Judith Mountain Vineyard

Update- finally! on the Judith Mountain Vineyard. We finally have a
real toilet, hot water, and a shower after THREE YEARS of living in a
14×14 foot cabin!

It’s amazing, in this time we’ve put in power,
water, a road, and a new home. We moved in on December 23rd, and love
living with the horses and goats and chickens. Our rooster ‘Re-peep’
[Peep's son] reminds me at nearly 5:24 am every morning to wake up and
stoke the fire. Getting used to it, at first we were thinking of stew
but now kind of enjoy it. This barnhouse is a cool system, with
animals –> humans –> waste back to animals, it’s pretty efficiently
cyclical, and entirely off the grid except for a propane on-demand
Bosch Aquastar hot water heater [awesome and inexpensive, by the way].

For the vines, the season finished off well is moderate temps,
dropping to freezing at night started in late September. On other
notes, looking into adding a distilling circuit on the future winery,
and growing bison, and adding on our long-awaited sauna or sweat
lodge. We’ll see how that turns out……

We are so blessed this holiday season, and many millions of thanks to
everyone who helped along the way. All of our friends and neighbors
dedicated time and effort for us to be here, advice and books and
texts, and we couldn’t be more grateful for everyone’s support. Come
visit! Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year -Scott

for the first time today we drove across a cattle guard and new
entrance along a graded road down to an insulated barn that has water
and power.  as steady as the country and homesteading are tough so are
the rewards.  when they finally come.

We recently discovered that on May 11th, at 1:39am in the morning,
Judith Mountain Vineyard witnessed a wind speed of 108 mph. This
shatters the previous record of 83.4 mph from November 8th, 2008.

Our broiler chicks became fully integrated with our chicken flock last week, free range and all.  At first they stayed on the edge- a little hesitant …

but then became fully comfortable, stretching out in their new surroundings.

In other news, the Big Spring Market is full-on now, the produce is EXCELLENT and CHEAP!  We love it.  Here’s a picture of one of the delicious kiwis  –> if walnuts are good for brains (’cause they look like a brain) and grapes are good for your eyesight (’cause they look like an eye), guesses on what kiwi is good for?

for many laughs goto:

…and it looks like quite a few buds survived the horrid hammer sunday night.

well it happened.  too early to say certain on the kill, but I’d say near annihilation of all the new growth, and probably some buds as well.  too bad, because it was going so well this year.

Final Score: 7 hours sub 32, 4 @ 28.5 F        Nature: 1       JMV: 0

Last night the mercury was supposed to push 31…    but only made it down to 34.1 in the bowl that sits the vineyard.  Narrow miss.

Tonight, expected low of 30 for 4 hours starting about 3am.  I’ve got sprinklers on the ready, and hopes for an insulating blanket of snow or at least rain to keep away the reaper.  These are tough nights!  Seems like the weather is threatening many of Montana’s vineyards (re: Clark Fork).  A bit disheartening to have ~10 degrees less of a chance here though.

One of the insurance policies I took against early killing frosts was to plant each vine in a slight ‘hollow’, then lightly back fill with straw, to allow for new growth while simultaneously providing an insulating effect.  This wouldn’t work, of course, if my vines were growing properly from cordons/trunk because they hardened off correctly in the autumn- which they haven’t yet- so, coming out of their second winter, they still push new growth from their bases.  Makes it easier to foil the spring freeze (re: straw, insulating ground, etc.), but bad for the long run it’s their third growing season now and yet a single vine is trained properly on their trellis having saved the previous years’ trunks.

‘Aint easy growing vines up here.  Have been considering an acre-sized greenhouse.

In other news, travelled to wyoming this weeked to visit family and witnessed an amazing and powerful storm cell, the beautiful Bighorn Canyon, and the so-named female? bighorn sheep in full shed.

Yes, well, all in.  Fully-loaded science, on the grapes page.  Check it out- now that I’ve done the structure it’ll be easy to update and watch the yearly progress…

All ’round here nap in the sun today.

I’m finally going through all of the temperature data, and vine health data for the vineyard recorded over the last two years.  Very scientific, I suppose- working out the bud swell dates, last/freeze first/frost dates, degree days [base 50F], and maps showing the status of the vineyard for the last two years.

I will post all of this information very soon on the Grapes page of the site, where the hourly/daily weather data and maps may also be downloaded for public use. (We have a weather station sitting in the vineyard itself).

In short:

1) The vineyard lost about 14% of its life over the first winter- hardening off late injured many of the vines.  Through 2008 to current, the vineyard health jumped 10%.  With the replanting recently, we’re probably within 1/2% of having every vine alive.

2) We have received ~half as much rain this year vs. last by this date (3.65 inches vs. 7.9).

3) Even though both years’ bud swell dates are nearly similar (May 18 vs. May 17 this year), we are at 125 ‘growing degree days’ by today vs. 74 by this date for last year.  This translates to faster bud swelling and accelerated growth over last year; something we need to ensure ripe grapes by autumn.  GREAT news!  [Growing degree days = Avg. Daily Temp - 50F].

4) The vineyard maps use a 0=dead, 1=poor, 2=damaged, 3=moderate/healthy, and 4=exceptional rating scale applied to each vine.  This data gets plotted in a GIS program and contoured to visualize the greater trends, as well as health/vine type etc.  The number of vines in the 4 category are rising!

Check back soon for all of the nerdy science graphs n such!

20 chicks came in the mail today.  They’re free range broilers, which means we can let them wander around and their legs won’t break even though they’re going to get really, really, really fat.  Quickly.  60 vines came in the mail, too, so today’s the day for planting with sunny and 65, a gas-powered auger, and beers all around.

are you looking at ME? Why I oughtta....