For a quick view of what is involved with mechanical pruning, check out this video taken in one of our vineyards.
Read more →They say that “necessity is the mother of invention!” We need to replace 200–300 Steuben vines that have died. This variety is pretty tender for Iowa’s winter climate anyway but we have some of our Steuben planted in a very wet area that we are having a
Read more →Weather permitting, we are installing pencil rods (steel rods about ¼ inch in diameter) in several rows of Marquette that we’ve cut off at the ground. We will train the suckers that come up when the ground warms up in the spring up along the pencil rods
Read more →Several batches of the very popular Red, White, & Blue have finished fermenting. We will rack the wine off yeast lees. This means that the wine will be pumped from one tank to another while leaving behind the sludge (dead yeast cells). We’ll then clean out the
Read more →Our vines are all dormant and are asleep for the winter. Some of our vineyard staff will take some time off and others will move indoors for the next two months. We are looking for a new source for rooted Steuben cuttings. Our former supplier lost their
Read more →We can’t predict the weather with certainty and we sure didn’t predict that it would stay so mild so late this year. This week will get cold but that means that the vineyard floor will be frozen hard enough that we can get equipment out in the
Read more →Although it is hard to imagine, the weather so far has stayed relatively warm, making it possible to continue working in our vineyards. We are just about done removing Mulberry trees at Tassel Ridge Vineyard so we are shifting to other trellis maintenance tasks at Tassel Ridge.
Read more →We will blow out our irrigation system on Thursday. We need to remove water from the underground tubes so freezing conditions don’t cause that water to freeze and burst the tubes. Although the air temperature will be quite low late this week, the ground temperatures are still
Read more →The vineyard team will finish up removing Mulberry trees at Newport Lane Vineyard and then start over with tree removal and post replacement at Meadowcreek Vineyard. We will be spraying herbicide if we get a break in the weather. And, we are putting our waste water treatment
Read more →We are working to remove Mulberry Trees at Maple Woods Vineyards and then at Newport Lane Vineyard. The Mulberry Trees seem to be everywhere but they aren’t as big a problem in the vineyards around Oskaloosa. We will be spraying pre-emergent under the vines. This is a
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