A Photojournalist's Day!

Today, I'll let the images speak for themselves.

Pruning 2011 Complete!

Last few vines!

Celebrate!

With a delightful Virginia Veritas Mousseux!

BoomBoom and Tonka want in on the fun too



Good to the last bubble!

Ahh... .

Meanwhile back down on the farm, spring is bursting out all over!

And the winery retaining walls go up, thanks to a hard working crew!

 We so appreciate these hard-working men who are helping to make it all come true.  Thanks, guys!

An Atypical Spring Eve

Just before dark this evening, Arnold called from the sheep pasture to let us know we have a new addition to the farm.  Two in fact!  Our first set of lambs are here!  They were born in the pasture near the creek, away from the rest of the flock.  Dennis, Nathan and I hopped into the car and drove down the mountain to catch a glimpse of the babies before it got any darker. 
As we got to the bottom we could see Arnold standing over a white mound next to the pond. I stopped the car and ran toward him. It was our dear dog, Dan, lying as a cold, wet heap of fur... our loyal, grand ten year old guard dog who has been protecting our sheep for years. Arnold was rubbing him. This poor old dog had walked into the pond sometime today and was too old, arthritic or weak to get himself out and he had been submerged up to his neck in the cold, springfed water for who knows how long.  Arnold had managed to pull him from the water onto the bank of the pond.  Dan was trembling, couldn't move, his massive, thick coat of fur soaking wet with the frigid water.  Dennis instantly went into veterinarian mode and checked the color of his gums, felt his chest to detect the beat of his heart. Dan's gums were a whitish blue.  Not good.  I ran for a blanket from the back of the car and wrapped it around him, rubbing his body, encouraging him that everything will be OK.  I kept rubbing him, trying to infuse some sense of comfort along with the physiological addition of heat.  I looked up.  The evening was near balmy, the first warm evening of the season, which probably helped to save Dan's life. The peepers, those wonderful harbingers of spring, were singing their sprintime chorus behind me, from the marshy end of the pond.  It would have been a perfect evening.  Oh please let my Danny Boy get through this.  He has been my guard dog as well.  A few years back I fell and injured my knee badly. I couldn't get up.  Within minutes Dan was at my side.  He scanned me with his nose, stopped at my knee, then put his front legs on one side of me and stood guard.  I will never forget wrapping my arms around this beautiful protector while I lie on the ground looking up at a deep blue sky that framed his majestic lion-like mane of fur.  Oh, my dear, dear Dan.
Nathan and Arnold lifted him into the back of the Pathfinder and we wrapped a second blanket around him, turned up the heat and he responded by holding his head up.  The color in his gums was returning. Other than not being able to use his right, front foot, he seemed he would recover from this near fatal hypothermia.  Dennis will take him back to Virginia Beach to our animal hospital and give him a good working over.

And oh yes... those baby lambs!  We then drove up to the sheep pasture with Dan warming nicely in the back of the car, heat turned up to 85.  In the back corner of the pasture, next to the babbling creek, in a beautifully tranquil spot, stood a Mama ewe and her newborn twins.  She was cleaning them, they were trying to stand on their feet, their scrawny legs wobbling.  They immediately try to nurse.  This innate awareness always is a marvel to me.  How do they know where to find their food?  Are there wired synapses in their brains that direct them to lift their heads and nudge the warm body above them?  I see the functioning of the natural world as amazingly eloquent and intelligent.  To observe first hand the creation of new life, I am always infused with awe.

Next:  We are within hours of pruning our last vine.  And with that last vine we pop some bubbly... our end of pruning tradition!! Right there in the vineyard... no matter what hour of the day!  It is that much worth celebrating!

Beware The Lambs Who Think They're Goats!

The saga of my fruit orchard continues, much to my dismay.  I planted an assortment of fruit trees seven years ago in a fenced in area of the sheep pasture.  Fruit trees take approximately three years to produce fruit, so after tending to the trees for two years, the next year I eagerly awaited my first crop of peaches, assorted apples, Asian pears, plums.  Our son had decided we needed a couple of goats.  They do clean up a yard of most wild vegetation, but we didn't know they liked bark of fruit trees!  It was too late before we realized they had gotten into the orchard and chewed the bark from all the fruit trees.  All eight trees; gone. We had heard if you spread melted beeswax on the bare tree it might help.  We tried.  It didn't.  All we got was an exterior cabin wall into which the honeybees would build a new hive.  We had left the unused beeswax on the porch and it must have attracted them. 

And so the next spring I replanted my orchard.  Last year was year three for most of the trees.  We got a good-sized crop of Damson plums and Asian pears, and some Elberta and Red Haven peaches.  The apple trees have had a rough time.  But this year... this would be the year; at long last, for a full crop of precious, organic tree-ripened, sweet, juicy fruit.  I walked into the orchard a couple weeks ago.  I stopped in my tracks.  Why was the bark of the trees such a light color?  What is going on?  I moved closer.  The bark was stripped nearly completely around the Damson plum and the Asian pear.  I looked around and shreds of bark were dangling from the trunks. The peach trees damaged but to a lesser degree.   No.  Tell me it isn't so.  I ran to ask Arnold about it.  He said he'd seen the young sheep climbing up on the fencing around the trees, so he had secured the fencing.  But alas it was too late.  My long-last abundant fruit crop; foiled again!  These young sheep have started being naughty in the vineyard as well, climbing up on the trellis wire.  The mature ewes are grazers; are calm, reliable.  These year old lambs must be feeling their oats.  I haven't quite decided how I will handle them till they settle in like their mothers.

Was there any hope of saving the trees?  We tried a new concoction this year that I found on the internet.  It is an organic treatment whose recipe consists of equal parts compost, wood ash, and diatomaceous earth, along with a bit of liquid seaweed, all mixed with enough water to form a paste.   We mixed it all in a five gallon bucket, donned some rubber gloves and spread it over the injured areas.  We also pruned way back, the most affected trees, leaving just a bare minimum on the pathetic Damson plum.

I went into the orchard this afternoon and everything is in full bloom, and all the trees have at least some blossoms, even the Damson.  The mixture we applied seems to be holding up. It obviously cannot replace the missing xylem and phloem, those channels under the bark that are the equivalent to our circulatory system.  But it seems to be protecting the exposed areas from pests and disease and helping the plant to heal.  We'll see how many blossoms actually become fruit.... and how many of these lambs grow up to be sheep!! 

Some pix of the trees in bloom tomorrow!

Earth Moving Experiences!

Life up here in the mountains is never boring when one is constructing a building on the side of a mountain.  It is deceiving to look at a slope and "see" the future building in one's mind.  Oh, we can just level it off a bit here, flatten it here some, scoop here, build up there.  Done! Hehe...Not that easy. 

 

The amount of earth that has been moved from one spot to another boggles my mind. In addition to space for the winery building, we need a driveway to it and parking and drain fields and walkways and sitting areas, and the list goes on and on.  And for each of these, dirt, a lot of dirt, has to be relocated. 

Our Amazing Marvin the Excavator is a master of his art, and there is an art to it all.  He needs to be able to see in his mind how he is going to scupt the earth.  He has a gift.  To watch his hands operate his equipment is like watching a dance.

And such impressive equipment it is! 

Massive, groaning, squeaking, roaring, pounding, rumbling... The sounds of progress.  And then, silence.  Everything comes to a grinding halt when some gasket blows and hydraulic fluid, 20 gallons of it, comes  pouring out and suddenly all work stops.

  

When we got down to the site, we found Marvin just chillin' in a deep pile of leaves waiting for some more hydraulic fluid to be delivered so he could start the dozer up enough to load it onto the massive trailer. He always keeps his cool, no matter what the circumstance. The fluid arrived and was poured into the dozer.  Then one guy started it up while Marvin jumped into the excavator to pull the dozer onto the massive trailer behind his huge dump truck.  I clenched my teeth, covered my eyes when I saw the weight of the dozer started moving Marvin's dump truck down the road a bit.  Just below was another guy's pickup about to get run over by it all!  I could just see it... a runaway dump truck and bulldozer rolling down our mountain!  But one of them ran down the road to move the pickup. Another jumped into the dump truck. I just stood  there watching out of the corner of my eye, afraid of the equipment carnage I was about to witness.  But they did it.  They kept everything under control.  I don't know how they always manage to get the job done.  Amazing.

And then the spring rains come pouring down... six inches in the last three weeks and all that moved earth is moved a bit more, by Mother Nature this time.  Sigh...  And so we take a breather, wait for things to dry out.  Marvin orders parts and figures he has a $10,000 repair on his hands.  A week later work resumes. More rain.  Here we are nearly four weeks from ground breaking and still don't have the earth fully ready to begin construction. Already we have moved back our opening from August to Sept.

But we have made progress.

Winter Slips Away

"Hoarfrost:"   n. The white particles formed by the congelation of dew; white frost. 

We were in a fog up here on the mountain for nearly twenty four hours last week with the temperature set at 26 degrees for nearly the entire stretch.  The visibilty was only about fifty feet that day but I could peer into the woods enough to see a white frost accumulating.  When the fog finally drifted away, it left behind a visual spectacle that is rarely seen here in our stretch of Virginia's mountains.  The woods were laced with white ice, on every twig and branch. The condensing, frozen fog had created a hoarfrost that transformed the winter woods into a magical crystal wonderland. 



But by mid-morning the following day, the hoarfrost had melted away... the spectacle over.  The ridges of the higher elevations above us remained draped with icy white shoulders that lasted for a couple of days.  Folks down in town would look at the mountain range in the distance and thought it had snowed up there on those ridges and I explained there wasn't a flake of snow that fell, only a blanket of frozen fog that settled on the world up there. What a gift for me to have spent at least a few hours in a white, crystal kingdom.

And enter visions of spring... I feel it everywhere.  I can see it in the slant of the sun's shadows coming from a higher angle and in the first hint of green in pastures in the "bottom lands", as they say around here.  I can hear it in the calling of the songbirds, robins, bluebirds, cardinals, and the first rise of peepers' voices at the pond's edge.  A whiff of something sweet smelling drifted by my nose as I walked through a path in the woods today.  But most of all, I see it in those dots of white meandering through the vineyard.  Our little flock is back on the job! 

This is the perfect time to get the sheep back in to graze the vineyard floor. We will keep them there from now until budbreak. By keeping the weeds low in early spring, it helps to slow their growth and reduces the length of time we have to manage the weeds ourselves. And the eighty hooves from our twenty sheep massage the soil, and the sheep add a bit of fertilizer to the earth as well!

There is something very peaceful about working in the vineyard with the sheep working alongside me.

From a distance the vines seem unchanged from their winter sleep.  But upon closer examination, we can see the buds swelling.  Just not too soon, dear buds.  It is only February, you know, and there will be more frosts ahead, so please just rest a bit longer. 

******

Haiku

Heavy fog slithers

Frigid this damp, quiet night

Crystal my kingdom 

The Son Also Rises...

...To the occassion of our expansion!  With gratitude and great joy, we are able to officially welcome our dear son, Nathan, into the growing realm of Ankida Ridge.  Having returned from a wonderful job in Denver that paid so very much more than will come anytime soon here, he is heading up our expansion to the next level...the construction of our winery!  He will also implement our winemaking, under the expertise of our winemaker from this past year at Stinson Vineyards, Matthieu Finot.

Nathan has been hard at work with the entire design, from the size and location of the building to studying and pricing the various pieces of equipment that will fill up the building.  Groundbreaking... or shall I say "rock-breaking" began last week.  To get an idea of the amount of rock we are dealing with, here is a short video of Marvin, our "excavator extraordinaire" trying to break through the massive granite bedrock that is occupying the back corner of our future barrel room!

Stay tuned for more!

The Journey, Part Two!

Five years ago we cleared a spot of land atop a lovely knoll on our beloved mountain retreat.  A vineyard we would plant.  I remember the first few times I referred to that plot of land as "the vineyard".  I nearly felt embarrassed when speaking the word in reference to something of ours, as if we could or would actually ever own a vineyard!  The reality of it still seemed so distant, so dreamlike.  But we could and we did, and we now own and tend to a little vineyard all our own.  I love that little spot of land!

And now after three years of the vines in the ground, we can claim our first harvest.  We have wine in barrel at our dear friends', The Stinson's Winery.  Both families were newbies last harvest...  sort of like the blind leading the blind throughout "crush", that term used in the industry referring to the period immediately post harvest when we are sorting, destemming, crushing, pressing etc.  Fortunately, we were in the capable hands of our dear Monsieur Matthieu Finot, winemaker extraordinaire!.  Merci, merci, Matthieu!

Our Pinot Noir and Chardonnay are resting quietly in oak barrels, a mixture of new and neutral French Oak.  They continue to undergo their transformation.  It amazes me, the change in flavor and mouthfeel in these wines from their post primary fermentation period.  Currently they are undergoing a process called "malolactic fermentation" in which the malic acids are converted into the smoother lactic acid molecules, changing the mouthfeel and acidity levels.  In France they refer to this as the "spring fermentation", as that is when the wines naturally kick into this stage of their cycle of development.  It is all just so amazing to me, and I continue to see the comparisons of rearing children to giving birth to wine... Our adolescent wines are now tucked away in their rooms, away from us as they continue their growth and transformation.  We only peek in once in a while to make sure they are coming along OK!  Our hope, as is every parents' hope, that they will emerge from their adolescence unscathed, mature, and ready to give their talent and gifts to the world.  A taste of  their talents we will soon enjoy.

Haiku

In the dark you rest

Transform young, unknowing ways

Emerge, speak our land

Looking back........

Clearing land, Winter 2006-07

Cover crop planted, Aug 2007

Tilled, rocks removed, marked, ready for planting, May 2008

Ready, Set.. Plant!!! May 10, 2008 (3,500 vines!)

Baby vines emerge, June 2008

And grow up to show their beauty, July 2010

And bless us with their lucious, sweet fruit



And after the harvest

The transformation.... the fruits of our labor become wine

Sometimes, when I sit back and reflect, and try to assimilate all that has brought us to this point,  I think of it as somewhat of a lofty, dream.... one that I have been delighted to share with you.

********



I feel very honored to have had one of my photographs selected for the cover of the 2011 Virginia Winery Guide. I thank those who voted for this photograph.  I hope through this image, I can do my little part to help promote the amazing wine industry of Virginia! 

And Next, Looking Forward...

A winery of our own!



Triple Celestial Event!

Last night the alignment of the sun and moon and the rhythm of the seasons lined up for a rare, and I mean rare, celestial event. Not since the year of 1638 has such an event occured. On the Winter solstice we had a full moon this year. In addition, we witnessed a full lunar eclipse. Well, some of us did at least.
Our skies were clear as the huge round moon rose above the mountain ridge. Our land here at Ankida Ridge is still covered with snow, so to stand outside in the dark overlooking the vineyard and into the woods was bright enough to see every branch, every limb on the ground, every shadow of the trees. It is absolutely magical to stand in that silvery, milky aura of light.

 

Just after midnight, an hour or so before the onset of the eclipse, a haze stretched across the sky, and just  before the eclipse started, a band of dotted clouds began rushing past the moon, giving the effect of the moon racing across the sky. And by the time the eclipse was underway, the clouds had totally obscured my view of the moon. My eyes did not see one moment of this rare stretch of hours that had not been experienced in 372 years!

But as I lie in bed, tucked snuggly under the covers on this blustery, cold winter's night, I reveled in the rarity of this celestial event, imagining life here in these mountains the last time this alignment coincided. There were no settlers here then. Our mountains and valleys were quiet and unlit and inhabited only by the Natives, the Monacan Tribes. They lived in clusters nestled in small patches of cleared forests, and under the light of the moon their teepees must have glowed. At the image, I smiled as I tucked myself more deeply under the covers and had to settle for imagining what was happening in the heavens above, behind the untimely clouds. I had witnessed a lunar eclipse in the past. I knew that once the first cresecnt slice of white was carved from the bright, white face of the moon, the lunar glow would gradually dim, until at the full eclipse it becomes an eerie, rusty orange ball hanging in the sky. Then the white crescent returns and creeps across the orange face, growing fuller and finally returning the moon to its former glory, illuminating my woods once again with a silvery, magical, lunar light.

I was asleep well before the eclipse had peaked and would have to settle for other people's captured images. But I made the moment special in the only way I could, to reflect on it and imagine its beauty. I look forward to a half moon for this Christmas Eve and the light it will sprinkle into my beloved woods and upon my beloved family who will gather here this Christmas time.

Moonlight and a family gathered....Simple pleasures. But those are the best kind.

This Winter Solstice morning delivered me a beautifully colored sunrise, the sun rising today at its southern-most point.  It will now begin its trek toward the northern sky, across our valley, moving right to left now, and with it lengthening each day just a bit.  We've made it past the shortest day of the year!

 And now... onto the celebration of Christmas!