Juicing

Paul picked 2 colanders of grapes; I juiced half.  Maybe it was the grapes, or maybe the seeds, but this was a fail.  So then I picked some tomatoes.  Juiced them with some zucchini and celery.  Tastes like tomatoes. More practice needed.

More Grape Trellises

I got out the drill and installed eye bolts on the 4 poles I put in for the grape vines last fall.  The eye bolts are for holding the trellis wires in place on the poles, one wire at about 2.5 ft off the ground, the second wire at 5 ft.  The wire is high tensile stuff that I used for the first grape trellis and there was enough left to run all 4 trellis wires, leaving 4 small spools of wire to be used for anchoring the posts—something I will do in the near future.  Some of the grape vines are long enough to reach the first wire, so I wrapped those vines onto the trellis wires.  The grape vines buds are just now showing ready to bloom, and once that happens the vines will start to grow, so it was good timing to get the trellis wires in place now. 

Grape Ardor or is that Arbor?

A couple of weeks ago the Baron planted red, white, and blue eating grapes high along the back hill. Then he dug deep holes and sunk 4x4 posts; last week he dug more holes and sunk the anchors. Today we strung the first wires; one at 3’ and one from the top of the 4x4s to the anchors in a very nice 45°- 45°- 90° triangle. Several hours later, everything is still standing straight. We’ll do the top wire at 6’ later. Then we went off into the forest to cut grape vines that are shading, weighing down and deforming the trees. Some of these vines were 4” diameter. I’ve heard that the difference between a flower and a weed is the side of the fence it’s growing. The ones we cut were on the wrong side of the fence.
I'm also on a rant against invasive and alien species, specifically but not limited to mustard garlic. Last year we were too late in the year to prevent seeding but this year we've collected lots of flowers and burned them. They'll not be seeding my hillside. We had a beautiful bouquet of Dame's Rocket, AKA wild phlox. This one has 4 petals and is invasive, so when I picked the bouquet, I yanked the roots too. We also have a grove of ailanthus with we've marked and will paint with poison later in the summer.
The Big Girls (chickens) are still laying 3-4 eggs daily even in our pre–summer heat. They haven’t molted yet so they pant a lot. We’ve put dishes of water around their favorite spots to help. I’ve finally figured out how to tell these 4 apart: their combs are noticeably different. One has a backward pompadour and one has just a tiny little red thing that suggests a comb. That one seems to be the morning layer. I’m trying to figure out which one lays light colored and eggs so large that they don’t fit easily into the standard egg cartons.
The Little Ones (don’t know how many are girls yet) are in the tractor now. They huddle up at night in a pile of pine shavings but we haven’t been below 50° and they are almost fully feathered. It's fun to watch them practice their dominance strut; They'll breast butt each other, mosh pit style, and try to stand taller and stare down the others. In their nighttime huddle, they all seem to have favorite places. One left out will walk across the backs of the others to get to that preferred spot.

Fruit

From the Baron:

Started the day off by driving to the Grange Fairgrounds and picking up some fruit trees I ordered. Got home and spent the rest of the morning digging holes and planting 3 seedless grape root stock (red, white, and blue grapes). This afternoon Gambol and I planted the 6 fruit trees I picked up this morning. We now have 2 new apple and 4 new cherry trees--2 tart and 2 sweet cherries. I just finished putting some crushed limestone on the new garden area to add calcium to the soil, a mineral our garden tends to be deficient in. I put some dirt and compost down on the future onion planting rows, but just am too tired to put the onion sets down today--maybe tomorrow before the rains come in the afternoon.