Good Vineyard Views
There’s no argument that the light at sun rise and magical. Match that with work in a vineyard, tucked between mountains, and well… good view. Cheers!
Home Garden Update
The corn is now taller than all of us, and we see the ears of corn starting to grow. The birds have started stealing blueberries. We have a baby watermelon. We picked another squash and plan for cucumbers this weekend. Tomatoes are growing but not ripe yet (it always feels like such a long runway to tomato deliciousness).
How about you? Pick anything summery good from your garden recently?
Home Garden Update
Our plant starts have been in the ground for about 6 weeks and we had our first veggie pick of the season this past weekend! (not counting herbs and greens) Every year we learn more about the space we have to grow, what grows best here, and what we enjoy watching grow, picking, and eating. This season, so far, it’s become really apparent where the sunshine hits first and longest. We have a zuchinni plant on either side of the garden. One we harvested a giant squash from and the other just has its first flower. Each to its own.
Did you plant a home garden this summer? What are you most looking forward to picking and enjoying? Let us know in the comments!
Early June in the Vineyard
The rows are looking good and we’re starting to see baby grapes!
Weed Whacking
Summer weather is here, and we’ve had our first red flag warning (hot temps, high winds, fire potential). We’re keeping up with weed whacking requests, and staying safe.
Clearing land
This week we’ve been helping with a project clear the land along the property edge. Cleaning up lots of weeds, branches, blackberry vines, and dead trees. Here are a few photos:
Pruning Season
Some of the most important winter work is pruning - setting the next vintage up for success with expert cuts to the canes priming the plant for growth and grapes. Out with the old cut canes. For some of our clients, we also paint/seal the cut ends especially during this rainy season.
Happy New Year!
Our favorite instagram post of 2020 was this photo from bud break. Fitting for New Year’s; there’s hope and excitement with the start of a new vintage. We wish you all the best for this coming vintage and look forward to what it may bring. Cheers!
Clearing Brush
Here are a couple photos from last week - clearing brush, making head way, getting ready for the rainy season, and being mindful of the fire season. First photo is before, second is after at the same location/spot.
Signs of fall
With the grapes in, and mostly cut from the vines, we’ve started seeing signs of fall in and around the vineyard. The leaves are turning yellow to red to brown and falling to the ground. The nights and subsequent mornings are crisp and cold instead of just cool and foggy.
Last Pick of 2020
Harvest 2020 with all its epic circumstances has concluded. The grapes are in! and we can turn our attention to preparing for the next growing season.
Here are a few photos from our last pick of the season. Cheers!
Fire Clean Up
This week we helped a client clean up brush to keep their property clear and safer during the fire season. Let us know if you’d like help cleaning up your property.
Before…
After - brush in small piles, ready for the burn pile
Purple Air
Have you used the purple air tool online yet? It shows air quality readings from all around. You type in your location, and it pulls up a map with the closest readings and a key too show you just how bad it’s gotten. Confirmation and another map to get oriented during these hazy days.
https://www.purpleair.com/
View looking over northern Napa Valley last week.
View from the Vineyard
How quickly things change. Perhaps that’s 2020’s mantra. Though I suppose we could all think of multiple others that would suit.
Last week in the vineyard, Francisco made the rounds, checking on vineyards and grapes as we wait for the fruit to ripen. The vineyards look great.
Francisco out checking the vineyards (and staying safe!)
And here the grapes. Wine grapes in all their glory. Look at these!
And then this week, 2020 continued to belch and spew bad news as a sudden lightning storm erupted in the summer sky. Billowing through, bringing fire, fire tornadoes (why is that a thing?), trauma, smoke, and ash. Today’s view:
We watch and wait with anticipation. A hope, wish, and prayer for all our friends and family in Sonoma and Napa Counties.
Fish Dish: Baked Salmon
There are a few dinners that are just better with wine. The dishes almost beg for a pairing, and the sipping helps savor the dish. Pizza and a nice medium-bodied red wine - our go-to is Zinfandel. Tacos and Pinot Noir. Fish baked or grilled with a well balanced (fruit and acid) white wine. Maybe it’s the acidity that helps cut the fat in the food, the combination embodies mouth-wateringly savory. Maybe it’s because we’re in wine country and it just makes sense. Maybe it makes the evening feel more celebratory and less like a Tuesday.
Either way, we enjoyed a nice piece of salmon, flavored with cilantro (substituted for the dill in the following recipe) from our garden, lemon, garlic and butter. And served it with roasted red potatoes, and fresh green beans with a little butter, salt and lemon. Back-deck kinda eating. It was good. And so, we share the following recipe inspiration for baked salmon and say a socially-distant cheers!
We used this recipe from Tastes Better From Scratch. She offers lots of good tips, and three flavor options. We went with the Lemon & Dill and substituted cilantro for dill.
Good Fruit
Seeing the fruit grow in the vineyard never gets old. It’s a product of good pruning and tending of the vines. It’s the anticipation of what they will become, and an acknowledgement of the vines’ demands and measure of time based only on sunlight/weather.
Here are some photos from this week. Old vine fruit and grape vine shoots.
Kale Chips
From our home garden to the table - kale chips. With recipe.
When we started this business, Francisco was adamant about the logo. It had to be green. We are wine growers and plants that are healthy and strong are green. Green is our color.
The greenery is also calming, re-assuring, and exciting. This year we’ve been able to extend that to our home garden. Our latest green harvest - kale. Now, if you’d told me a few months ago that I’d be writing my first food post on the new blog (in a previous life I was food blogger) on kale, I would’ve laughed. I’m not kale’s biggest fan. I get it, kale is a super food. It’s also a chore to eat raw.
And then we had fresh kale greens in the garden. We had kale seeds on-hand this winter, and Francisco sewed some along with the other greens, first planted indoors in March and then transplanted outdoors in April. We didn’t know how good we had it, and let these leaves get pretty large before our first harvest. Their wavy, green leaves have been lovely in the garden and we let them hang on longer than needed before we finally harvested.
Harvest we did. Before being turned into something wonderfully delicious:
Toasted and transformed - the leaves made a delicious, fought-over, pre-dinner snack. Below is the recipe. Enjoy and cheers!
Toasted Kale Chips
Ingredients
Bunch of kale
Olive oil
Kosher salt
Directions
Preheat your oven to 350 deg. Line a cookie sheet (or two depending on how much kale you have) with parchment paper.
With a knife, cut away the greens from the thick stems. Then roughly slice them into 2 inch pieces. And place them in a large bowl (with room for tossing).
Drizzle the kale with olive oil. Do this with a light hand as a little goes a long way. Use about 1 tablespoon of oil if you have enough kale to spread out evenly in one layer on a cookie sheet. Sprinkle liberally with salt.
Bake in the oven for 10-15 minutes, until the leaves are crisp to the touch. Toss in a bowl and don’t forget to taste some before sharing with others (they’ll be gone by the time the bowl comes back around to you).
Russian River Valley Pinot Noir
Note - this post was originally published 06.29.2014
Grapes! Our pruning efforts paid off. Here are some Russian River Pinot Noir grapes growing, growing, growing.
