What a Lot of Chickens

It's Saturday 29th of November 2008: 7.15am.

We've had a strange old week. The anchors and cordon wires have progressed well and we are happy. The dam water stays determinely in the dam. All attempts to get the pump and the very very expensive filtration system working are unsuccesful. We do have municipal water however but have been plaqued again by a succession of leaks and pipe joint failures. Zakrey, our Rastafarian vineyard manager is becoming something of an expert pipefitter, I am tempted to award him a certificate of competence.

The vines look good though. The growth is phenomenal in just 25 days. All have budded and we already have at least 2800 looking like chickens. The eccentric Jake Easton, from Lismore, is very fond of the vine chicken. I'm not sure if this is the correct technical term but Jake insists and I dont arque. Yeah, I know everybody thinks I'm eccentric BUT Jake beats me in the eccentricity stakes hands down. Anybody who signs his emails 'Winemaker and Poet' .... well???? None of our other friends are eccentric. are they? Nah! ... ummm .... possibly Nigel and Alan D and well all of the Alans, Trevor can be strange..... Collo is fairly normal -apart from that not liking anybody trait and that poetry and painting thing he does....... all our children are normal though ... YEAH that's ok then.

This is what rows of chickens look like. These are a couple of the rows in Block D, the first block to be planted on 3 Nov so techically(?) 26 days old.
They've had 208mm of rain since planting plus 25mm of irrigation water and 85 hours of sun. You can see some of the smaller rocks that we have had to outwit and also the latest excavation required to repair the most recent leak. I will tidy it up soon.

At 6 this morning (hence the grey sky) this is what vine VCR12V1 looked like. I've labelled the snap (for the technically interested person). He/she looks well though. There's a close up below of VCR12V4. taken with flash, to show off the leaf growth to best advantage..... thinks... hope he/she isn't affected by the flash... will that affect our organic status?

The trellis system is stainless steel, supplied by the quite normal (compared to Jake!) Jamii Hamlin of ecostake (I know. Anybody who spells their name with 2 i's can't be normal). Collo spotted the product in a farming magazine on one of his dental appointments back in 2007. Iin Feb this year I met up with Jamii and much to his surprize (I wouldn't let him finish his sales pitch!)

I bought it on the spot and we installed it ourselves - I mean I did a row with Zakrey and he did the rest assisted by whoever we could rely on to turn up. It's a much more humane way of trellising. The anchoring and the fitting of the cordon wire for 3000 metres has only taken a week for 2-3 men. I imagine the 6 strand plastic canopy support system should only take a couple of days. Forget all that banging in of wooden posts and a load of guys with those big pliers and staples.

The vines don't really care one way or the other but I think its better for them.

The only difficult bit is the tying off of the cordon wire BUT Jamii's patented fixing system made it easy for Ralph (Jake's foreman) to show off his knotting.

More knots next week - now back to the plumbing.

First Buds

I'm Block A Row 10 Vine 8.

Planted on 5 Nov 2008- so am now 16 days old.
I'm a Viognier vine - clone VR1A (apparently part of original Viognier brought in to SA) on R110 rootstock. There are only 400 of me in this vineyard.
I've had 205mm of water already and 55 hours of sunshine.
I have quite a few buds but no leaves yet.

I'm Block B Row 4 Vine 4.

Planted on 5 Nov 2008- so am now 16 days old.
I'm a Viognier vine - clone VR642C on R110 rootstock. There are 2600 of me in this vineyard.
I have also had 205mm of water and 55 hours of sunshine.
I have some leaves. The black pipe is my drip feeder

I'm Block C Row 8 Vine 12.

Planted on 4 Nov 2008- so am now 18 days old. I'm a Viognier vine - clone VR642C on R110 rootstock. There are 2600 of me in this vineyard.I have also had 205mm of water and 55 hours of sunshine.I have lots of leaves. The black pipe is also my drip feeder

I'm Block D Row 4 Vine 20.

Planted on 3 Nov 2008- so am now 19 days old. I'm a Viognier vine - clone VR642C on R110 rootstock. There are 2600 of me in this vineyard.I have also had 205mm of water and 55 hours of sunshine.I have lots of leaves and am already very strong as you can see. The black pipe is also my drip feeder. As you can see I have rather rocky mulch (like all of the vines in this yard). They will keep me warm and also keep the weeds at bay.

Vine Watch

The Vineyard is divided into 2 fields each of 1 hectare. Each field holds approx 3000 vines. The field to the right (as you look from the house) is Viognier.(V) and the field to the left will be Temperanilla (T)
The rows of vines are split into 4 blocks each of 750 vines. The blocks are labelled A, B, C, D and the rows 1 to whatever in each block and the vines 1 to whatever in each row.
SO - Field V; Block A; Row 2; Vine 10 equates to the code VAR2V10; i.e. the 10th vine in the 2nd row of block A of the Viognier field.

In this blog there will be pictures and updates on the vine of the month.

We'll publish a map of all the vines and if you have a favourite - such as VAR2V10, please send an email to VAR2V10@thedawes.net and we will oblige with a picture and update on health and progress.

Happy vine watch