Memorial Day 2018 - Bachelor Weekend

Lisa went to Santa Barbara to visit Allison so I'm home alone for the weekend. After two days the chore lists has a satisfying look to them.

Not much mulching left to go.

For lunch last week and this weekend we made a very nice zucchini lasagna. Only problem was there was a lot of moisture in the zucchini, but still made for several tasty meals.

For Mother's Day the kids bought Lisa a sous vide cooker. We tried it out on ribs and it was also a success. Finished in the oven with a little BBQ sauce.

The elderflowers are coming on strong. After making some 6 gallons of elderberry wine last year, I'm considering some elderflower wine this year instead. To help with the decision, I popped open some elderflower wine from 2014, the only batch I've ever tried before. Not much elderflower...not any, really, but not bad wine. Elderflower wine is back in the rotation.

One of this weekend's chores was building a new set of sawhorses. I hope they last as long as the last set and that this is the second to last set of sawhorses I ever build.

Lisa and Allison seem to be having a good time in California.

My two favorite women

2018 Grape Update and Photo Album

The grapes, with one exception, are coming along. Frontenac and Foch have started to bloom. Traminette and Chardonel are loaded. I'm removing all of the blooms from Chambourcin and Norton. The Norton doesn't show the vigor of the others but they were a little slow last year as well, so we'll just be patient and see how they progress.

The Vidal Blanc shows no further signs of recovery. We've started to look at replacements, and considering La Crescent, Brianna, Itasca, and Frontenac Blanc. Unlikely to get them replanted this year so we have time to look around.

There is a subreddit powerwashingporn which would be a good place to post pics from last weekend.

This weekend is rainy and cloudy so we got some wine work done. 2017 elderberry came out of the barrel and went back into the carboy. I barrel aged 1/2 of it, and it seemed to improve the wine, will consider doing the other half depending on what we have lined up for the barrel later. One half of the 2017 old vine Zinfandel went in next. I will likely give both halves 3 months each in the barrel before bottling.

Most country wine experiments end poorly but 2017 pawpaw wine might just be an exception. Aroma is very light but there is definitely banana and other tropical fruit there just at the beginning. I added a bit of glycerin to smooth it out and went ahead and bottled. We'll chill this and give it a try this week. Judging from the looks of the trees so far, I will have more pawpaws than I can use this summer.

We bottled the 2017 Sauvignon Blanc last weekend. I probably won't even bother with caps and labels, this wine is good enough that it won't last long. The surprise of the weekend however was the 2017 Vignoles. Early on this wine had a very nice passion fruit tropical aroma and somehow I've not managed to screw it up. Bottled just a portion to be sure we have the residual sugar right, and if so we'll bottle the balance in the next couple of weeks.

Pictures taken before the rain came...

Haskaps

Beginning of Summer

This weekend we made the big move. We pulled out all of the greenhouse plants and pool deck furniture, signaling the official beginning of summer.

We're trying something a little different this year. In the spirit of thigmomorphogenesis, we are putting some new plants out by the pool. Some of our tropical fruit trees are well-rooted enough, we think, to hold up to the strong winds we occasionally get.

Fig (Ficus mysterious), jaboticaba (Plinia cauliflora), camu camu (Myrciaria dubia), citrus (Labelus missingii)

Star apple (Chrysophyllum cainito), acerola (Malpighia emarginata), Washington Navel orange 

Calamondin

Ficus mysterious

Jaboticaba (Plinia cauliflora)

It's a great time of year for flowers and foliage.

Lilac

Fothergilla gardenii

Cercis 'Appalachian Red' with owner shadows

Cercis 'Forest Pansy'

Korean Spice Viburnum (Viburnum carlesii)

Asimina triloba, Paw Paw

There is bud break on the grapes and the first spray of the year is in the books. We had the driest September-January period in Missouri in 40 years, in addition to zone-testing -9F temps in January. At least one of my varieties did not like it at all. Winter survival numbers:

• Frontenac 9/9 
• Foch 9/9
• Traminette 8/9
• Chardonel 9/9 
• Chambourcin 9/9
• Norton 42/44
• Vidal 5/36

Basal shoot on Vidal, one of five

There is no time this year to replant. Best advice I've gotten so far is just cut them back and see if they return from the base. These vines grew very well last year and in fact my plan was to devigor them a little bit by letting them fruit. Scratch that plan. 

End of Winter

The winter of 2017-2018 felt as if it would never end. Plants are 2-3 weeks behind this year, and we finally just got some warm temps last week. Naturally the one year spring is late, the pool opening is early.

Never has the pool been this clean yet this cold.

We have struggled for months with water loss from the pool. After filling it up last week, we came back yesterday to find it several inches down again. I suspected this to be the cause of a persistent wet spot behind the poolhouse. The cattle have absolutely wrecked this ground on the other side of the fence, eventually requiring some fencing reinforcement. Yesterday I found the cause. The fitting on the filter was cracked and dripping water down the side of the filter and right into the drain. It went unnoticed because there really wasn't much of a wet spot on the floor until now. I used a clamp and piece of old hose as a temporary fix, and now a day later, the poolhouse is dry again.

Tom lent us a skid loader and we spread two truckloads of mulch a couple of weeks ago. The late spring allowed us to get much of the mulch down before the perennials came up.

Lisa got the deck cleaned up. My Big Green Egg operation has been pushed to the end of the deck to help keep smoke out of the kitchen.

Big day today - we'll bring some greenhouse plants out. I'm battling some serious issues with thrips, courtesy of a well-intentioned friend who will go unnamed. These plants badly need to get outside and get cleaned up.

Spring Fishing

Not every post can be about central Missouri gardening and grapes. Our winter just broke last week and so everything here in Fulton is 2-3 weeks behind. Gardening posts are on the way, but in the meantime, there is fishing.

Jake, Adam, David and I scheduled a trip to Florida to do some bass fishing. The idea was Jake's; he wanted to celebrate completion of his Step 1 exam, and what started as a camping trip morphed into fishing in Florida. I did a farm pond shake-down the weekend before.

I circled the 2 acre pond 8 or 10 times in under 3 hours. Cloudy water and sky prompted me to go with dark spinnerbaits and shallow crankbaits. The fish were shallow, possibly still spawning, and the bite was very good.

I ended with about 25 fish, and as a result ironed out some of my baitcasting reel issues.

On Wednesday we flew into Orlando. Miraculously, all of the flights were on time, and Adam picked us up.

We fished the Harris chain of lakes with guides Mark and Gary from Lakeside Bait and Tackle.

We think Adam got the big fish but we're certain that each of us lost a bigger one. Great weather, great time! Thanks guys!

2017 Wines - Chapter 10 - Elderberry

With an eye toward fermenting everything in the freezer, I went with a 6 gallon batch of elderberry this year.

• 29# 3oz elderberry
• 10# 4oz sugar
• 21 quarts water
• 6t pectic enzyme
• 80g tartaric acid
• 6g Opti Red
• 7g Booster Rouge
• 1g Lallzyme EX

The berries were simmered in the usual fashion.

This year I adjusted to target TA instead of pH. Starting TA was 1.95 and I adjusted to 6.5. The pH dropped from 4.95 to 3.4 range. I added the sugar, water, enzymes, and gave it a 4 day cold soak. The volume was too great for a standard fermentation bucket so I used the larger one, and it barely fit in the temperature control setup. I warmed it up, made the final adjustments, and pitched K1-V1116. 

The temperature curve on this wine was very steady. I started off at 70F but soon turned it down to 68F. The last couple of days I bumped it up to 72F to help it finish up.

At 1.004 I racked most of this wine off to 5, 1, and 1/2 gallon carboys. The extra gallon is going toward a port. For this port, I added sugar back to raise the SG back up to 1.030. I fermented it down again to 1.004 and repeated this process. The fermentation slowed up at 1.014 the second time, so I did my math and came up with an ABV of 16.14% and 3.6% RS. So I stabilized at 19% with 7.5 ounces of Everclear, added KMS, and racked it off to a 1 gallon carboy. I anticipate using a little oak on this wine.

Meanwhile the regular batch got racked again after a week and I moved 10l to the oak barrel. The remainder went into a 3 + 1 gallon carboys.