conclusion

This internship has been really fun. I feel like I have a much better feel for the grape growing agricultural business now. Growing up near a big city, I was never really exposed to this sort of life style, so it has all been a nice big learning experience for me. I now have a much better appreciation for all the work that it takes to make just one bottle of wine. Extremely fun stuff.
Cliff is an incredibly smart person; he knows so much about so much. Knowledge just seems to stream off of him, and I did my best to soak it up (Iron sieve Cliff. Iron sieve). I am very grateful to him for taking me on as his spring intern. When my parents and grandmother come down for graduation, I’m going to have them come visit CZ and taste some of Cliff’s wine. We also have some Cairn o’ Mohr wine that Pete shipped to us from Scotland that’s made out of oak leaves that we’re going to try (bit sceptical, but you never know…). I’m excited for Cliff, and I can’t wait for him to get his license so he can sell his fantastically good wine and I can come back and steal some :) Best of luck CZ!!!!!

VA vineyard meeting

Wednesday, May 2, 2007

Field Trip!!! I went with Cliff to a vineyard near Charlottesville today for one of the VA vineyard meetings (not too sure the official name of the meeting). I got to briefly meet some important people in the VA grape-growing business and a few other grape growers in the area. Tony Wolf (basically the VA guru of grapes) talked a lot about vinifera and chemicals/fertilizers/pesticides and how important they are, which ones to use, how often, how much, and what for. Then we got to walk around the vineyard and check out the frost damage (particularly on the Chardonnay). The managers of the vineyard we were at also discussed how they were going to try and save their third year(/leaf) merlot crop, which had frost damage along the ends. Interesting to see a huge commercial vineyard as compared to Cliff’s more experimental one. They used a lot of technical wording and pesticide acronyms, ect. The grape-growing for wine-making business definitely has its own vocabulary. I’m glad I went after having my internship, since I felt more confident I knew most of what he was talking about J though I did learn that they like to pull leaves and hedge trim the canopy at times to try and increase the amount of sunlight that reaches the fruit to improve crop quality. (Cliff said it increases the amount of sugar in the grapes). I also learned that some vineyards have to put up bird netting to keep out certain migratory birds that have been destroying their crop. These poor grapes seem to have a lot of enemies. Cliff also got to give a mini speech himself (upon request) about what he’s doing with his hybrid crosses. (He explained how he’s trying to breed a Norton-like grape that is disease resistant but tasty). A lot of the people at the meeting grow grapes for their living in a way that doesn’t really allow for the kind of experimentation that Cliff does, so a few seemed a bit sceptical of the practicality (and benefits) of what he’s doing. But I think what he is doing is really important. I mean if you have to graft Chardonnay onto native stalk just in order for it to grow in VA soil, and you have to dump tons of chemicals on it just so you can get a decent crop out of it, there must be a more efficient way of doing things. I agree with the comment that Cliff made in the car about the way vinifera appear to be going. It’s getting trickier and trickier to grow them. I mean, the poor people will screw themselves over one day when they can no longer grow these non-native plants. Power to the hybrid growers and sustainability. It really is too bad that we have all these grape varieties available, but you only ever really see a few of the big name ones at the grocery stores. I’ve definitely resolved to expand my horizons and try some other kinds of varieties myself. We stopped by the Edible Landscaping place on the way back to Sweet Briar, and I met this really funny French dude (that Cliff was going to give some of his seeds to) and a few other very nice people, but we had to run off with brochures over our heads once it started to rain.

Celebration day!

Tuesday, May 1, 2007 (just for fun)

Today was a fun day. It was my last official day for my internship, so I went out to the Ambers farm a bit early to help them set up for the departmental party for tonight. When I got there, Cliff was finishing up mowing the vineyard again. (Grass grows relatively quickly!) Then I watched as he pumped the water out of their stream that piles up behind their mini homemade dam. It fills up with sediment over time, all the way to the top of the board (the dam wall) if they don’t dredge it. So, he had a pump with a mini fire hose attached to it that he used to pump out some of the muddy bottom water. Mucking about near the dam with a rake and hoe, he pushed the mud towards the hose so it could spray out and onto a patch near the vineyard gate. It made the ground really soupy and squishy, but it left behind nice brown silty dirt after the water percolated down or ran off downhill. Kinda neat stuff. It was a really hot day, so the cold water felt really good squishing my toes in. I had just finished my classes too, so I was enjoying running around in the grass in the sun. He almost sucked up a huge bull frog (BIGGEST frog I’ve ever seen), but it was big enough to get stuck in the front of the hose, so he just pulled it out. It seemed fine after blinking its eyes a bit and jumped back into the stream bank. The vines look like they are popping out quite nicely. The Vineyard looks even greener than it did last time.
The department party was fun. We had smoked turkey (yum) and tasty sides with tasty CZ wine. It was my birthday today, and the Ambers’ made me a cake!!!! It was a spicy carrot cake with cream cheese icing (my favourite :) :) :) :) Everyone sang. It was all very embarrassing and wonderful. Cliff even made me the unique trophy I’ve ever seen. Haha. It was great!

Vineyard databasing cont...

Saturday, April 28, 2007

Today I went out to the Ambers’ farm. When I arrived, Cliff broke out with the frozen Mackerel, which he nuked and sliced and placed in a glad tupperware container. I carried around the fish while he took down his home-maid bug traps that he had strung up in branches and placed all around their front yard area and around the vineyard. They consisted of empty vinegar jugs with four plastic bottle tops punched into the sides. The stinky fish was supposed to attract the bugs, and the little bit of vinegar/oil at the bottom is supposed to drown them once they get in, so they can’t get out. (The less bugs now, the less will be there to eat the grapes later in the growing season, hopefully.) A few traps seemed to be working. By the time we got around to them all the fish was thawing beautifully gooey in the sun. After that Cliff showed me what 10-10-10 fertilizer looks like—it looks like tiny bits of grey gravel or multi-sized kitty litter. He spread a handful on his potatoes. He then showed me what he uses to distribute the fertilizer on the vineyard. It’s just a little sac-type thing you sling over your shoulder with a mini handle turner that spins a ribbed disk that shoots the fertilizer out in front. You can actually see the areas of grass in the vineyard that were sprayed with the fertilizer from their darker colour. Amazing stuff for growing crops except for the fact that its production is heavily dependent on fossil fuels…hmm conundrum. We spent most of the day continuing to input into the vineyard database. We walked down rows 3 through most of 9 by the time the pocket computer’s battery died (though I don’t think my eyes could have lasted much longer squinting at the tiny reflective screen anyway). I plugged into the pocket computer the row, vine type, year it was planted, and distance from the first post. This Cliff measured using the cool and surprisingly accurate wheel-measuring device that he rolled along the vine row. While I was inputing data, Cliff nipped off the buds that were on the base of the vine (“suckers”). These buds receive nutrients first, so by taking them off, more nutrients would make it up along the vines on the wires, which is where he wants them to be fruitful. The vineyard’s starting to look green again! The shoots are several inches on the wires!

Sick grub microscopy

Thursday, April 26, 2007

Today I met Cliff at the train station geology lab where we are keeping our Japanese beetle larvae that we had collected in six rubbermaid tubs. We put on our purple rubber gloves and sifted through the soil with trowels to pick out all of our Japanese beetle larvae, which we looked over to try and determine if they had been infected. It was obvious that they were eating the roots of the clover and grasses that we had put in the soil to grow, so we were hoping that they were getting infected with the milky spore powder we had added as well. We found maybe twenty or so that looked pretty milky white all around or dead or decaying (hopefully from the milky spore disease), which we separated from the rest. Initially we were disappointed in finding so few, but after looking at several larvae, we decided that they were all in various stages of getting the disease. Cliff thought that more than likely they were all affected, but some were further along than others (since it takes up to two weeks or so for the disease to become obvious). We eventually decided that the healthier ones were relatively transparent and had a predominant black mark on their abdomen shortly up from the end, which gradually got concealed in by the increasing opaque milky colour of the diseased ones. So there were quite a few that looked like they might be in a middle stage of the disease. The infected ones were more of an obvious bright almost yellowish-white colour. Once we had sifted through all the soil, we replaced the non-diseased ones into the containers. Then Cliff cut open one of the obviously diseased ones to check out under the microscope. Since bacteria are really tiny and hard to see, it was still hard to find them even under 500x, but we think we found some floating in the blood between big round fat cells. They are supposed to look like mini toeless footprints. Cliff found a nematode too, which was really neat. It was this tiny wiggly worm (much bigger than the milky-spore though) that was see-through with a spike-like appendage in its rear-end. He had just ordered $95 worth of nematodes for the vineyard. Then we checked out the infected larvae themselves under a less-powerful microscope and found lots of mites on their abdomens, which Cliff said are probably symbiotic mites commonly found on Japanese beetle larvae. Gross white things though. When the larvae were all in a bowl together, a few of them started biting at one another. Once we checked them out under the microscope, we decided to further fertilize the soil in our containers with the infected ones (each infected larvae houses about 2 billion spores), so we blended up the infected ones with a bit of tap-water and spread them over the soil in the rubber-made tubs along with some added seed. Hopefully when we check the larvae again next week, we will find more that have been infected. Then I helped Cliff stuff envelopes of the final exam and certificates of oenophilia for the wine-tasting class, which we then took to the campus post office. In our remaining few minutes I accompanied Cliff to a farm supply place where he bought two bags of fertilizers for his garden.

Planting governmental cuttings

Thursday, April 19 2007

Today was a planting day. When I got to the farm, Cliff was hosing down the cuttings that he had gotten free from the government over the winter from both of the two main government-run vineyards, one in NY and one in CA, that grow tons of varieties and will give up to 20 cuttings to U.S. vineyards that ask for them. Very cool. Anyways, he had buried them to keep them alive over the winter, which is why they were dirty enough to merit hosing. Cool fact: in the dirt, the vines come in contact with roots from various other plants that are often infected with bacteria/viruses that are symbiotic to the plants, providing nutrients. So if the cuttings contact these, they will do even better underground. Some were even starting to bud. Once they were rinsed, we put the bunches into water buckets and carried the hybrid cuttings out to the vineyard where we “planted” them in the various “holes” in the vineyard. Cliff cut slits in the earth with the shovel and placed the cuttings (right end up) in the slits and packed them in (sooo much easier than trying to plant them roots and all. And they have a good chance of doing quite well too). I made sure they had strings stapled into the ground and attached to the first wire for support. We also made sure that each row of cuttings was labelled on either end with their original governmental labels or with sharpy on hot pink ribbon tape (at least until Cliff gets his fancy official blue ones printed out). It was chilly and overcast today. We were out in our hats and gloves, L but at least temperatures are staying well about freezing. A lot of the vines are starting to bloom now. Cliff was teaching me the difference between the males and female vines. The males tend to put out lots of large flower clusters while the females tend to put out a few smaller ones…or something like that. He nipped the buds off a few of the vines that he said would produce fruit on their second budding so that they would bloom late enough for him to hybridize with others. If next week stays in the 70s, the vineyard with really start to get leafy. We finished up planting quite a few cuttings before I had to go.

Wine up the snoz burns

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Today, I learned the importance of paying close attention to what you are doing when sniffing wine. I was a bit distracted listening to someone talk with my nose in the glass and proceeded to get a nostril-full of Sauvignon Blanc. Not very fun, but highly amusing to my slightly intoxicated wine-tasting buddies.
Tonight was our last wine tasting class :( It was almost sad near the end when I was helping pack up. I’ve really enjoyed the class. We’ve tried 75 different wines in 8 weeks! No power point lecture today. Instead, we started with a 20 question multiple choice final exam. The course isn’t graded, so we didn’t need to stress out too badly about it, but it actually was really hard!!! (For shame Cliff—actually finding out if we retained all your chemistry, math and German ranking sweetness scales—for shame.) It was fun though to realize how much I actually did learn, and I ended up doing ok on the test…naturally :)
Next we did a blind tasting of eight different wines using a Universal California 20-point wine evaluation scorecard. We were supposed to score the wines 0,1 or 2 in terms of colour, body, boquet, acidity, and several other categories. Then we added up the score. A rank of 12 on the scale is determined commercial, and since all of these wines were commercials wines, we should at least have come up with numbers that high, but Cliff said that there’s no real right answer. I’m not sure if I was doing it right, since I came up with anywhere between 7 and 17, but I suppose it was a bit difficult to rank them as “normal” or “off” if we didn’t know exactly what the wine we were tasting was supposed to be. Cliff also provided us with a “wine-bank” list of ten or twelve different wines on the scorecard, and we were supposed to try and see if we could match eight of them up with their bottles. We tasted four whites and four reds. Two paperbag wrapped bottles of each were on eight tables and we rotated around tasting them all. It was actually very cool because we had to keep open minds about the wines we were tasting; we didn’t initially have a clue what to expect, since we couldn’t see the bottle. So I found out without any pre-concieved notions or bias that I am a fan of at least one Shiraz and a Moscato.
I think everyone had an awesome time taking the wine-tasting class, and I have a feeling that it will continue to be very popular in future years. (Many of the faculty/staff expressed interest in returning for more fun next year). Perhaps it will even be offered for credit! Too bad all of us seniors won’t be here, but it did kind of act as a nice class bonding experience for our last semester here. Good end to a good class.

Grafting and rock excursion

Tuesday, April 17

Today I met Cliff at the train station where we checked on the grubs living in the plastic bins and chomping on sprouts. Looks like they’re eating the clover roots quite nicely. Soon we’ll be digging them up to see if they’ve been ingesting the milky spore as well. We then took a trip over to the community garden where Cliff taught me two different ways of grafting. For the first, he used this expensive but neat tool to punch out notches into the vines—one on the vine he was grafting to and one on the vine he was grafting with. The two notches fit together perfectly. Then he wrapped electrical tape around the puzzle-piece notch so that it would stay. We were grafting one of his hybrids onto a male native vine on the side of the old feeding barn. Once he had clipped the ends of the native vine to initiate the grafting, however, the vine started to bleed. Since this is detrimental to the whole grafting process (as the bleeding can prevent the notches from lining up well), he sawed at the base of the vine to cause it to bleed down there, and (due to gravity) the ends stopped bleeding. Now he can graft without worrying about it bleeding through the tape. The trick to grafting is to line up the zylem of each so that the plant the nutrients from the plant can reach the new vine. This can be tricky to do and is why whenever you graft you cross your fingers that it will work. For the second method, which he used mostly when the vine where he was grafting on was a bit thick, he cut a notch manually at the end of the vine using a knife and wedged the ends of his hybrid cutting (“weegie” J) to fit into the notch of the native vine. Since his hybrid vine cuttings were pretty small, he wedged two in side-by-side lining them up with the native vine along their edges. Then he wrapped tape around them and sprayed them with this grafting tar that was supposed to seal it up even more (smelly stuff). We got through two vines (well, he did, I got to hold the tar spray) before we headed back to the train station to meet up with Dr Rebecca Ambers and her Earth Materials class to go out along the James river in Lynchburg and look at rocks! Since Cliff was asked to come as a consultant (he got his Ph.D. in rocks) I got to tail along. We drove around and studied the different rocks found in the piedmont region of the Blue-ridge mountains south of the Shenancoah National Park Area. It was actually kind of cool trying to identify the various rock types and checking out the stratification and metamorphic folds, ect. The Blue-ridge really is an old mountain chain. Neato.

Grub hunting day 2

Thursday, April 12

Today we dug in the dirt. Got nice and really muddy this time. When I arrived at the farm Cliff was just finishing up canning pinto beans that they’d grown in their garden. Can you believe that I knew nothing about the age-old art of canning? It’s so funny the things certain people grow up with while others haven’t a clue. You basically boil them in a glass canning jar sitting in a layer of water, which boils and steams. (Cliff had like 6 jars going in a pressure-cooker-looking big metal pot). This causes it to seal the metal lid ontop, which stays on from the suction (and is why they pop when you open them). But you have to be careful when canning because the acidity has to be less than 4.6 or else the food may develop botulism, which is very deadly and kills if even tiny amounts are ingested. Isn't that interesting?
But onto my grubby adventures. Today we went out into the garden and continued to dig. We used a pick and a grape hoe to turn up the soil and dig out the grubs. We went down rows paralleling the plants starting at opposite sides of the garden and collecting them in our buckets. I got to wear Cliff’s orange chainsaw chaps to protect my knees, but I still got my red boots covered in dirt shuffling along the ground. Cliff did a much better job at finding the buggies then I did, (I think the grape hoe was a better call than the pick axe thing I was using because it went deeper), but we ended up with a good few hundred bugs by the time it was ready for me to leave. We put them in dirt in some plastic bins and wheelbarrowed them out to my car where we dosed them with milky spore. From there, I took them on into the train station lab and laced the surface with clover seeds. Let the infestation begin!