I am very happy to announce that David Mead will be making a return engagement to the Flying Otter Vineyard for a living room concert Saturday, Nov. 1, 2008.

Those of you who were able to join us for the last David Mead show 3 years ago know what a truly special evening it was, and we hope to continue the tradition with another fine evening of music and camaraderie.

You never know what might happen. The last show featured new music that was yet to appear on Tangerine, old favorites from across the span of David’s repertoire, witty banter, and a few smidgens of pop culture favorites, such as a teaser from Daydream Believer, which was remarkably close to Davy Jones’s tones.

More details about this show and some others will emerge as we get the details figured out, but I want you all to help spread the word, and get us on your planner, blackberry, refrigerator door, or whatever apparatus controls your life. See the Events tab for more details, and check back there for updates.

We are at a momentary lull in vineyard activity here, which is really appreciated since we are anticipating the arrival of our first grandchild any day now and somewhat preoccupied.

We put up bird netting a couple of weeks ago when the grapes started to get sweet enough to attract the attention of the turkeys. It seemed to work for a few days, but this week when Bob checked the vineyard the whites (which were already sparse from the hail damage) had been wiped out. It appears that they ate through the netting. We will get some Frontenac Gris because it is high on Geneva double curtain trellising, but anything at 3 feet or below is gone. So far the reds are still there, but we aren’t too optimistic about that holding. Bob is more convinced than ever that he needs to get a noisy, territorial dog to live in the vineyard next year.

We tested grapes last weekend and they aren’t quite ready yet. Sweetness is good, but the acids are too high. Hopefully the warm weather we’ve been having will speed up the finishing process and we will have some grapes to pick fairly soon. This won’t be a typical year since our harvest was significantly impacted by the June hailstorm, but we won’t really know how much till we get everything picked and measured.

In other news, we are hosting a special Flying Otter event in November. David Mead will be returning to do another House Concert to help us celebrate 2008’s season. More information about that in the Events tab on the website. David joined us after our first season with a wonderful intimate concert of his excellent music and we are very excited that he has agreed to return.

To answer John’s question earlier, please stop by any time to visit. We’d love to see you. Especially around harvest time when you will very likely get enlisted to pick grapes. If and when we decide to get into the winery business and get all of the licensing required to sell wine, we will be sure to let everyone know where to purchase Flying Otter products.

On July 31 we went to the annual Viticulture Field Day at the MSU Southwest Michigan Research and Extension Center. This was our second year attending and we had a great time. The weather was beautiful, sunny and breezy, perfect for a day in the field. We attended the round robin set of 10 mini workshop sites, making the rounds on buses or open trailers. Lunch and the steak fry dinner offered ample opportunities for getting to know other growers and winery operators, and to exchange ideas. A very valuable experience. Wally Maurer of Domaine Berrien Winery was very generous in sharing some of his expertise over a fine steak and some of the best sweet corn we’ve ever eaten. Of course, there was ample opportunity to taste the local wine brought by many attendees.

Here it is almost halfway through the summer and we haven’t updated the blog. (Thanks Debra, for keeping in touch)

It seemed like winter wanted to last a long time this year and we had lots of rain. The vineyard was off to a great start. Lots of beautiful green vines and tons of tiny grapes. Then we went on a business trip for a week to Utah and when we returned we found that the hail we got on the first day we were gone had shredded many of our beautiful leaves and “cluster thinned” many of those promising young grapes. It was probably just as well we didn’t know about it till we got back because there isn’t anything we can do about it anyway.

It took quite a while, but the vines seem to be coming out of it now, and things look much better. Bob is busy spraying on days when the wind is calm enough to allow it. So far we haven’t seen very many japanese beetles yet, which is always good. Between the weeds and the deer and the bugs there is always something to do battle with. And then there is the bumper crop of mosquitoes. They don’t eat grapes or vines, but they sure do eat us.

We have some bird netting to try this year so we are hoping to save as much of the rest of the grapes as we can

Here it is mid-winter at the Flying Otter Vineyard. This is the slow and easy time of year for us. We have our first ever vintage of Flying Otter wine in the aging process, and it is quite promising in the early stages. We will have only about 50 gallons of wine this year, but that should be enough to take to some area wineries to pique their interest in our Frontenac juice for their winemaking activities.

Other winter projects include making a rooting bed for propagating plants to increase our vineyard. We hope to get some Marquette cuttings to expand our interest in that variety as it seems to have great potential as far as taste. We are hoping it will be favorably winter hardy as well.

Next year will find us carefully watching the whites for their first season of harvest. We have already invested in a bird netting system, as last year convinced us of the necessity of preventative methods if we hope to have any grapes left by the time they reach harvest levels. Between the deer and the birds (turkeys and others) they picked the vines clean last fall.

Other than planning, we are spending much of our winter on research in the form of sampling of various wines made from grapes we are growing or are considering growing here. Life is good.

We had our first harvest today. It was awesome! What more can I say. After three years of work - late season frosts, Rose Chafers, Japanese Beetles, weeds, Japanese Beetles, deer, Japanese Beetles, turkeys, Japanese Beetles, and others pests, diseases and problems I can’t even remember, we actually picked grapes today. Linda, Jeff and I picked approximately 400 lbs of Frontenac, and the numbers looked very good. The crush was at 25.2 brix, 3.25 pH, 1.00 TA.

Jeff (number two son) came down to help for the weekend. Yesterday and today we finished rebuilding the crusher/destemmer I bought last winter on ebay. I was worried about this piece of machinery my number one son, Josh, had nick named the “grape annihilator”. I completely disassembled it, sand blasted it, had it powder coated and reassembled it with all new stainless steel hardware wherever possible. I was worried that we would pour grapes into it and it would choke or spit them back out our just grind itself up, but it performed flawlessly and truly lived up to its name - the “Grape Annihilator”. We poured about 400 lbs of grapes into it and it spit the stems out one end and pumped the mashed grapes (must) into a waiting tank 16′ away, pretty much as fast as we could pour them in. It was awesome!

I added the “Meta” and tomorrow we can actually start making our first wine.

Bob sent this article about the Alexis Bailly Vineyard in Minnesota.
http://www.winesandvines.com/search/article.cfm?content=48041

We are growing some of the same grapes they have, developed by Elmer Swensen and the University of Minnesota grape breeders. We have 25 plants of the new Marquette grape that they mention as being the new big thing for northern growers. They seem to be doing very well so far.

A brief update on the vineyard activities for 2007: Things were going gangbusters in the vineyard till we had a late freeze that set some of our plants back. The Foch in particular took it pretty hard. The Frontenac had very little damage, and the whites had mixed reactions. The end of the vineyard closest to the woods is really struggling. They took the biggest hits from both the japanese beetles last year and the freeze this spring.

But overall everything is looking good and growing fast.

We put in a modest 25 plants of Marquette plants this spring. There was much rejoicing by the crew to find that we only had one row of expansion this year.

This weekend we have a work crew scheduled to do the cluster thinning on the Frontenac. They have really outdone themselves making little grapes, and as much as it grieves us to have to thin them out, it is the only way to get them to make it all the way to a successful harvest.

I hope to get some photos up on the website of this year’s progress thus far soon.

Somebody do a rain dance (being careful not to overdo it) for us, as it’s been pretty dry for a couple of weeks here.

Cheers,

Linda

We had our first frost last night. The low temperature recorded at the house was 36, but there was frost on the roof and on the grass. I walked out in the vineyard first thing this mornging, and it doesn’t look like there was any frost on the vines. But it’s only a matter of time. Another growing season comes to an end. The second year vines did very well. I’m still hoping for a partial crop from them next year. Foliar phylloxera was definitely noticeable on the too many of the Frontenac vines. Let’s hope it doesn’t turn out to be a big problem. Overall the new vines did pretty well, especially the Foch. The Japanese Beetles were terrible. The last newsletter of the season from the county extension department characterized the Japanese Beetle situation this season as “extreme”. I’ll second that.

Next year is another year. I’m already looking forward to pruning next year in late winter/early spring. And then before you know it, we’ll be adding some Marquette vines to the vineyard.

I am so lucky!

The whole family was home this past weekend to help with the spring planting. And, some friends from Wisconsin stopped by for the weekend and we put them to work too. We started on Saturday, May 20 and finished at noon on Wednesday, May 24. I really appreciate everyone’s help.

We finished everything we planned to do. We added 8 rows (312 vines to the vineyard). The varieties are listed in the “Grapes” section of the web site. The vineyard is now approximately 0.8 acres. The weather was great for planting. It was cool and breezy the first few days and warm and sunny the last day. A couple of nights we had lows of 34.5, but I couldn’t see any signs of frost. That is just too cold for this time of year. Last year we planted two weeks earlier. This year I delayed planting a couple of weeks because last year we also had a “near frost” the first night we set out vines. It looks like I’m going to have to move planting to June if we really want to be safe!
We also added a drip irrigation system this year using buried T-tape. We’ll see how that works, but it simply has to be better than dragging around garden hose like we did last summer. As long as we have the drip irrigation system I had a soil test done and then added an Agro-K crop fertility program. The price seems reasonable and it should be real easy to do with the drip irrigation. I’m anxious to see if there is a discernable difference between this year’s growth and last year’s.

And now to top it all off, it’s raining. So far, yesterday and today, we have had 0.75″ of rain. I’m sure those new vines and cuttings are loving it.

I am the luckiest! (We’ll see if I still feel this good after the Japanese Beetles come out.)
The Flying Otter