Wine Making

Our first vintage; a sweet white muscadine wine

In 2012 we had a GREAT crop of muscadine grapes so I tried my hand at wine making. The result was a pretty good (if I must say so, myself) muscadine sweet white wine. After 9 months of fermenting and racking, we put up 16 bottles of wine, one of which I am sipping on this evening.

We were not so lucky in 2013. Once again, we had a great crop of muscadines. Unfortunately this time, some critter ate them all before we could pick them. There were muscadine hulls under the grape vines, the pear trees and the apple trees. It was very frustrating and happened so quickly! I managed to harvest about 10 grapes last year - not quite enough to make a batch of wine.

In fact, 2013 was not a good year for any home-grown fruit. Our peach tree died, the pear trees didn't produce any pears. The apples were pathetic, the plums were sparse and you know the story of the grapes.

A small sampling of our 2012 grapes.

Since we didn't have any good fruit this year, I wanted to try my hand at making mead. Mead is a wine made from honey. After a little research, I decided I wanted to make a melomel. Melomel is a mead with fruit added to the mix.

I had a little free time this evening, so I decided to start a batch of melomel. It sounded much more tasty than just plain old honey wine. I could not find one recipe I liked so I decided to take the best of the ones I saw. I decided on a raspberry and honey combo. It sounded good.

So, after an evening of cleaning, boiling, and mixing, we have a bucket of raspberry melomel must sitting under the kitchen table fermenting for the next few weeks. In 3-5 weeks the primary fermentation will be complete and I will transfer it from the current bucket into a 3 gal carboy to sit for another 5 months or so.

More to follow as we progress in the process....

Here is the recipe I used to make the brew. It's pretty basic:

140 oz Honey - about 9 pounds - (note: All the recipes I saw said to use the best honey available - preferably orange blossom honey. This being an experimental batch, and fresh honey being quite pricey, I decided to go budget with Food Lion brand honey. I don't even know if I like mead, but it sounded interesting.
2 Bags of Frozen raspberries
1 pkg Red Star Montrachet Yeast
3t yeast nutrient

Some recipes call for the addition of orange and/or lemon juice, which sounded good, but I didn't have any on hand.

Donkey Wrastlin' and Plantin'

Saturday was a great day, weather-wise. The sun was shining and it was warm. If I were to have one complaint, it was the wind, which was rather strong. It blew bird houses of their stands, the trash cans went for a tour of the back yard and the buckets I had sitting in the driveway wouldn't stay.

About a week ago, I ordered some plants from Ison's Nursery. They arrived Friday evening, delivered by FEDEX and wrapped in a plastic sheeting and a thick, brown paper bag. I got two more muscadine vines for the grape trellis, four raspberry plants, another pear tree, a peach tree to replace the one the goats killed last year and I couldn't resist trying out a pomegranate tree. So, with buckets, plants and shovel in hand, I headed into the orchard to plant me some trees.

This is the first time I've ever dealt with bare root plants and I sure hope I did things right. For each plant, I dug the hole about twice as large as the roots (except for the pear tree which had really long roots - I would have had to dig to China). Then I took the dirt and mixed it with some home made worm castings in about a 2:1 ratios (dirt to castings). As I filled the dirt back in around the roots, I would add a little water in the hole to help settle it down around the roots.

It took much longer to plant nine plants than I thought it would. It was mid-afternoon by the time I was done. After all that effort, I sure hope they live!

By the time I was done planting, it was time to feed the menagerie. I walked down to the feeding area to get the feed bowls set up and was greeted by 15 hungry animals. (I guess I should explain here that Rosalita, the donkey we acquired in Jan, has proven to be uncatchable ever since the farrier trimmed her hooves two months ago. This is unfortunate, because she has a bad case of thrush and her hooves are over grown and need lots of attention) Rosalita got just a little too close to me and a quickly grabbed her halter. When a 350# donkey doesn't want to be caught, it can put up quite a fight, but I managed to hang on and drag her out of the pasture.

I tied her up to the horse trailer and fed her separately, trying to make this as pleasant an experience a possible. I brushed her, gave her a carrot and then started working on her feet. That's when the real fun began. It was a tussle, but I managed to clean, treat, and file her hooves as best I could. Buddy the farm dog was a casualty, though. He got a little too close to the action and took a hoof to the right shoulder. No permanent damage, but I think he developed a very health respect of the donkey at that moment.

Anyway... That was my Saturday at the Red Clay Farm. At the end of the day, I was dead tired, but it was a good tired! Lots of fresh air and sunshine. Spring is in the air here in SC!

(Editor's Note: I will add pictures later. One of the things I've got to do better is take more pictures. Nothing is more boring than a blog without pictures! Who wants to read all the time?)

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.