Grape Pruning Time

February is grape vine pruning time, or so I've heard. I don't think the grapes on our trellis have ever been pruned and the trellis is a little worse for wear as the posts rot from the top down and the cross beams are dry rotting as well.

Back in early January, I got motivated to cut out all the wisteria vines that had wrapped themselves around the trellis and interwoven themselves among the grape vines. That was quite a chore. Once I chopped out all the vine pieces, I shredded them in the chipper and mixed them with a pile of horse manure to do a little bit of composting. Later in the spring, I will spread the piles out on the pasture.

This week, I pruned back the grape vines in accordance with the guidance I found in the Ison's Nursery and Vineyard website here. They provide a variety of guidance on how to care for grape vines, fruit tress and more. I also ordered my strawberry plugs from them and was very pleased with the plants I got.

Anyway, here are the before and after shots. Hopefully I didn't cut they back too much. I am looking forward to a good grape harvest this year!

Here's what the trellis and vines looked like before I pruned them. This fall, there was more wisteria than grape vine.

Here's how it looks now. I replaced a few cross boards and straightened the trellis. That big pile in the middle is grape vine trimmings.

Sustainable Williamson Project

I wanted to take a moment to share a project from a fellow Appalachian State University alum who is making a difference in the World!

From his most recent email release:

Dear Friends,

On March 1st, 2013, we are launching our campaign in an effort to raise support for making the coalfields of central Appalachia sustainable and economically diverse! 

Our hope is to start a movement to make Williamson an example to other communities in central Appalachia and across the nation, changing how we approach economic diversification and sustainable development.

We aim to create a replicable model from our existing projects that positions Williamson as a hub for sustainability throughout the central Appalachian region.

We invite you to join us, taking action in sharing this campaign with your friends, family, communities, and networks. And as we begin our Campaign Tour across the east coast, stay tuned to our upcoming event to join us the national celebration for sustainability. 

We sincerely appreciate your support, and look forward to working with all of you over the next two months and beyond! Get excited with us! 

The Sustainable Williamson website goes live on 2 March. Check it out if you have a chance.

The New Garden Update

The garden is slowly taking shape!

I added four cubic yards of mushroom compost from Allen's Market this week and mixed it in with the tiller. Then, planted two rows of potatoes (both white and red), a row and half of onions (white, yellow and red) and seven cabbage plants. We're not too fond of cabbage in our family, but we are going to try it again. Maybe it tastes better when you've grown it yourself. I sure can't wait for things to start growing!

The folks at Allen's were very helpful when it came to offering advice on planting the potato and onion sets I bought from them. As I've said before, I'm pretty inexperienced in this gardening stuff. They also have some very reasonable prices on started plants. You get a three pack of plants for $1.00 - not too bad.

As for our sustainability score, I think we get an A+ for expanding out garden area. This new garden will really expand our ability to grow our own food. We probably get a D for the addition of the mushroom compost, though. While the compost will definitely improve our growing capacity, I later learned that it was shipped from mushroom farms all the way up in Pennsylvania. That's a long way to transport compost and I'm sure required a fairly significant quantity of fuel to get it here (and all the other places it was shipped). In the future, I will have to find a more local source of compost.

Prepping a New Garden

We broke ground on a new garden this week. After all, it is the season to start planing! This brings us to two garden plots now. We started one beside the house the first summer we were here.

This particular garden is going to be a challenge. It's a 35' x 30' plot on a little bit of a slope. The area where we placed it used to be grass (kind of), and I've spent hours trying to rake out all the grass roots but they seem to keep popping up. I know I will be pulling grass out of the garden all summer long! Being on a hill, I sure hope the dirt doesn't all run out of the bottom side in a big rain storm.

I will be adding some mushroom compost to it soon because it is nothing but hard, red clay with a few rocks here and there. It definitely needs some organic material in it. It probably also needs a little lime added. We have some pretty acidic soil here.

We are going to plant some potatoes and onions in the near future. I think that's all we can plant at this time. It's not quite warm enough for anything else.

More to follow...

New Windows

There are hundreds of ways that houses waste energy. In the case of our house, I think we have thousands. Today we are taking care of one of those issues.

We are replacing the windows upstairs with new double pane, low-e energy star rated windows. The old windows original to the house were single pane wood frame windows. They had cracks, holes and the glazing was dry and cracked. It was time for them to go.

The new windows are Simonton brand windows. They're not the absolute best in the world, but they are pretty good, especially for the money we're spending. These particular windows are Energy Star rated in the south east (and other areas).

It's going to be interesting to see if these new windows make a difference in the comfort of the rooms and efficiency of the heating system. I can tell you that they look a heck of a lot better than the old windows did! 

My Hairy Ass

The Jennet hanging out with her new friends, Moe and Curly.

Yesterday we drove up to the Raeford, NC area to pick up a donkey. It is a rescue donkey that had been mistreated and abused at its former location some friends of ours had acquired and tried to keep it at their place. Unfortunately, their neighbors didn't appreciate the braying of the donkey and our friends asked us to pick her up as soon as possible.

So, how do you load a stubborn, scared donkey into a three horse, slant load, stock trailer? Very carefully! After 1.5-2 hours of coaxing, bribing with food, brute force pulling/pushing, we finally got the jennet  loaded on the trailer. Then it had to be properly restrained, which was a whole other challenge. The problem was she was just short enough that she could get herself under the dividers if she worked at it. We tried a number of different tying configurations before we found a way to restrain her that we felt comfortable with.  

The ride home was uneventful and she rode well. By the time we got home, it was dark. We considered the idea of giving her food and water and leaving her in the trailer over night, but she was eager to get out of the trailer. Rather than traumatize her further, we lead her into the pasture and put her into a paddock separate from the horses. The horses were very excited to see a new pasture-mate! I hope they get along.

So, the jennet has some issues... Her feet are overgrown and need trimming bad. I think she has thrush based on the smell I smelled as I struggled to load her. She also has a very hard fat deposit along the crest of her neck which indicates some metabolic and nutrition issues. If I can catch her this morning, I will clean and treat her hooves for thrush and we have the farrier is coming out on Thursday to fix up her feet. In the meantime, I think we're going to have to put her on a special diet to lose that fat on her neck. 

More to follow... Let the hairy ass jokes begin!