Follow us on our journey to...

To a person who does not wish to be a farmer, land looks like land. Sometimes it can be hilly and sometimes it can be flat. Well, our land is generally flat, but it does have a sort of a slope. We also have to consider the direction of the sun and how the earth revolves around it. In fact, we used both the basic math and science they teach you in schools to decide just where to plant our test rows for the vineyard.

The goal was to plant thirty-two vines. The soil here is incredibly rocky - so rocky in fact, that we have an excess of iron in our drinking water (not a bad thing for people or grapes). That reminds me, time to check on that iron filter! The point to this is that, it is very hard to work in rocky soil - especially in a drought - especially in the height of summer - especially when your wife is eight months pregnant. Guess what! We did it anyways! We are middle children, the rules don't apply to us. So, we borrowed a friend's perfectly-sized tiller and made two quick rows. 

I hope you've hydrated today, because your body needs water, and so do plants. Grapes are one of those plants that seem to be as picky as those who taste the wines that come from them. They absolutely hate to be soggy, yet, they are thirsty little things. We acquired an interesting device for the tractor called a subsoiler. It was a new tool for both of us. What great trenches can be made with it! We (my husband) made a very nice irrigation trench to bring water from our well to the grapes. One day he will automate it. For now, we really need to remember to set the timer so we don't keep asking each other - "Hey, did you turn the water off?"

It's March which means even though it feels like winter, it's basically spring and we need to get a move on. It just rained so we could clearly see the drainage problem in our field and that was in the plans to fix first. It's good to have family that likes to help and has muscles. We rented most of the muscles for this mission because it's about 900' of drain tile (corrugated, perforated pipe with a sock on it) that needs to be installed, which means it's 900' of trench that needs to be dug. As soon as they broke ground the water was streaming through. It was as if we had unleashed a secret part of the Missouri river under the earth. Really, it's just all the runoff from the hill and the concrete up at the house. Everything routes down to the field, because, well, it's down yonder. Just as with everything in farming, every project will take longer than expected, but our motto is, "Do it right. Do it once." It's cold and windy, but the vines arrive in May and they wait for no one!

Our family has a vineyard in the town of Hermann. All of the Norton that comes from that vineyard is used to make small batches of wine for our family's consumption. It's a nice thing to have, too, because we get to practice our wine making skills. Hov's father is the one who does most of the work on that vineyard and to make the wine, but he always appreciates a helping hand come harvest! When we helped prune his vineyard we took some of the cuttings to make new starts. Here's your fun fact of the day - it's almost impossible to grow a grape vine from seed and if you do it usually turns out sterile. Most of the grape vines all over the world are just created from cuttings of an existing vine! How cool is that? Ours are sitting waiting in pots doing fairly well. We'll bring them inside over winter and plant them in the ground next spring with our 500 other vines!

One way to start a vineyard is slowly and take cutting after cutting each year. However, we have a specific timeline we want to achieve so we decided to purchase vines from a friend of a friend. The interesting thing about these vines is that they will be three years old when we put them in the ground, so we should expect to get some fruit the first summer they are here. We had the opportunity to go and visit the vines and talk to the wine maker at the winery. It was a cool experience! 

Also, these vines originally came from Virginia, then cuttings were taken to Missouri around the time of prohibition or shortly after (I can't remember) and then they went back to Virginia and now we are taking cuttings back to Missouri! How cool is that! We'll be getting 500 in the spring of 2024 and will be hosting a planting party to help us get them in the ground and to give the community a chance to come out and see the place. We are very excited and can't wait to show you the results, but until then we will be continuing work on the vineyard infrastructure. 

From May to October, the team was hard at work installing the new rows in the vineyard. They completed 14 rows which should be enough for our incoming 500 vines in the Spring. The soil here is really rocky and compacted clay. This required us to add organic matter to the soil including, a special fertilizer mix based on tested soil samples. We also added organic compost, gypsum, and lyme. This will help make the soil ideal for the new vines to establish their roots and keep growing for many years to come. After tilling the rows with a special vineyard row-sized tiller, the team added compost and sand to the rows that was then tilled in again. Thankfully, we saw just enough rain to keep the wind from blowing all their hard work away. It was a particularly dry summer, so we will definitely be adding the irrigation lines to these rows in the next few months.

Lucky enough for us, we had a second well on the property. It was not in use and there was no information on it so we had to do some digging (lol) to find out when it was drilled and if we could even use it. Once we got it up and running, we purchased two large food-grade cooking oil drums to hook into the well to make a just-in-case watering system. Vines need to be very well watered their first year after being planted, so this system will help ensure that we have enough water and the plants are getting enough water. We had a pretty rough drought the first two summers we lived here, so we are hoping that this system helps if we face that again.

Hovhannes is a great engineer and when we needed slightly more torque than a man's arm could supply to drive the earth anchors into the ground, he came up with the contraption pictured above. It worked really well! They were able to put in end posts with another contraption (to get them in at a very specific angle) and voila! We had a mostly complete vineyard. The last steps would be to finish the irrigation, run the wire to hold up the irrigation, and oh a bunch of other things; but all of these tasks got us where we needed to be to execute Planting Day!