(Picture from here.)
You recall last year when we had the worst drought
I’d ever seen since I moved out here. Parts of our garden just twisted
themselves out of the ground and we lost a couple of trees. Sections of grape
arbors died and never came back. The birds, in their desperation, stripped one
whole arbor of every grape that was there. The hornets and yellow jackets
fought each other over left over orange rinds.
Everybody prayed for rain.
You recall that old adage, be careful what you
wish for?
Well, it’s been a wet 2017. I mean, we’re not in hurricane
class, but we got all the rain we needed. It was a cold rain, too. None of the
melons set at the right time. The grapes came to fruition but they never got enough
light or heat to really sugar up.
Sigh.
It was a good year for some things and a bad year
for others. This was the best year we’ve ever had for apples. However, that’s
not a high bar. Some folks would say that the measure was more a paint strip on
the road than a bar. We got a bout thirty of the ugliest Granny Smith apples
you’ve ever seen. I mean, these made those ugly dried face looking cabbage
patch kids look positively handsome.
They made good apple tarts, though.
Back to the grapes.
I held off harvesting as long as I could, hoping
against hope, they’d sugar up. We harvested the Concords and got an adequate
harvest—maybe 15 pounds or so. Not much for that vine. They had a Missouri
interesting flavor. (“My. What an… interesting
looking baby.”) Not bad but not too sweet,
either.
Over the years I’ve moved to freezing the grapes
before I press them. This has the interesting effect of making more of the
juice available. But, since it ruptures the cells, other things come out in
higher concentration. It gives a little something extra to the flavor.
Sometimes it works as a wine. Sometimes it doesn’t.
So I froze the Concords and started up primary
fermentation. I’ll get a hint when I rack the batch.
To make room for the Concords, I had to pull up
some frozen peaches from earlier this year. (We had a good peach harvest.) That’s just finishing up primary so I don’t
know how it came out.
We have two primary grape producing vines: Concord
and Marechal Foch.
The M/F was the arbor that got nailed by the birds
last year. Like the Concords, I held off as long as I can. Until I saw the
birds paying too much attention to one corner. Okay. I attacked it last weekend. We got about 30 pounds of grapes.
It was interesting. The birds didn’t bother me but
yellow jackets know no fear. I’d be working on a section when two wasps would
decide that they wanted that bunch. No problem. I’d go working on another
section. It reminded of a Leonard Wibberley quote from (I think) The Mouse that Roared. It went
something like this: “The pen is mightier than the sword but the sword is
mightier than the pen at any given moment.”
I coexisted with the yellow jackets as the total
amount of grapes gradually decreased. They flew near me once or twice but more
as a sheathed threat than an active menace. Until the last bunches at the very
top of the arbor.
I started pulling at the bunch and got seriously
buzzed. This time one of them bounced off my head.
I figured I could do without that last bunch of
grapes.
As I said, we got a good peach harvest earlier in
the summer. Ditto the pie cherries. I hoped
to get a few sweet cherries but, as always, the birds got there first. We did
get a few plums.
The apples are always the last fruits of the
season so we’re talking about what to do next year. We planted several new
bushes and small trees: blue berries, sea berries, some paw paws. The nectarine
has never produced well. The fruit is prolific but it splits and tears up the
tree. It’s a dwarf. We got a volunteer nectarine across the yard. (Thank you,
squirrels.) Its fruit didn’t split but
the chipmunks got to them first. So I think it might be the base graft upon
which the fruiting tree rests. Likely we’re going to tear it out and put
something else in.
Ditto the prune plum and the pluot. Both appear to
be reservoirs of black knot. We’ve been tip toeing around the problem for years because the prune tree has
been with us for years. But no longer.
Likely, we’ll save the wood. We’ve been doing that
this year. We had to cut down a birch and lopped the limbs off a cedar. Instead
of just burning the wood, we coated them so they wouldn’t crack while they
dried. When they’re dry enough, I’m going to pull out the lathe and see what I
can make.
Musn’t waste things.
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