Wild Yeast Wine





Sheep Snakes Wildflowers Trees	Vine Dressing The vineyard has been dry-farmed since 2012. This year, 2014, a new drip irrigation system is being installed. We are practicing no-till, mowing once a year in May. We're planning to have sheep do the mowing next year. It is getting easier to walk along the rows as year by year we step on uneven clumps of soil. We're choosing to not spray nor fertilize. We enjoy finding earthworms, lizards, snakes, seeds planted by birds and the myriad of life in the soil. The vines have been pruned each spring since 2012. This year, 8 rows by the driveway are being pruned late into April. We're striving to prune the vines in a goblet shape with just six spurs in a circle at the top part of the vines, resembling little trees. Taking advice found in a favorite book, Vine-Dresser's Manual by Charles Reemelin, we placed wool fleeces around vines in the six rows next to the driveway as a beneficial mulch to encourage the soil and vines' recovery from being flooded by a broken 20" concrete pipe deep below ground level for a week in May 2013. During June and July 2012 and 2013 we dropped most all of the grapes, throughout the vineyard, to the ground to allow the vines to put carbohydrates into their roots and trunks.