Grape Harvest Day - Birdland Merlot

Yesterday was our harvest day - and it seemed a long day!  The harvest began at 5am - with the vineyard crew working with lights on their heads to see what they were doing before sun rise!

 

I began a little later - there was at least some daylight by the time I started....and the mist was rising off the pond....

As they had started in the dark, my friend Kathrin and I wandered around doing a "second pick" to find the bunches they had missed.  It was nice and quite leisurely strolling through the vineyard, picking the grapes and tasting a few.  As the rows go in different directions, Kathrin and I would split up and then I'd hear her soft singing as we were coming back closer....she seemed to sing all day :=D  And Bella, her little dog followed alongside her - with a few rest stops too!!!

My leisurely picking job was substituted after a while however, to a much more exciting task!  Another friend, Ken, and I became leaf pickers!  We had to go on the back of the tractor on the trailers  - on little running boards - and pick out all the leaves as the guys were throwing in the grapes into the half ton bins - all while the tractor was moving along the rows.  It was quite the fairground ride at times, and also quite back-tiring work, leaning into the bins and stretching to pull out the leaves.  Sometimes the grapes would be thrown in by a couple of pickers at at time so that was fine  - but then suddenly you'd get 5 or 6 loads all at once and be scrambling in hundreds of bunches of grapes to pull out leaves - all the while trying to keep your balance without holding on and hoping not to get a face full of grapes!  No photos of this phase I'm afraid as I couldn't deal with balancing, leaf picking and having a camera.

In general the grapes looked great.  The only sad part of the day however was when we were picking the grapes in the area where the turkeys had frequently been - despite our daily chasing efforts.  If you look online about wild turkeys and vineyards, it often says that turkey's don't eat many grapes.  If you saw our harvest yesterday, you would know that is not true.  Whole bunches would be left with only 1 or 2 grapes on them.  The turkeys had eaten loads.  I think they'd eaten easily more than a ton.....  It just looked so sad to see nearly empty stalks.  Again - sorry there were no photos - but the full bunches look much better!!

A total of 16.5 tons of Merlot grapes were picked. But the job didn't stop then!  The grapes had been bought for crushing and wine making in Houston, TX so they had to be put in a refrigerated truck, ready to be shipped to TX. Everything was therefore taken down to a field at the end of the lane - where a 48 foot truck awaited us.

Now all 33 white bins - which each contained approximately 1/2 ton of grapes, had to be weighed and then put on the truck with a fork lift - along with some barrels too, that were on their way to Houston.

As the bins were weighed, I had to write the weight of each bin on a piece of paper, fold it up and then put it in the corner of the bin.  After a while, it seemed a little boring to just write numbers so I started adding a few little drawings and happy messages to these notes.... I'm not sure who will find them and read them - but I'm hoping they will brighten their day :=D

Finally, everything was loaded and the truck headed on it's way.  Phew!  It was tiring.  John and a couple of the vineyard crew had worked for 12 hours - but they were still smiling at the end of it.

I ended my day with a little stomping - well, you just have to - and then a soak in the tub!

What a great day!  Harvest day is always one of the very best days of the year.

Merry Go Round - Spring

It's time for another ride on the merry-go-round! Jump on and join a group of 11 artists/crafts-women as they link around the world and tell you a little about their lives in art and craft.

This month's question that myself and 10 other women will answer is "Spring". Now - I know that's not a question - but the idea is that we each post about spring in our own way and what it means to us - so there could be a wide variety of interpretations - which we thought (hoped!) would be interesting.


Spring to me nowadays always seems to bring my attention to our vineyard. Since November, the vineyard has just been this area of land with, what looks like, dead sticks! But in spring - all that changes. We get bud break and the whole property around our home changes.


As I wrote on one of our wine labels "the first frog chorus of the year heralds bud break in the vineyard" - and true enough, when those frogs start a-singing, the vines at the top of vineyard start showing signs of life!


Part of the vineyard is on a slope and so the vines at the very top are always quite a bit a head of the vines on the flat. It's lovely to see those perfect tiny leaves unfurl all around us. That dark color of the vine trunks now gets broken up with such a vibrant green.


And if you know me - you know that my favourite color is lime green - so Spring is a wonderful season for me - as I'm surrounded by all things lime green! Those buds, the leaves, .......



Coinciding with the bud break is also the flowering of the first California poppies. They are such a wonderful orange ....and orange is the color of happiness and laughter - so add that to my green buds and I am one happy person!!!


Hope you like the vineyard photos. These new delicate leaves are also what I use to make my leaf pendants as shown below. I love adding a tiny bit of resin to give them that green to make me and others happy!! This one I actually ended up making into a key ring for my dad as he commented on how much he loved it.....


Please take time to look at what "spring" means to the other wonderful artists on our merry go round. Here are our links. We are from all around the world so there are big time differences so if someone's post isn't up yet - come back later!

Happy spring to you all.

Fabienne at Easterya http://easterya.blogspot.com
Jenny at Jenny Karlsson design http://designjennykarlsson.blogspot.com/
Nikki at Beaded Zen http://beadedzen.blogspot.com
Wendren at Wren http://thewrendesign.com/
Sara at Sara's Texture Crafts http://sarastexturecrafts.blogspot.com
Charlotte at Fancy Picnic http://fancypicnic.blogspot.com
Lily at Lily Pang Art http://lilypangart.blogspot.com
Marian at Florcita http://florcitasart.blogspot.com
Agathe at Le Bar du Vent http://lebarduvent.blogspot.com
Andreanna at Glamasaurus http://blog.glamasaurus.com
Ruth at Birdland Creations http://insidetheartisan.blogspot.com

Wine bottling

Well today our 2006 wine was bottled. Yippee! It would have been nice to say "we bottled our 2006 wine" but this year the winery where it is housed had a mobile bottling line come in - a big truck that has the bottling line inside - and so it is all over and done with in about 10 minutes! We didn't even go and see it as they were busy doing all their bottling in a week!!!

The first year we made our wine, we did everything ourselves - and filling the bottles was like milking a cow (not that I've ever milked a cow!). So I'm glad we had that experience - even if we seem to do less and less hands on each year....

We haven't finalized our wine label for this vintage yet either.... I wrote a first draft and John changed a few words and that's as far as we have got. Guess we need to get on with that now that there are bottles waiting to be labelled. At least we get to do the labelling..with the help of a machine and some friends.
Each year we change the back label - which is where I write my little story for the year - and we also change the colour of the label. So far we have had yellow, turquoise/teal, and orange. We have agreed that for 2006 we are going with green for the label. It took quite a lot of persuading John - but I think he is OK with it. It's a nice fresh green. My favourite colour is lime green so I was pushing for something like that. Let's hope it works out OK.

Then we'll have to go through the ordeal of keep tasting the wine to see how long it has bottle shock!!! Yes, when first put into the bottle, the wine goes into a state of "shock". We like to track the shock passage by drinking our new wine regularly and seeing how it changes day by day! I know - what a tough job to do!!!

And talking of bottle-shock - we are going to see the movie "Bottle Shock" tonight that was filmed in Glen Ellen and Sonoma! All about the wine competition in 1976 when French wines were up again California wines in a blind tasting - and the California wines won! There was alot of excitement during the local filming and lots of locals had small parts etc - so it should be fun to see the final result.

Naturally I have done some grape pieces of jewelry. Not recently though - these are all older pieces.....pins, necklaces.... I used to show my work at some winery events locally and so the grape pieces were quite popular there. I do less events nowadays - but do have one coming up at Ravenswood winery in Sonoma in September. If you are local - come by and see me. The details are on my website www.birdlandcreations.com

Well, think of us, working hard at tasting our wine and charting it's progress. I'll try not to whine about it!

The silent charm bracelet

While I was at a metal clay conference last month, I was lucky enough to win a charm bracelet with all the charms made by different instructors. It's a great bracelet - but not one I can wear everywhere. You see it's really noisy! All that jingling and jangling makes quite a racket - even when I'm just moving my arm slightly - never mind if it is a longer motion!

So when I'm not wearing my prize - I wear one of my "silent" charm bracelets. A single charm on a solid bangle - like this one with Wattle the chicken on it. Yes, Wattle is a quiet little chicken - no clucking from him!!!

A friend of mine, Jo, is just starting a new e-commerce business called "choirgear" where she will sell all things to do with personal goods for choir and chorus members. She kindly asked to include some of my items too - so the silent charm bracelet will be one I recommend. It's a great resource so if you sing, do check out Jo's website. I sing a lot and am always carefully to not wear jangly stuff but hate having to not wear perfume!! For an evening out, I always want a little spray of my favourite scent, but have to forgo it for the sake of other singers who have allergy problems....

I make the bracelet sometimes with clips - so that you can buy different charms and they are interchangeable so if you aren't feeling like chicken one day...you could have bird instead!!
That way, as your mood changes with the day, you can add whatever charm you feel like.

Right now, I'm not having a particularly good day nothing really wrong - but maybe I need to be wearing my bottle of wine charm!!! Too early to have a drink - but maybe the charm will do something for me!!

But maybe the correct choice would be a teapot charm - a nice cup of tea - that would sort me out!!! Yuck! Hate tea!! (see my previous post about tea).

Anyhow - for those "silent" moments - consider the silent single charm bracelet!

Charm swap - Wine time

I've been busy making charms for a charm swap. I'm going to a conference and workshop on the 14th of this month, all about metal clay. Part of the social time of the conference is that, if you choose, you can bring a number of charms, all the same design and then on one evening, there is a social gathering and people exchange charms . I haven't been to one of the conferences before so not really sure how it will all work -but it sounds like fun. Some people have reportedly made 50 charms to swap!!!!! Wow - a bit beyond this first timer's goal I think. Especially as I'm not really a charm bracelet sort of person in the first place. In fact, I think I'm going to put the ones I swap onto a silver bangle instead of bracelet........See how it looks. I've made 20 charms - will be interesting to see what I get in return.

The tricky part was coming up with a design. Simple and quick were two words that came to mind if I was contemplating making 20 of something!!!! But I also wanted it to say something about me so when people see them, then could connect it back to me. I read on the yahoo group that some did charms in the shape of their state, or as a shell if they live by the ocean or.......

After a bit of umming and ahhing - I decided on a wine bottle. We have a small vineyard and grow merlot grapes - selling most of the grapes to a winery, but keeping some for our own wine. I plan on taking a couple of bottles of our wine to share during the conference - so therefore thought maybe the wine bottle would be a reminder for those who get the charm, to connect it to me. I put the B initial on the wine label - as our vineyard is called Birdland Vineyards and also my surname begins with a B......

Hope people like the charms. The photo of them all makes me think of the children's counting song "Ten green bottles"! I'll post some photos of the ones I get in return when I get back from the conference.