It is now. We are finally having the warm days of summer and no forest fires in the area yet. But as you can see below, a few unexpected weather events happened before August.
Unheard of late snow in the Valley
Mother Nature continues to throw curve balls at our attempts to be farmers. This year the growing season started with a late winter/early spring frost in our area. There was initial concern that up to 50% of the crop might be lost, as the untimely cold spell came right at bud break. A grape bud is comprised of three smaller sections, known as the primary, secondary, and tertiary. The primary bud, which was present on most of our plants at the time of the extreme temperatures, contains the shoot with the flower that eventually develops into the grapes. The buds being exposed to such extreme cold in this stage of development had the potential to destroy the whole crop or at least extremely shunt growth of future stages of the plants development this season. Danette documented the growth over the course of the weeks that followed, and fortunately, we were able to see only minimal damage to only a few of the plants.
The cold spell was followed by a long, slow, cool, wet spring. Farmers, especially grape farmers, don’t usually complain about these conditions, except for the impact it has on your mood, as well as the ability to get out into the farm itself. There were several atmospheric rivers throughout the spring, which made it quite difficult to do any further ground prep, as the tractors and mowers were only creating ruts in the ground, if they could even get out of the barn.
After bud break comes bloom. This event determines the amount of berries which may potentially grow or how many grapes will be on each cluster. Bloom can last 1 – 3 weeks depending on weather and other variables. This is when the flowers fertilize themselves, as they are not dependent on insects or other species to help with distribution of the pollen. Generally bloom occurs 50 -80 days after bud break. We estimated that our bloom occurred right around July 4th, most likely the longer duration was due to the cold, wet spring.
Throughout this waiting time, we were able to visit with Lauren a few times. In April, where we were also able to attend PINCC annual fundraiser for the first time.
Right after bloom, Danette had the opportunity to attend a field days put on by OSU and Dr. Patty Skinkis’ team. While informative, it really showed things that are far in the future for our small farm, but it was certainly informative to learn about clever things on the horizon that will help use fewer chemicals and allow farmers to be more focused in their efforts.
We look forward to our Fourth Harvest here at Aeolus Vineyards. We encourage you to buy wines from the Eola-Amity Hills AVA or at least Willamette Valley. This year we only sold to two wine makers, who have very different wine making styles, Stangeland and Landmass. Please visit both of their websites to learn what they have been up to since last year. A lot has been going on at both locations.
Remember there is always an open bottle and empty glass waiting here for you. So just let us know when you will be by to stay a while. CHEERS!