Tag Archives: vineyard

Bambi and Friends Have Struck. The Sunday Farm Update

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Sadly – this is now a “before” picture of how our fruit trees looked right after planting.  I will be heading out with camera today and post “after deer have destroyed them pictures” later.

We have always heard and read from so many about all the damage and destruction deer can do to their yard, garden and plants.  Whenever we talk to anyone about our garden – it doesn’t take long for them to ask – “What about the deer – do they destroy it all?”   Most are astonished that we just haven’t had much of a problem.  We joked quite often that we must have Bambi and her friends in our area – the well-behaved and friendly deer. In fact,  up to this point – I don’t think we could quite empathize with those that have had so much damage.  Other than the once this past summer when they enjoyed a meal of our purple green beans –  the deer had all but left all but our little farm alone.  That was until now.  Upon heading out to water our newly planted apple trees Saturday morning – I noticed driving into the farm that one of our yellow delicious trees was leaning heavily.  I just figured the little bit of wind we had the night before had made them a little wobbly – and decided that I would go ahead and get them staked today.

We are still getting good amounts of peppers in – I am so glad we planted the Italian Roaster Variety (the red ones). Great taste and perfect for roasting or stuffing.

I was wrong.  It wasn’t from the wind.  And no amount of staking was going to help or for that matter, save the tree.  A deer had completely destroyed it.  Taking its rack to the 1 to 2″ thick trunk – he had stripped every bit of bark and had all but splintered it.  No amount of first aid was going to save this tree – it was a goner – courtesy of Bambi’s crew.

So – needless to say –  today will be spent fencing in the remaining trees and their trunks to prevent us from losing any more.  I think what scares me even  more – is that the trees are only about 50′ from the start of the 4 long rows of grapes that we put in this spring.  Are they next?

As for the rest of the farm – the summer garden is down to mainly peppers, onions, carrots and potatoes now.  We picked over a bushel this week of  Big Bertha and California Wonder green peppers, Italian Roasters, Marconi’s and Hot Banana Peppers.   We have pulled all of the fading tomato plants, spare a couple of late planted ones that we keep for fresh tomatoes to eat.  The fall crops of sugar snap peas and lettuce are up and growing well – and this coming week we will be planting our garlic.  Garlic is one of those strange crops that needs to get started in the fall to have a successful harvest next summer.

So far – this is about the extent of the landscaping for the entrance to the farm. This week we hope to get started on the rest.

We have also begun to work on the driveway entrance to the farm.  Up until now it has been pretty much an overgrown thicket of trees and a large hill of dirt.  We started by adding the old barn window address sign a  few weeks back at the top of the hill.  And now – with the help of Old Betsy the farm truck – we will be getting a few loads of large rock to install as a retaining wall up the hill.  Hopefully we can create a nice landscape bed behind the wall and all around the sign.  We want to get it in now so we can start early next spring to fill in the beds with more transplanted ornamental grasses and perennials.

One thing is for sure – the temperatures have cooled of nicely – into the mid 70′s for highs – right where we love it to work outside!

- Jim and Mary

Shared on Gnowfglins Simple Lives

A Big Week For The Blog!

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Today marks an anniversary for our little blog –  our 100th post!  Since starting the blog about 8 months back on a cold day in February – we never imagined how far it would come in such a short time.  Our 100th post also coincides with two other milestones – our 1000th follower  to the blog and our 600th follower to Facebook.

The first few weeks of the blog we spent writing and filling in a few posts from the previous year to provide the background for our little farm’s story.  After that, we settled into our current format of posting 3x’s a week  (Sunday-Tuesday- Friday) about life at the “farm”.

Us at the farm during our first barn party

The past 8 months have been a blast for us.   I never imagined how fun this journey to carve out our little “farm” space would be – and documenting it with the blog has made it all the better.  Our blog has really helped us to stay focused and working toward our dreams – putting down in words and pictures our efforts to build the farm.  The blog is a great motivator on days when your tired and don’t feel like you’re accomplishing enough.  When those days hit – sometimes we will just reflect back and read some of the old posts and quickly see that we are slowly getting there.  It serves as a great re-energizer for us to keep at it.

We really are more committed than ever to a more simple approach to life and the farm, conserving the resources we consume, and being responsible for the food we eat.

We have tried to incorporate simplicity and responsibility into every facet of “The Farm” as we slowly work on our dream.  Our goals to be responsible for the majority of our own food – and to re-use existing materials and products as often as we can have helped us build the farm at a fraction of the cost.  At the same time – we want to show that it can be done in a way that can be pleasing to the eye – and without all of the stereotypes that come with “recycling and re=purposing”.

We have been able to get in some apple and cherry trees for our little orchard. The hard part is waiting the few years to finally eat something from them!

There are a lot of exciting challenges ahead for the farm.  More work and plantings to grow the garden, orchard and vineyard areas.   The building of a greenhouse from recycled windows.  The installation of a Sensory Garden.  And hopefully, at some point down the road, the process of designing and building our house to go on the property.

Simplifying the Old World Garden Blog:

Much like we do at the farm, we also thought this was a great time to simplify the blog.  It didn’t take long to realize all of our posts fit into the three categories that we love most.  The Farm, Food and our DIY building projects.

Moving forward – we are going to stay with the 3 post-a-week format – and simplify it into a day for each category.  In the coming weeks we will also organize all of our old posts into those 3 categories, with links on our side bar to make them easier to find.

TUESDAY:   DIY DAY.   Each Tuesday’s post will feature something to do with one of our DIY projects – from building, landscaping or  re-purposing something we found.

FRIDAY :   FOOD DAY.   Each Friday’s post will focus on recipes, canning, and food from the garden.

SUNDAY:   FARM DAY   Sunday’s posts will be all about the farm – with updates on the garden, the chickens, plantings and everything in-between.

The Farm is starting to take shape…but there is still so much to do!

Our blog, farm and our lives are really are about having fun and staying simple.   Thank you to everyone who has followed along, and thank you as well for all of the great comments – we love reading them all.  We hope this blog helps spread the word that living a more simple life really is enjoyable.  We hope you continue to like Old World Garden Farms and stay with us on our journey as we grow!

-Jim and Mary

Shared on Six Sisters and Homestead Barn Hop

We Will Make No Wine Before It’s Time

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The Grapes arrived healthy – but only a few inches high with very tender young leaves

Remember the old commercial from Paul Mason? :  ”We will make no wine before it’s time”.  Well – theses days…I certainly have a whole new appreciation for that saying!  There are some things that just take time, and grapes, grapevines and the resulting wine and jellies are certainly one of them.  If you read our blog, you may remember back about a month ago, when during our first heat wave and dry spell – our tender little 1″ to 2″ grape plants arrived in a UPS box.  To say we were worried about planting them in such conditions was an understatement.  The temperature soared to 100 for the two days after we planted them – with no rain in sight.  We planted them – we mulched them – and we watered every morning and night for the first two weeks.  The plants certainly struggled – with two of them even losing most of the little leaves they had….but through all this heat and dryness – they have somehow started to grow.  In fact – about a month ahead of schedule, last week we had to stake each small plant and begin the long process of training the vines up.

It doesn’t look like much yet – but hopefully these will be beautiful vineyard rows in years to come.

We currently have (3) full 80′ rows of Marquette (wine) grapes – and one 80′ row of the Concord (jellies and jams) established.   In the first part of August – the plan is to sink large end posts at the end of each row, along with a few more in between – and string across a low galvanized trellis wire about a 1.5  feet above each row.  We will then tie off the plants and get them to grow as high as they can until the end of the year.  Then next season – we hope to add wires 2 (about 3 feet off the ground) and 3 (about 5 feet off the ground) to the posts.  Hopefully by the end of year two – with some good pruning and training – the grapes will have reach the 3rd wire and we can begin to let them canopy and fill in.

It is a long, drawn out process – but one we hope will pay off in some great jellies, jams and of course wine in the future.  If all goes to plan – we may be able to pick some small yields of grapes by season 3 – but it will be at least  four years before we can make our wine.

The Marquette grapes growing up the stakes nicely!

So – there is something to be said about the quick crops like lettuce and radishes that you can plant and eat within 45 days.  Then there are the  tomatoes we patiently wait for each year to ripen over the course of a few months after planting.  But when it comes to grapes…grapes are surely the “gotta have” patience crop!  We will begin next year the same way as this year – planting a final three more rows of  Marquette grapes up the hill – and beginning the plant’s long journey to wine as well.  So I guess for now we will have to make our motto : “We will make no wine before we have grapes!”

Jim and Mary

This post shared on the Monday Barn Hop :

HOLY GRAPES BATMAN….NOT NOW!!!

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There it was….the box

“NO….NOT NOW!”   Those were the words uttered when we saw the little box sitting on the front porch after a visit from UPS.   It was our grapevine order from January! One of our goals on our “LIST” this year was to plant the little vineyard on the hill.  We had ordered our grapes way back in January and were all set to receive them in early march – and that’s when it all went a little crazy.

The warm spring all over the midwest  led to a call in mid-March from the nursery we had purchased our vines from.  All of their bare root stock – because of the warm temperatures, had begun to show signs of budding.  And with the chance of a late frost still hanging in the air – they advised us they would not be shipping our Marquette grape vines until they were completely leafed out – and we could plant them as potted vines.

The Marquette Grapevine

So, we waited….May came and went – and as June started, we began to think that we just wouldn’t be able to put them in this year.  Starting new grape vines is all about timing – (cooler weather is best) and good water.  Of course – the weather here lately has been anything but that -little rain, with temperatures steadily climbing into the mid to high 80′s – not a good combination at all.

The vines spread out on our back porch table – they look good and healthy – let’s just hope they can make it!

But there they were – all neatly stacked in the little box – wrapped up in paper.   Our future bottles of jam and wine staring up at us needing to be planted – right smack dab in the middle of a dry and hot growing season with a million other things to do!   So we carefully unboxed them, gave them a drink of water, sat them on our porch to begin to acclimate to our weather – and out we went to the farm to finish creating the rows we had started to prepare in early March.

The hillside where the grapes will go in. We had done a little prep work in the early spring – but now we will have to sink the trellis posts – dig the holes and get them in!

For this year – we will have to sink 4 x 4  end posts to each row – and then string up a galvanized wire about 12″ of the ground to get them trained.  That will be good enough for now – and then we can add the final lines to the trellis season this fall when we are less busy.

We figure we will let them get used to the sun for a few days slowly on the porch – and then plant them late in the day on Sunday evening for a cooler start.  Unfortunately – it’s going to be a long summer of trying to get them established.  We will have to water daily for the first 3 to 4 weeks no matter what.   Hopefully, Mother Nature will help out with some good rains and hold back on the scorching sun.  If the sun gets too hot – we will have to come up with some type of a shade system for at least the first few weeks.

But hey – no problemo!!!!  This is what it’s all about – it’s what makes growing such a challenge and far better to have work to do than nothing at all!  :)

Jim and Mary

Countdown to Wine and Jam

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Dreaming for now...

Ok,  so we may be jumping the gun a little with the title above.   In reality, we only have 6 grape vines in the ground, and those were planted just last year.   But this is the year that we will start to transform the hillside into our little dream “vineyard”.   Arriving in just a few weeks will be our much-anticipated grape vines that were ordered over the winter.  A large majority of our property includes a sloping hill which leads down to the barn, garden, and chicken coop area.  Our long-term plan is to site our future house at the top of the hill, overlooking the property.  From the day we first cleared the land, we began to imagine ourselves sitting on our back porch overlooking a small “vineyard” while gazing down at our barn and watching the chickens roam.  It’s hard to believe that the time is here to begin to make that dream a reality.

Last year, as an experiment, we planted a portion of our first row of grapes – which will be our table and jam grapes.

Looking up from the barn... The hill was covered with snow this past weekend - but soon enough grape vines will be planted, and someday at the top....a house.

These consisted of a few vines each from the Concord, Reliance, and Mars varieties. We planted them in early part of the summer, which wasn’t the most ideal time to plant grapes – but we got them on a clearance sale, and thought we’d give it a try.  We planted 12 in all – with six of the cuttings actually surviving. (we kept hoping for the best with the other six –  looking for growth each week – but we are now convinced they have been converted to compost!).

This year we are on target for a proper early spring planting for the rest of the table grapes and our wine grapes.  Our plans call for a total of four long rows consisting of 10 vines each, spaced 8-10 feet apart, and trellised on poles and lines.

What we HOPE our rows will look like in a few years!

Planting on the hillside slope allows for adequate drainage and for full sun, which is important for the production of quality grapes in the future.  We spent a lot of time researching which varieties of grapes that we wanted to plant, knowing that making our own wine and jam was in our “5 year plan”.   We selected the Concord variety for the jam.  Concord is the most common grape in the United States and is known as a heavy producer and THE grape to have when you plan to make jelly, juices, and jams. The Reliance and Mars grapes will provide us with an adequate amount of table grapes to eat.

The choice for our wine grape - The University of Minnesota's Marquette variety

Our wine grapes will make up the final three of the four long rows of our little vineyard. I guess it’s easy to see that wine may be more of a future demand for us than jelly and juice! :)   We just figure that the teenagers will soon be adults – so our demand for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches will be dropping in 5 years, and they will all be in college – so we will need the wine to get us through!

We considered using the Catawba, an Ohio staple wine grape variety.  However, due to it’s susceptibility to disease, we continued to research other varieties which would work well in our planting zone.  We finally decided on the Marquette grape.  This is a relatively new, cold hardy grape variety developed by the University of Minnesota. It has a great wine heritage being a cousin of Frontenac and a grandson of Pinot Noir.  It’s a high sugar, moderately acidic grape that produces a wine with hints of cherry and blackberry in a vibrant ruby color.  At least that is what it supposed to do – we will see how it actually turns out when we make it!

Although thoughts of sipping our own wine while we sit on that yet to be built back porch is our dream, we realize that it will be at least 3 years before we can harvest enough of the fruit to even make our first test batch of wine.  So for now, we have to concentrate on the task of planting the vines and setting the poles to provide support for them to begin to climb.  Those vines are due to arrive in just a few weeks from the nursery – and yes Jim, that means we need to dig 35 more holes!

- Mary