Tax Time

We woke late this morning to a balmy morning in the mid twenties. The sun was already up and was filtering through clouds to give the effect of a misty romantic January morning above the upper vineyard. I couldn't help to think about when, we would be venturing out with our light jackets and start prunning vines. (How cool is that!) But we still have plenty of time for that. According to a gardening law I heard years ago, trimming can be done in any month with and 'R'. Not really sure who wrote this law, or if its just something I heard an old gardener say! But still, we know that we will start prunning within a couple months or so. More about prunning later. I started our tax returns this week. I was reminded of it while trying to find my keyboard amidst a plethora of sales slips. We were told ,when starting a vineyard, you need to keep all your slips to use as a write-off. But what few bother to tell you is, that you cannot use your expenses until you get an income from you fields. So the slips for the wire, post, plants, and equipment ect., will lay and collect dust for about 5 years. Don't loose them, keep them in order, and remember most of all, remember where you put them! I keep mine in gallon freezer zip lock bags with a double zipper. On the label, I put the year of the expense. A bit of over kill there but, they are safe from what ever the global warming throws at us. While I am doing taxes and updating a blog, Terry is still hard at work in the basement. Last weekend he finished the texturing of the walls in the lab. Now he is working on the floor. It was just a plain cement floor. So he used one of those kits with the paint and the multi colored sprinkes. Also, he is putting a counter top together, and will build a cabinet to go under that. It is all coming along nicely!

WINTER PROJECT

While the two of us sit in our very toasty home, occasionally look out the windows and wonder if our vines are as hardy as we were told. While our outdoors thermometer was reading only a minus 12 degrees, the surrounding communities had a whopping minus 21 degree's. What may be to our advantage is that we on top of a ridge, that some how keeps us a tad warmer. We will see come spring, just how hardy our vines really are. In the mean time, Terry is very busy with his basement project of building a wine cellar and a place to make our own wine. The big plan is to let four or five plants of each variety, produce fruit so he can start experimenting on wine from our grapes. The wine cellar room has turned out very nicely. Now comes the room with a sink and the room to hold the containers for fermentation, store the carboys, and finally the the bottling. Most items for the remodeling are coming from the local hardware store which boast of being the "savings place". Hmm. But anyway, I have the easy part of just keeping up the blog, Terry is doing the actual work in the basement. Nice job Doc, looks nice so far!

Rainbow over the upper field

We seem to spend a lot of time in the vineyard but, that is what the plan was all about. This photo was taken 15 months after it was planted.

What an adventure!

Gavel Ridge Vineyard came to be due to the desire to be active outside, for a small income during retirement, and adventure. We toured our first vineyard that fall of 2006. That was the vineyard owned by Allen and Judy Olson, at Wild Mt Vineyard in Taylor Falls, MN. After that tour and some dreaming and planning we decided to go for it.
We planted the first field in the spring of 2007. With a purchase of approx. 400 sticks or cutting from Frontenac, Frontenac Gris, and LaCresent grape vines from Allen and Judy. This is a very economic way of starting out. Sticks run us around 75 cents a piece. Compared to 5 or 6 dollars for a rooted plant. We were half way through planting the first row and I told Terry that I would not make it, but, I did and we planted all the sticks in one day. We then went out and put in the grow tubes over each stick. A week later our son-in-law Eric and daughter Wendy and their son Blake came out and set in place 107 post for the trellising. I remember it was extremely hot on June 9th and 10th that year when we were installing the wires for the trellising. But we got it done. Now I am starting to wonder if this is this hard, how am I going to do this during retirement! We are surely crazy people. That summer Terry tilled those 9 rows with the aid of a very small tiller from Farm and Fleet. He was is good shape by the end of summer. Now we start hearing very good things about the future of a grape called Marquette. So, here we go again. this time however we order and buy the rooted plants. This we a bigger expense this time. Planting of the 2nd field took much longer. We dug a hole, put in the plant, put on water and finished adding the dirt. This summer we decided to get another hand tiller. Now the 2 of us were tilling. These were very dainty and grew at a much slower rate then the first field.