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!