A good way to start the month!

Hallelujah, it rained last night and this morning! We've waited over two and a half weeks for this (I know, not exactly a drought but with all the perennials we put in, weekly watering by hand is a bit of a chore). We collected all the water we could in buckets (and coolers) off the patio roof, we probably wound up with over 30 gallons! Enough for one half of one watering, but still we were awfully excited. Pa, you'll appreciate that we got the hop trellis up:



And here's our slowest growing hop, Horizon



But the hop trellis wasn't the only training system I got up today, the grapes were also rewarded for coming back from a bad frost. All I had left to do was string the wires for my 4 arm kniffen trellis, and set the earth anchors. Here I am putting in the eye bolt that gets strung to the earth anchor



And a beautiful view of our vineyard



Besides some pruning, sumac-wacking, and mowing, the only other thing I accomplished on the hill today was putting in two raspberries (Prelude, supposedly they bear very early), and 3 grapes, all Cayuga. Sarah on the other hand managed to put in three more mounds of corn for a total of 11, plant two cherry tomatoes in pots, plant hills of beans around 3 of our plum trees, and help me with the sumac-wacking.

Our zucchini are all up now



along with most of our Scarlet Runner Beans



About a third of last week's corn planting is up too



In other news, we had a small grub problem in our rhubarb, but Sarah was happy to salvage the ungrubby part of the stalks



And we can't expect people to ever read our blog unless we include cute pictures of our animals, so here is Gerard, quite content to be out of the rain, but still out of the house



But even a cat can be unphotogenic!



And Roscoe truly enjoys our slow drives to and from the hill; it's fast enough to smell at super speed, but slow enough to be able to breath (and avoid choking on one's jowls). He takes his job of sniffing the neighborhood very seriously






But even at 30 mph, he still has to take breaks



Oh, I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before but we killed our keg of Red Lager. What color that beer had!



Cheers!

Cultivating our own garden and such

We (mostly Sarah) have been seeing some beautiful birds on the hill this spring, to include Baltimore Orioles, Eastern Bluebirds, and Indigo Buntings. We looked up the Indigo and found that the male of the species is actually black, and it is the diffraction produced in the feathers that results in such rich shades of blue and purple. Neat. Sarah managed to nab this picture of one on our rotten log pile. (Sarah's note: It was the first time I have ever seen one, but Mick and his family talk a lot about them. I saw a blue brighter than a bluebird, and thought, that's gotta be it, amazing!)


Dad, you'll appreciate how different this looks now. I've cut some smaller trees down and cleared a few limbs, and then used the brush hog to sort of push back the forest.



What a help that thing has been. We put in 25 hybrid poplars this morning, and three chokecherry trees. With the kubota we just went down the line and filled the bucket with the rocks all that digging produced.

We started putting in our annual garden as well. This time last year our tomatoes were about 2 inches high, we're expecting more from them this year.



We did a raised bed with onions and garlic, and boy have the onions really taken off!



Along with the other trees we put in today, we had two Carmine Jewel Dwarf Cherries. They are cold hardy all the way up to zone 2b! Also, they are naturally dwarfing. Gurney's sells them for 30 bucks, but they had a special and sold 'em for seven. We bought two, and mulched them heavily.



All of that mulch has to come from somewhere, and we sure as heck aren't buying it! That rotten log pile that the Indigo Bunting was on, we've been chopping those up with shovels and using it as mulch.



And we've been using the mulch for just about everything we've planted so far. The next picture is taken from on top of the rotting log pile, and it shows the site of our future orchards, with a bunch of mounds and raised beds in between what we already have established.



And now for one of my favourite things, the vineyard. I ordered 11 grapes from Red Dog Vineyard and I'm reasonably happy. Their prices were very cheap, though the root systems on the Frontenac Grapes were very poorly developed. The other varietals were great, though. So I think I've lost one Frontenac and one Sabrevois (great root system, no idea what happened), so thus far I'm pretty happy. The new grapes look great, and with a distinctive look to the leaves that might mean I'm far more accustomed to older, more american grape hybrids.



I had three Elvira grape vines that I nurtured and kept away from freezing weather all spring (I got 'em from Tractor Supply and they had already leafed out), and I planted them...gosh, when was that horrible wind storm with all the snow? Well, right before that happened I planted them, and all the new green growth died. My reliance, concords, and niagaras had begun leaf flush as well, and they lost their primary buds also. Everything but one Elvira is budding out again, and I'm so excited about the poor Elviras that I've got to include some pictures:





Life is just amazing!