Grapes all harvested, vineyard all pruned.

It's been pretty frosty here overnight for the last couple days. I've been watching my pitiful Pinot blanc crop, and finally picked the surviving cluster.

Pinot blanc

This clump tested out at only 16 Brix - meaning there was very little sugar development in the last few weeks. I guess when the temperature is rarely above 50 degrees F there isn't much more development. Time to pick in mid-October - next year.

All of the vines have been now pruned. I forget the name of the method I'm using. It trains two lateral cordons off the upright stem at about 30 inches. A second high wire at about 5 feet will accept the upright growth next year from spurs on the cordons.

Overview of the Madeleine Angevine and Regents

Showing the training style.

About all that is left now for harvest are the kiwis. All in all a good year on the farm.

Fall harvest at Woodland Creek / Raven's Call

Time to recap some of our fall harvest and button things up for the winter.
The Regent grapes were harvested on 09-Oct-09. I had about 35 lbs from the 32 plants in the vineyard. Brix tested at 19 - not bad for Puget Sound AVA. I still chaptalized the must to 25 Brix - went a bit overboard.

Regent Grapes

Birds were starting to feast on them.

The 2009 Regent harvest

The same day the Syrah from the prior week was ready to press. Some additional modifications to the home-built press now have it working quite well. Time to rebuild it in oak.

Pressing the Yakima Valley Syrah

The 100 lbs of Syrah yielded about 7 gallons of wine into the secondary fermenters.
The Yakima Viognier has been racked to a secondary fermenter (6 gallons), and the Madeleine Angevine as well (3 gallons). I currently have 6 varieties under airlock right now.
As for other crops - our two chestnut trees both produced well this year. The trees are each about 12 years old now - having been planted before we built our house here. One is a seedling from nuts from the tree in the backyard of our prior residence, the other is a seedling from a heritage tree - the "Carson Chestnut" located in the interchange at Highway 167 and Meridian just north of the Puyallup River bridge north of Puyallup. Quite a magnificent tree.
At any rate, this year I detected clear difference in the bur sizes, nut sizes, and ripening time between the two trees. I did some on-line research and decided that the earlier one, with larger nuts, from the Carson Chestnut, must be a Spanish chestnut, Castanea sativa. (I just did a google search and this site http://www.halcyon.com/tmend/heritageplants.htm asserts that the Carson Chestnut, planted before 1861, is C. sativa). The other tree has to be Chinese Chestnut, C. mollisima. I also have a couple American chestnuts C. dentata, one of which finally produced nuts inside the usually empty burs. Boy, are those nuts tiny. Here is the entire crop.


The darker ones (darker only because they ripened sooner) in the back on on the left are Spanish chestnuts. The lighter tray in the front right are the Chinese. And the few tiny ones on the bowl are the American. Despite their tiny size, the American chestnuts are by far the tastiest. We probably had 35 to 40 pounds of chestnuts - time to find some recipes.

Harvest time at Raven's Call Vineyard

Wow - hard to believe so much time has gone by since last posting. But today's work was a good trigger for a new post. We decided, given the weather forecast (cold and rainy for the next 4 or 5 days) that we had better go ahead and pick the Madeleine Angevine grapes. They have been looking good and individual grapes measuring in the 16 to 19 Brix (% sugar - target would be 22 to 25, but hard to do in Puget Sound).

Row of Madeleine Angevine Mid-Sep-09.

Two year vines.

Mad Ang

Row of Regent - two year plants in foreground. Mad Ang in background.

Regent grapes.
It is very hard for me to estimate grape crop yields (yet, as this is only the second year on the plants!). We bought 100 pounds of Viognier (white) and Syrah (red) yesterday from a fellow who brought over 5,000 pounds from Yakima. We processed those on Saturday.

35 pounds of Viognier grapes

Viognier grape cluster with vintage crusher in background.

Syrah grapes from Yakima

At any rate, while my home-built press did a fair job of pressing the white grapes, in the end Michelle extracted quite a bit more juice from the pressings by using her Roma extractor.

Pressing Viognier

Final extraction from Viognier using Roma extractor.
In the end we produced about 8 gallons of juice from the Viognier. The Syrah, a red, is of course not pressed yet but is fermented on the skins. The must for the Syrah is about 12 gallons in the primary fermenter.

But back to the local harvest. I decided to pick the Mad Ang, since everything related to the crush, including the garage floor, was covered in a sticky film from the Saturday crush. Here is our first significant harvest at Raven's Call.

First harvest at Raven's Call - Madeleine Angevine - 27-Sep-09

Decent cluster of Mad Ang.

Total 2009 Mad Ang harvest. 37 pounds of grapes.

Hard to tell, but there is about 12 inches of grapes in the tub.

In the end we had about 3 gallons of pressed Mad Ang juice. All three musts are fermenting merrily now!

Raven's Call Vineyard Update

Yes, I re-named the vineyard this winter. It is now "Raven's Call". I expended a fair bit of effort this past winter digging up every other row of grapes I planted last summer, as I determined that the 3-foot spacing between rows was not going to be practical. Not enough room between to maintain.

This required extending rows, and adding more rows, which required clearing space already planted to small trees. Then I built trellis's using my own hand-split cedar posts. The style I'm going to try trains two permanent cordons from each plant onto a main wire at about 30 inches, and each year's new growth will then reach for (hopefully) the upper wire at about 60 inches. Here are the results as of early July.

The Madeleine Angevine grapes are doing the best by far. About 80% have grapes - about 3 to 5 clusters per plant.

The berries seem a bit small to me, given the good block of warm weather we've had, but I may be way off.

But the Regent are not too far behind, as far as foliage. But only about 20% of them have fruit.
The Pinot Blanc and Pinot Noir are way behind, but at least they are looking much better than last year. They didn't even warrant building the first 30-inch trellis wire yet.

I purchased cuttings of three more varieties this spring: Muller-Thurgau, Siegerrebe, and Pinot Gris. I had about 90% success on 35 cuttings each so have about 30 each, so another 100 or so plants to plant out. But first I have to clear out more space for them... it's always something.

2009 Soay sheep lambing season at Woodland Creek Farm

Wow - too much going on in the last 6 months to post to the blog!

Our 2009 lambing season here at Woodland Creek is done now. After last year's more-than-20 Soay lambs, and carrying WAY too many sheep through the winter on purchased hay, we significantly downsized the flock and intentionally did not breed quite a few of the ewes. Couple that with a couple too-immature rams that didn't get the job done, and some targeted but immature yearling ewes and we only had 7 lambs this year. But a nice set.

Our final lamb of the year, born 03-Jul-09, was a very pleasant surprise. First, the dam, Woodland Creek Sienna, was not impregnated as planned by my chosen ram (as were none of his target ewes - he's gone now.)

So I did not intend to breed her at all, but in transferring ewes she slipped by me and got in with another group of ewes already bred to a different ram (but the ram had been removed). THEN, the ram in the adjacent breeding group knocked the gate open and "merged" with the supposedly already-bred ewes. Although I didn't witness it, it is now obvious that the escaped ram had an ulterior motive... So here is the surprise. Sienna is a dark reddish-brown mouflon. She lambed while we were out of town, and we returned to the scene portrayed below.

Woodland Creek Sienna and her 2009 ewe lamb, Moenkopi

Obviously, Sienna had a light phase lamb (and happily, it's a ewe). I quickly referenced the pedigrees to see how this could have happened. The sire, Woodland Creek Chico, is light phase, so no surprise there - he HAD to contribute a Bb (light phase brown) gene. But I had no idea that Sienna was carrying a "hidden" copy of the light phase. Looking back, I note her sire was Blue Mountain Juniper. Some may know that Juniper, also dark phase, was identified as carrying one copy of the (recessive, thus "hidden", not expressed) Bb gene when he sired the sort-of-famous Red Deer, who was light phase, thus homozygous Bb/Bb, thus HAD to get a copy of Bb from Juniper. (I have owned Juniper since shortly after he sired that crop of lambs at Blue Mountain).

So the light phase lamb Moenkopi proves that Sienna received one copy of the light phase gene from Juniper (well, sort of "proves" - there is a tiniest of chance that her dam, Maddie, had a light phase gene, although from pedigrees it seems highly improbable).

The interesting thing, (interesting to me, anyway) is that the light phase that Juniper carries came from the RBST ram Triumph. Some feel that the light phase in the NA Soays came from outside the Soay breed, and is somehow "different" from the honest-to-goodness light phase from RBST Soays. Moenkopi then will have one copy of Bb from each, so it will be interesting to see if her phenotype is discernably different from my NA Soay light phase.

Our "Black and White" Soay breeding group produced 4 B&W lambs. Some may know we are trying to extend the extent of coverage of the recessive white spotting onto the solid black coat pattern of the recessive self-colored agouti. We had one very good extent of white spotting in the ram lamb Lakotah, sired by our matriarch B&W ewe Blue Mountain Thumper.

Woodland Creek Lakotah - ram. Thumper X Chilcoot.

Lakotah has a nice white cap, and a wide blaze, a nice throat "bib", and a "necklace". Very similar, but a bit more extensive, than his sister from last year, Athena (same dam and sire).


W.C. Athena-e '08, W.C. Lakotah-r '09 and dam to both B.M. Thumper '00.

We had another nice B&W ewe lamb out of W.C. Raven, a ewe out of the Teed line of Soays.

Woodland Creek Aspen-e '09. Raven X Chilcoot

We also had 2 other B&W rams, but both only had minor white spots, so not too exciting. Our best B&W ram from last year, Yosemite '08, did not mature sufficiently to sire our '09 lambs, so we used the same ram as the prior year, Chilcoot. Yosemite is finally maturing some this summer, so he appears to be in the lineup for this fall.

W.C. Yosemite-r '08. Cinnamon X Chilcoot.

We also had some lambs born into our hoped-for-but-long-odds self-colored light phase group, but no hits on the double homozygous recessive jackpot.

Enough for now.

2008 Vintage at Ram's Head Vineyard and Winery

Well, we harvested our 2008 "crop" at the newly dubbed "Ram's Head Vineyard and Winery" in early October. Only 26 of the (well, first year, after all) Madeleine Angevine plants had grapes, so it was a very limited harvest. Here is the entire crop:

Still, we decided not to waste these first precious grapes (having not yet ever tasted Mad Ang wine!), so we crushed by hand and put it in a fermenter.


And yes, sadly that is a 1-gallon carboy, so the final yield was just one 500-ml bottle of 2008 Estate bottled Madeleine Angevine from Ram's Head. (Our logo ram, Chico).But the good news is, that after fermenting, stabilizing, fining and resting for a month, when we cracked the half-liter at our family Thanksgiving day feast, it was... not bad! This is very encouraging as we have 50 or so plants of this variety, so were hoping for "drinkable" results.
In preparation for the future harvests here at Ram's Head we also obtained a vintage grape crusher off eBay:

and after completely disassembling, blasting, cleaning, refinishing and then building a hopper, the final result looks pretty good.

Then, after we bought 100 pounds of merlot grapes from eastern Washington, I decided I better have a grape press too.
Although it was tempting to buy a vintage press, the clean-up task seemed daunting. New presses seemed, to me, to be overpriced, so I tried building my own. I must say that it turned out alright. After a first test revealed my design flaws, and these were remedied, here is the final product.
Well, I say final, but a discerning eye may note that the framework is softwood - which just won't do. I will rebuild the framework this winter in oak. But I have plenty of time until next fall's grape crop!

Vineyard at Woodland Creek Farm

After my son gave me a wine-making kit for the holidays, and after encouragement from a friend and colleague at work, I decided to try growing my own wine grapes. After studying materials on the internet, and in particular the materials from WSU experiment station at Mt. Vernon, WA, I chose two varieties that are supposed to do well in our area (Puget Sound region of Washington State).

I obtained about 50 cuttings of a white, Madeleine Angevine, from Lopez Island Winery, and another 50 or so of a red, Regent, from a grower in Grapeview WA. My colleague at work (whose small vineyard is in Vancouver, WA) provided cuttings from his prunings of Pinot noir, Pinot blanc, and Dolcetto.

After rooting all these cuttings, with very good success, in a cold frame I chose a grassy area out in the front of our property and borrowed our neighbors 3-point posthole digger and started digging holes.

Planting on 10-Jun-08

After planting about 250 plants, watering them in, and giving them a few weeks, they really started taking off. Here they are in early July.
Quite a few of the Madeleine Angevine flowered, and even though all advise to remove these, I want to let them produce grapes even the first year.

We have had some pretty warm weather this summer and by 10-Aug-08 they were coming along just fine. Each plant has a bamboo stake to train the upright stem.

And by late August, they have really started to shoot upward. The grape clusters are really starting to fill out. I pruned leaves away from each cluster to increase air circulation and to give more sunlight to promote ripening.

About 25 of the 40 Madeleine Angevine plants have grape clusters, so if the birds don't get them, I may have enough for a small batch of wine! Only 3 or 4 of the Regents (a red) have grapes, so no wine from them this year.