How much wine can you make at home?

A bill carried into Congress by Senator Alan Cranston of California and a signature from President Jimmy Carter in 1975 made it legal for a single adult household to make up to 100 gallons of wine each year, and up to 200 gallons for a households with two adults. This law still remains in effect to this day.

Stamen to Stamen, the nurturing and care begins

And the quest for the best begins anew.

Soon, like this muscadine flower in June of last year, the self-polinators will be busy sending signals to the vine to make grapes.

Photos - Growth begins

By April 7, the vines are pushing hard. to release the first leaves. It's important the fertilizer added in March is now available. The leaves need to green and widen, the vines to seek length, flowering and fertiizing, stamen to stamen, the grapes seek release.














Cattle egrets visit, foraging, cleaning the vineyard of potential invaders.

Photos - Buds to greenery

Over the vineyard, the sun rises and sets in an endless explosion of shapes, forms and, most incredible, colors

















Lead by the pruning shears in January, the buds explode into leaves and the season begins in earnest.

Photos - The season is triggered

The incredible process of cellular generation into leaves, vine, and grapes has begun. Glory!

There's a trigger no human understands. Perhaps it's the temperatures, or the amount of sunlight, or a time-instilled genetic signal that flips the switch at exactly the right time. Something tells the vine to generate growth, leaves, tiny and fragile, and the point from which the plant will create it's new season.

By March 24, the temps are rising and the buds are confident. It's time to break. It happens very fast. Apparently comatose one week, then change, slight at first.

Photos - Early March. They're coming!

After the pruning, the vines sit quiet, dormant, spooky looking in the morning mist, for weeks. The spiders string their traps between the spurs awaiting the unfortunate. Their webs, invisible otherwise, become highlighted by beads of dew. A few buds break their casts early eagerly seeking the new season. It's early March.

First two weeks in April, 2007

April 7th We had a slow drizzling rain that lasted nearly two days but only gave us 0.7" rain.

April 10th. We've started replacing the rotting fence along the road in from of the vineyard. It has been there at least ten years that I'm aware of and probably another five before that. It was a board fence that was becoming at one with terra firma. Replaced it with new posts and hog wire. Good ol' "red top". I worry a bit about the wild turkeys having more difficulty getting through but they always seem to find a way, just like the raccoons and opossoms.

4-15th A fast moving frontal system whipped through this morning leaving us .8" rain and cooling everything off. Temp was 50 degrees when I got up this morning vs 80 degrees yesterday. It's crystal clear and a beautiful day. Everytime I see a day like this, I think about that day the twin towers came down. It was a beautiful day then, too.

March 25, 2007 Pruning, watering and fertilizing

I've decided to keep a log of our farming activity here on the blog because it'll force me to be more conscientious about making entries. More importantly, though, it'll give me and any visitors, if there ever are any, a history of things good and bad about the process, warts and all.

Pruning.

Started pruning back in January. Because I don't have every waking hour to spend on this business, however, it has taken me until the first week in March to finish. It also took me longer than it should have because I had to begin correcting the incorrect pruning I've been practicing the last two years. It'll probably take me another two years to get it right.

Our local section of the Florida Grape Grower's Association had a presentation by Louis Royes about the correct way to prune muscadines and I finally got the concept right, I hope!

Pruning means having to remove the clippings, too. Such a pain.

Our farm, Skyshadow Vineyard, has about 358 vines at present. I found that it takes about ten minutes to prune each vine. So, that's 3,580 minutes or about 60 hours of pruning. When I prune, I find it is so tedious that I have to do something else after about three hours so if I did three hours every day that I pruned, it took me 20 days! Like I said, that 20 days was spread over 2.5 months from January to mid March.

Irrigation

I have low volume emitters that place two small circles of spray around the base of each vine. Sunday was the first day I irrigated this year. By Tuesday the buds were breaking and tiny green leaves were pushing out. It always amazes me that they continue to survive despite my inadvertent attempts to kill them.

Fertilization

Sunday was also the first day I fertilized this year. Probably should have done it on the first of March but couldn't get to it. The plan is to do it again on May 1st or so and then again after harvest, probably late September or early October. I put a full 2 cups, a little less than two pounds I think, on each vine in a band about eight inches wide between 10 to 18 inches out from the base. I use 10-10-10 with trace elements. Haven't killed them, yet.