroom

*install new slider closet mirrored doors for Suzie & Katie

*install closet organizers for Suzie & Katie

*install new front path and landing for front door

*install terraced vegetable garden

*dig my own grave & bury myself !!!

From down in the vineyard, John

Young Oak Vineyards - Volume 32: Tax Write Off Edition!

Hi all:

First of all,  we would like to welcome any new readers who have found our blog through our new listing of local blogs in the

                Palo Alto Weekly

internet website at the bottom of course, listed alphabetically.  You can see what great friends I have by scrolling down towards the bottom of the blog on the right side bar.  Then you can scroll back upwards and see a quick pictorial history of the establishment of our family vineyard.

While the newcomers are doing that, the rest of you are going to have a pop quiz on vocabulary from our previous lesson to see who has been paying attention!

Question #1 - What is the definition of a cordon.

Question #2 - Compare & contrast a spur with a cordon.

"What's that little Johnnie!  You don't remember what a cordon or spur is!  Didn't you pay attention when I explained that last time!  Johnnie, how many times do I have to repeat this information?"

Hey, there are only 40 school days left till summer vacation and boy, as a new teacher, am I ever ready!

Well, we had a wonderful time at YOV's 1st Annual Easter Egg Hunt today, with many of our old friends, new friends & neighbors coming by for great Peet's coffee, great Hobbie's coffeecake and great conversations!  Unfortunately, I was a bit under the weather and wasn't up to getting any pictures.  But we did have a dozen youngsters invade the vineyard and find Easter Eggs a plenty.  Well, actually, our two dogs made a pre-emptive strike Thursday night in our family room where we were assembling the Easter Eggs and our losses were considerable!  The dogs are okay and our Egg hunters still had enough chocolate!

But the big story is that things are happening in the vineyard and I don't just mean Easter Egg Huntin'.  Some of the vines are starting to bud & leaf out already.  So, we are excited for another growing season after our winter dormancy!  I hope all is well with you & your families and that you have got your taxes done, ..., or at least filed your extension!

Wishing you well from down in my tax write-off, .... ah, I mean my, .. ah, vineyard!  John

Young Oak Vineyards - Volume 31: Train that Trunk!

Hey, Happy April Fool's Day Everyone:

For the last week or so, we here in the San Francisco Bay Area, and all across California, have been enjoying a huge migration of butterflies coming from Mexico on their way to Canada.  As they fly by, I am reminded of all the constant little seasonal changes that are going on in the living things around us!

Another daily pleasure I have, is passing by this wonderful Pinot Noir vineyard on Concepcíon Road in Los Altos Hills about half way between Gunn High School and our house.  I believe this vineyard is about six or seven years old.  It is one of the vineyards that inspired me to take on my own vineyard project.

They have done a wonderful job of pruning over the years and I wanted to snap a few pictures for examples of how things should progress over the next three or four years on our vines, if we watch our "p's & q's"! First look at an individual grapevine with its single mature, vertical "trunk" and the left and right "cordon" canes extending to the sides laterally.  Off of each of those "cordons" are about six little "spur" canes about three to five inches long.  Those "spur" canes are where the fruiting canes grow out from each year, budding out into leaves and fruit.

So, for this first and now second year at Young Oak Vineyards, we are just establishing that main "trunk".  In the second and third years we will be establishing the "cordon" canes.  And in the third and fourth years, we will be establishing the "spurs".  Now, along the way we will be getting some fruit and we may be able to make some wine, but the emphasis in pruning for these first couple of years is in establishing the "trunk", the "cordons" and the fruiting "spurs". 

As you can see in the last photo from my previous post, we are headed in the right direction.  And boy, we have really come a long ways from the planting party grafted clones in the picture below that!  Now, you will just have to be patient while we wait a couple of years!  ..........

..........  Oh heck, I tired of waiting!  I think I'll try to snag a bottle of that Pinot Noir from down on Concepcíon Road!  Here's to waiting!

Wishing you well from down in the vineyard.  And that's no joke!  John

PS-Hope to see you at our Easter Egg Hunt !

Young Oak Vineyards - Easter Egg Hunt - 2009 !!!

Come on up to Young Oak Vineyards for a good ol' fashion Easter Egg Hunt in the vineyard!

See how the grapevines that you planted are doing and visit with your fellow vineyard workers!

Easter Egg Hunt for the little ones and the "young at heart"!  Come meet, greet & feed the baby goats!  Check out the bee hive & taste the honey!

Enjoy some Great Coffee & Morning Treats along with your fellow vineyard friends!  

Regards, Kristen & John

Where:  Young Oak Vineyards, 12121 Foothill Lane, LAH

When:   Saturday, April 11th, 9:00 a.m. until 12:00 noon

             

What:   Coffee & Danish    9:00 a.m.

            Easter Egg Hunt   11:00 a.m.

Why:    Friendship.  Can't make it for the whole time?

           No problem!  Drop by for a short visit.

           We'd love to see you!

Young Oak Vineyards - Volume 30: Pruning 101 - The First Year

Well, here goes! Its time to prune, prune, prune, but first off, let's talk about the pruning shears. From the internet, books & videos, I learned that the best kind of pruning shears are the scissors type or by-pass shears. The other kind have a blade & a flat anvil, usually made out of a soft metal like brass, aluminium or even plastic. These type tend to crush the cane (branch) against the anvil as it cuts, leaving cracks & large wounds, which take longer to heal and create sites for disease to enter the plant. The scissor type leave a sharp clean cut, which heals over more quickly. Felco seems to be the brand favored by the pros. I found a nice pair of Fiskars for a reasonable price at our local hardware store, OSH (Orchard Supply Hardware).

As you can see, I have mi amigo, Leo, pruning away at the vines and this was after just a few minutes of training. We decided as a first pass to cut the grapevine growth down to two trunk canes so if one cane gets damaged during the early spring we will have a spare to work with instead of replacing the entire plant. When the buds start leafing out a little later in the spring, then we cut the spare away.

To show in more detail what we are doing, we put a white board behind a really good plant that had a tremendous amount of growth for the first year. Really, as we said last post, this is more like second year growth. We were very fortunate to plant so early at the March 1st, 2008 planting party and have so many sunny days of spring with our early heat spell last year.

Well, the first cane we are going to cut off is a large lateral branch, low on the bottom right side kind of hidden in the weeds. After that, we selected the main cane that we want to keep and a secondary cane, which actually buded and grew out of our main cane. We continued to prune off the smaller side branches until we had only the two well formed canes left. In other plants we selected two separate canes that had budded out of the original clone graft, which is even a safer bet if anything happens to one of the canes, like getting broken.

Well there you have it. It took about eight hours to prune all the grapevines on this first pass. We will probably spend a couple more hours in a month or so to prune off the spare canes.

On another note, I received a pink slip a week ago for "pruning" costs at my school district to meet next year's budget, which hopefully will be rescinded in a couple of months. Given that, I can't help but pass on a joke I heard from the Palo Alto superintendent of schools:

Attention All Personnel - In our ongoing effort to reduce costs, we will be turning "off" the light at the end of the tunnel !

As a parent, educator & voter, California really needs to find a better way to fund education in our state. To go from being first in the nation in education, both in funding and student performance, when I was a child, to vying for last place in both today, is utterly ridiculous. I really want to find an organization that is going to address this issue with some practical common sense from all sides. If you hear of any please let me know.

I think I'll need a glass of wine after that tirade! Hope you are having a pleasant first day of spring.

From down in the vineyard, John