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.

Black and White Soay lambs

Our five new "Black and White group" Soay lambs from 2008 are growing nicely. The two blacks with fairly extensive white spotting are just as attractive as I had imagined they would be when I first envisioned creating this phenotype several years ago.
They make a very attractive group of Soay lambs, as you can see below.

Our 5 "Black and White Group" Soay lambs 2008

Left to right above are Yosemite-r, Athena-e, Flindra-e, Tundra-r, and Anasazi-e.
Here is a short video of them playing together recently.

Obviously one of the 5 is NOT a self-colored black. The brown one, Flindra, had a 50% chance of being self-colored black. She is heterozygous for self-colored black (A+/Aa) so will be retained for next year's B&W group - having a 50% chance of producing a black (same genotype as her mother Bunny).

Hay Man

After putting up loose hay last year with my Farmall Cub and sickle-bar mower, and after raking fields by hand with a custom-made large wooden hay-rake, I conclude I had to get a mechanical rake of some sort. I wanted something vintage - not the more popular wheel rakes, but not so old as a dump rake. That pretty much leaves side-deliver rakes. After searching the internet for a long time, and watching many auctions back east (where it was impractical to ship such a relatively inexpensive piece of equipment) I finally found one locally (Shelton, WA) last winter.

It is a 1964 vintage International 14 side-delivery rake, and although a bit paint-worn, appeared to be in VERY sound mechanical condition. Virtually no repair welds, bent frame members, etc. Only many teeth missing or bent. Here is what it looked like when I bought it.

1964 International 14 Side Delivery Hay Rake

Since I didn't have an equipment trailer, I had to wait a few weeks to find time to rent a U-haul trailer, knowing that I would have to disassemble the rake to fit it in the trailer. Unfortunately, we had a rare snow that weekend, and it turned out to be a bigger job than we expected to get the parts into the trailer! We had to completely turn the frame upside down (yes, by hand!) in order to get the wheels to clear the sides of the trailer. What a job loading!

So all winter I tore it apart--with frequent orders to the Case-IH dealer in Burlington, WA, for parts. Thank goodness most of the parts are still available, albeit very expensive. Take for example the bearings on the ends of each of the tooth bars. There are 5 tooth bars, and a bearing on each end, and a special housing to hold the bearings. Each bearing is $75, and each housing is $75. If all were replaced, yes, that's $1,500 - 5 times what I paid for the whole rake! Then there are replacement teeth (it has 90 - fortunately the seller had a box of about 40 replacement teeth). But even the small metal holders for each tooth - about 50 of which were missing - cost about $5 each!

But the worst surprise was when I tore into the bearing jackshaft in the tooth bar drive wheel (driven from a universal shaft from the wheels). Of course the bearings and seals were all shot - packed full of "vintage" grass, but the woodruff keyway in the short 6-inch shaft had been torn out -- from the wear on the key, this had occurred many years ago and simply not discovered. Worse, the shaft was a discontinued part. A local machine shop said they could not build up and still keep round the hardened shaft, but he could build a replacement for about $100. I told him to go ahead, and begain waiting. After 3 months, the part was done, however, it cost $265. Here is the old and new (actually same size, just funny perspective in the photo).

So after many months of cleaning old grease, sandblasting paint, waiting for weather warm enough to re-paint, etc. Things began to take shape. To get some appreciation of the work involve, here are a few before and after shots of main pieces.

(So I'm having trouble lining these photos up in pairs - heck with it..)

At any rate, It finally all came together, and here is the final result earlier this spring.

And here it is after being put to work raking a field of grass hay. Works like a charm!

Great Finale to the 2008 lambing season

Our 2008 Soay sheep lambing season went out on a high note. Our last pregnant Black and White ewe, Teed's Cinnamon, was VERY pregnant--she was "udderly huge", so to speak. I was sure for the last 3 weeks that she was close to lambing. Finally Saturday evening I saw her off by herself. I watched her until 10 pm but no action (although clearly she was close). This morning (Sunday) at 5 AM I found her with her handywork. See Woodland Creek Yosemite - ram, below.

Woodland Creek Yosemite '08 - ram

Teed's Cinnamon X Woodland Creek Chilcoot

Yes, after our recently born Athena - this little ram is has the second-most white I've seen in a self-colored black Soay in North America. Cinnamon was our most white-spotted ewe. She has a poll spot, a forehead spot, and a small neck spot. So it was expected that she would give a good white-spotted lamb. (However last year her ram lamb Shoshone only had a few white hairs at his poll, so it doesn't always work precisely).

At any rate, after checking out the little ram Yosemite, I went to find out where he was born, and low and behold, there was a second lamb -but unfortunately it had never made it out of the birth sac. I could see it was another black and white, so I cleaned it up and photographed him (he was a little ram). He was a beautiful little guy too. I named him Sam, for the records.

Woodland Creek Sam - stillborn twin ram

Sam would have been the 3rd most extensively white-spotted self-black Soay (although admittedly only slightly more white than Thunder '01, good old Blue Mountain Thumper's very first lamb.

So more of the good news is that I needed a good B&W ram for this fall to keep spreading the white. Even better, this ram is out of a Tracy Teed ewe, so this brings some new blood to what had previously been a bit overloaded to the Thumper line.