What's up in the Vineyard?

200,000 Canes

Rafael. Cutting canes in early spring is only the first part of the pruning process ... and by far the most "enjoyable."

Suspended in Mid-Air. After you cut a cane, it doesn't fall neatly to the ground like leaves from a tree. Thick, strong tendrils hold the cut canes tightly onto support wires and each other. So you have to go through the entire vineyard again and pull the canes free from the tangle. Tough going.

Tendril is My Heart. Old tendrils clinging to support wires in the Satori's first vineyard planted in 2001 along Buena Vista Avenue (merlot, zin, cab and petite sirah).

Fagots. (Check your dictionary, people!) After the pulling, the piling.

Moving the Pile. After piling, pick up the piles, and pile 'em high into truck and trailer.

Let's Do the Math. To put this pruning play into perspective, we have about 9,200 vines in our 15 acres of estate vineyards. About 3,200 have a quadrilateral support system, which means each vine has 4 cordons, about 5 spurs per cordon, and 2 shoots per spur ...  so that generates about 40 canes per plant ... or about 130,000 canes a year. 

Raising Canes.  The oldest vineyard at Satori, planted in 2001 along Buena Vista Avenue, features a bi-lateral support system ...   1,500 vines with 2 cordons each, 6 spurs per cordon, and 2 shoots per spur ... which that generates another 36,000 canes.

To the Bonfire. Finally, the newest, "head-pruned" (no support wires, no cordons -- more about this in a later post) vineyard, along New Avenue, features 4,276 Zinfandel vines, planted in 2007. Each of these has, say, 7 spurs each along a vertical trunk (they are still being trained so there is not yet a fixed number of spurs per trunk), with 2 shoots per spur, so that adds roughly 60,000 more canes. Add it all up and we have, on the low side, about 200,000 canes that must be pruned, pulled, piled, packed and ... burned each spring.

Burn Day? You can start ag fires like this one only on "Burn Days." Santa Clara County officials measure moisture, wind, weather and air quality every day and then make the Burn, No Burn decision. No smoke after Sunset. 

Slow Starter. Because canes are mostly hollow (enabling water to wick up from the roots through the vines to the leaves and grapes), there is very little actual wood to burn. The fire is hard to start and it will die out fast if T. doesn't hop on the tractor and keep piling more canes onto the flames.

California Gothic. Cane fires put up lots of smoke ... a lot of it a drab olive green ... which T. opines might be chlorophyll.

Not Much to Show For It. How can 200,000+ vines burn down into a couple of 5-gallon buckets of ash. Hardly seems possible. (Note the "Orbs" flitting around the super-hot fire at Sunset -- "Orb backscatter has been broadly interpreted as a highly variable range of paranormal phenomenon without verifiable causation — including invisible spirits, auras, angels, ghosts, energy fields, psycho-energetic artifacts, energy balls, etc." -- Wikipedia)

Bucket of Canes. Of course, grape canes can become beautiful and useful in the right hands in the form of wreathes and sculpture and BBQ fodder.

Grape Balls.  Our friend, Patrick, pioneered these sticky, hanging Orbs. He soaks the stiff canes in water for a day or two, then wrestles them into a sphere, and ties them in place with fishing line. Our friend, AhNanDa, inserts a short line of battery-powered LED lights into her Balls and hangs them from her porch ceiling. Grape Balls of Fire.

That's All Folks.  The canes are all gone for This Year. Except for the ones T. put into a bucket of water in the greenhouse to sprout (more on that magic later).

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What's Up in the Neighborhood?

Acacia Trees?

Whose Idea Was This? Going west on Buena Vista Avenue from Satori, just after you cross the Highway 101 overpass, you come upon this Lone Acacia. Most of the time it's easy to not notice her at all. But for a few weeks in Spring (which is happening here now ... a bit ahead of schedule), she erupts in such a colorful display that you just have to stop and take notice ... maybe wonder what her story is ... how she got here ... if she notices

Colonel Mustard in the Acacia Tree. Yellow seems to be the color of first choice in Spring ... daffodils ... mustard ... Acacia. What the heck is an Acacia tree anyway? Wikipedia says: "Pod-bearing trees, with sap and leaves typically bearing large amounts of tannins and condensed tannins that historically in many species found use as pharmaceuticals and preservatives."  Who knew? But wait ... there's more.

Little Yellow Cotton Balls. They feel soft and feathery and look great with the fern-like leaves. And they smell like mustard ... strong and mellow at the same time. And lo and behold, somebody else noticed the smell too. Wikipedia says that "Acacia farnesiana (which this is) is used in the perfume industry due to its strong fragrance. The use of Acacia as a fragrance dates back centuries." Who knew we had a perfume factory in the hood? But wait, there's more.

Tree of Many Secrets. Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acacia goes on and on:  Acacia shoots used in soups, curries, omelettes and stir-fires in Burma, Laos and Thailand ... Acacia used as a symbol in Freemasonry, to represent purity and endurance of the soul, and as funerary symbolism signifying resurrection and immortality ...  Acacia (mainly bark, root and resin) are used to make incense for rituals, mainly in India, Nepal, and China including in its Tibet region. It's smoke is thought to keep demons and ghosts away and to put the gods in a good mood (always a good thing) ... And both people and elephants like an alcoholic beverage made from Acacia fruit. OK, so now we're getting somewhere.

Who Knew? So what have we learned here? First, it's not a bad idea to pay attention to all the characters in your neighborhood. Two, there's always more going on than what meets the eye. And, three, how amazing is Nature and all the places where we intersect with Nature?

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What's Up in Satori(ah)?

Everything is not grapes and wine at the southwest corner of New Avenue and Buena Vista Avenue (although they naturally tend to dominate the experience and conversation around here). For non-commercial places and experiences, we have another name: Satoriah.

For Example. This is a place where old GMC Vans are put out to pasture. It's a 1988 vintage that T. bought used in 1991 with 40,000 miles on it. Over the next 15 years or so, he put another 100,000 on it, most of them journeying to Grateful Dead concerts with Adorah (when she was still 100% Sandy). It sports its original faded blue paint job on the hood, along with the flowers Sandy painted around '98. In 2003, according to Adorah, in the back of the van (T. had decked it out like the teak sleeping cabin of a sailboat back in '91), their son, Riley, became more than a twinkle in their eyes. In 2007, with winery space at a premium, T. pumped up the tires, fired her up, and somehow backed her through a couple of gnarly sucker plum trees and against this fence to her Final Parking Spot. But cherished Dead Vans don't die; they morph.

The Latest in RVs. Last year, T. and Riley, built a "tree house" atop The Dead Van (some call it "The V Van" -- you'll have to ask AuRoRa or Adorah for details), complete with ladder, front porch, great room with carpet and picture window. This week, Riley settled on Camelot as the name for his Castle, and went down to the paint store with Dad, selecting a gallon of "Medieval Gold." Of course, Mom usually ends up doing most of the actual painting.

Golden Boot Award. Riley focused on the ladder and front porch ... and his shoes. 

It Takes a Village. Riley's friend, Kelly, helped, while the dogs held down the mustard, and Kelly's mom, Sophia, relaxed after a day of pulling canes. 

Camouflage. In another month or so, you won't be able to see Camelot 

or The Dead Van for all of the leaves on the sucker plum trees.

Riley and Kelly. Racing toward Camelot. 

Room with a View. We said there is a picture window. 

 Up on the Roof. The Front Porch is the best place on campus to watch the Sun set, although it can get a bit crowded. Morphing continues: there are loose plans to paint The Dead Van in the near future (Riley and his Mom are deliberating colors), and T. says a new battery and a new futon would make the sleeping cabin, with working lights and radio, as good as new. Stay tuned for Up-dates.

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What's Up?

Clouds ... taken on last night's vineyard walk.

Start of the Walk

 Older Palms

Newer Palms

Can't plant

 enough Palms

Swimming Pool

Reflection

West Edge

of the Vineyard

West Edge

Old Orchard

Walnut Trees

Now They Know

We're Watching

Woman

Rearing Back

on Horseback

Good Night

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What's Up in DogLandia? 

Dog Tails

Cute and Happy? Sure they're cute and Happy.

Relaxed? And we're Lucky to have such models of Ease and Freedom and Presence.

Here's the Scoop. But there's a steamy underbelly beneath these heartwarming dog tails. With 6-8 free-range dogs (6 permanent residents, 0-2 visiting dognitaries at any one time) roaming the 20-acre Satori campus, Solid Canine Effluvia (SCE) can pile up. 

Heavy Hitter. And some of the dogs -- especially Oldsters like "The Bud Dog" here -- prefer to unwind close to home, on grassy lawn or rocky driveway (instead of, say, strolling out into the 15 acres of rough hewn vineyard where all is soon forgiven and forgotten with nary a sniff).

It's Not All Wine & Roses at Satori. So this sturdy, colorful, 3-foot camping blade is the Tool of Choice (TOC) for the ad hoc Satori SCE Redistribution Team. There are two such weapons on site. One rests here, as if in a sheath, in the sandy beach near the Middle Vineyard ... ready for Dooty.

Bucket Brigade. The other rests here (near an official redistribution container) against the very structure that houses the SCE Manifester Generators. In Winter, when nights can drop below freezing, and SCE coalesces into the consistency of charcoal briquets, with virtually no negative perfume, an early morning romp through crunchy grass with Shovel and Bucket and visible breath can, if you let it, 

feel like a Meditation or a Dance.

These Boots are Made for Scooping. But as Spring temperatures are now approaching the high 70's, such illusions are impossible. Everyone pitches in from time to time (except the perpetrators), but lately Adorah has been the spontaneous leader of Vineyard Redistribution ... often harvesting up to five gallons of SCE in a single sweep. 

It's All Dirt to Me. Fortunately, Nature has devised ingenious ways

to turn lead into gold in very short order.

Parting Shot. And the full cycle of Beauty continues forever ...

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What's Up in the Vineyard?

Pruning 101

It's Pruning Time Again. When you see all that mustard, in February, you know it's pruning time in the Satori vineyards. Pruning is different than training. These vines were "trained" to grow onto a quadrilateral trellis, or support, system. That means that over several growing seasons we trained the trunk of each vine to grow up to the desired height in the middle of the trellis ... then guided four branches -- or cordons -- to grow out of the trunk and onto the lower support wires, two on each side of the row. 

It really is easier than it looks. When you are a rookie like AuRoRa here, pruning is mostly about going slow and steady, and asking questions if something looks odd. T. says it's more art than science, but after your first couple hundred or so vines, it becomes a meditation. Once four horizontal cordons are established along the lower support wires, you allow 5 to 6 "spurs" to develop along each cordon. From these spurs, each spring, you prune out old dead wood (canes), and all but two fresh buds per spur ... which will sprout and eventually become two new vines per spur ... home for this year's crop of tendrils, leaves and grape clusters.

Up Close and Personal. The horizontal wood at the bottom of this photo is a cordon. The vertical growth coming out of it is a spur. The two canes growing out of the spur are from last year's, 2011, vintage.  And, at the junction of each cane and the spur, you usually find a small, light-colored, somewhat-fuzzy protuberance ... that's a bud, which if you let it, will become a shoot, and then a grape vine. 

The First Cut is the Deepest. The goal for each spur is two nice buds ... but no more than two.  Grape vines will push out a ridiculous amount of buds (even on the trunk and cordons) so you have to keep finger-nailing them off until they get the idea that it's only two you want. Here, the first "prune" removed the oldest cane. One more cut to go.

Voila! The second cut removes most of the second cane from last year, but leaves the one tiny bud you can see from this side, and the one you can't see on the other. These will become our two desired shoots, which will become our two desired vines, which will -- by next year this time -- become two dead canes. And the process starts all over again.

All Pruned. You see the trunks, you see the cordons, you see the spurs, you see the fresh cuts on old canes ... and by April you'll see the two new shoots per spur ... and then the fun really begins. Stay tuned. 

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