Just saw a national weather service forecast calling for an early spring this year. ![[stirthepothal.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/f/f40faec63ca1018898a40805efbf9f0066a3d205.gif "[stirthepothal.gif]"){kind=small}
A little diversion from the vineyard rat race today. Took a walk around the edges today to clear my head. This one is called hounds tongue. Shooting stars and Indian paintbrush will be right behind. Say prayers for rain in Cali folks!
My single vine of Thompson seedless grapes has budbreak into small leaves. If the trend continues, I am looking at an August harvest. Lots can happen, but reading back to some earlier vintages, this type of “behavior” has been instigated by warm dry weather (but often followed by periods of rain). Let’s see what is going to happen.
I am pruning this weekend.
Almost 80 degrees today, luckily the high on Saturday will be a more normal 59. No real rain in the next week which is troubling. I’ve heard folks saying there’s a chance the storm door might open around March 7-8.
Grape and wine if Silicon Valley Bank is correct.
Were all ready for the vintage, pruned, frost sprinklers and fan tested. We just need more rain to delay bud break and fill the pond. Only one storm over 1" of rainfall and right now we have had less rain than the '13-'15 drought. '13-'15 we still got 20-22" but we had multiple 4-8" events that created surface runoff. This year every bit has soaked in with no runoff. The Navarro river at the Pacific has the sand bar back again as the Navarro is not flowing enough to open it.
On the business side traffic is us as the weather is warm and dry and Lake Tahoe has less than ideal conditions. Last weekend was a very successful rebranding of the Anderson Valley White Wine Weekend, still recovering from the long week to get the event pulled off.
We just had a few sprinkles on the north side of the house. Nothing to the south! Praying for more. It’s cool, grey, and windy. The cover crop is knee high and beautiful. The vineyard is newly pruned and those babies are certainly awake. Weeping like crazy.
Nice to see it get cold again. 32 this morning. I’m told it’s been an awesome bloom for the almonds in the central valley, which makes sense. Hope those guys have enough water to farm this season. I figure we have about two more weeks of pruning. Ladies following behind tying canes to the wire. Sure would like to spend a week down in AZ for spring training while not much going on but we’re working on a huge domestic project. Lots of unsold grapes and bulk wine. Gonna be a bloody couple of years.
We have been fortunate as our February high temps have been in the 50s/low 60s until late last week, when we got to 72F. No sign of bud-break and the last two days have got under freezing (with highs in the 40s). That cooler weather combined with pruning the week of March 9th should push bud-break into early April. Now just praying for more rain. We need a March miracle!
Paul
Here’s Zip demonstrating how thirsty the cover crop is. It really hasn’t moved much in the past month.
Young Chard getting closer to budbreak. I walked lots of fields today and everything else pretty darn tight.
I’m feeling my vines would appreciate a drink. At 4:00 this afternoon it is still 84 degrees and dry, dry, dry.
Kind of hard to drink when you’re asleep. I believe March will be good to us eventually, and April could be a gift.
Folks starting to flush frost sprinkler systems in our area, so a visitor might think we’re watering the vines when in fact that’s not the case. Many folks don’t have much water so they will be cautious as to how they use it.
My vines are not sleeping. If they were sleeping, they would not bring that sap up to the cuts. They would not have buds ready to pop.
People are talking about rain during much of next week. That would be great. We hit 84 for much of the afternoon today…way too warm for early March. I may take the opportunity tomorrow to de-bug the irrigation system while delivering a bit of moisture. Turning on the system is the only way to find breaks, leaks, and coyote bites that are otherwise not visible to the eye. Yeah, the vines will get a drink tomorrow.
It has been bone dry down here in Ventura county. This season’s rainfall is 8.8" - normal is ~15" and last year was 22".
We pruned 3 weeks ago and have irrigated our hillside vines weekly since.
Totally bummed about the weather now. Looks like this little bullshit storm is going to possibly give us a tenth of and inch and move on. The ‘series’ of storms that was predicted for early next week seems to have changed their minds. This is getting serious for us and probably most folks south of the Oregon border.
I’m planning a meeting soon with all of my crew (we have 9 worker houses) to talk about the coming summer. Our ranch has some of the best watershed and storage (8 ponds) for frost and irrigation but our domestic water system is not great. Most years my people have enjoyed big vegetable gardens, but if things keep at this place we’re going to have to change some of that.
I’ve talked with some other farmers and they are terrified about water. If we have a long frost season this year many could use up all of their bullets frost protecting and not have any water for summer irrigation. I’m not making any predictions but this is becoming the story of the vine of 2020 so far.
It rained overnight, cleared, and is now raining again. Just beautiful. A light rain, not a deluge, but rain nonetheless.
.16 and counting this morning in Berkeley!
I saw some weather models for the coming week showing the LA area getting some serious rain while we get next to nothing. Sad in Mendo! ![[swearing.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/8/8a0d3f3461d40641d294442fc2be78039bf94d19.gif "[swearing.gif]"){kind=small}
The sun is out. We got the topsoil wet - that’s about it. Hope there is more on the way. Cab buds are tight. Plenty of weeping vines out there since last week’s pruning. The birds love it.
First frost of the season this morning. My weather station days it got down to 30. Saving our water but may have got a touch of burn. Will look tomorrow
All the Boonville fans ran last night. Were not “out” yet but better safe than sorry.