We have been lowering wires and flail mowing in the pre pruned cuttings. Getting ready for the next round of storms. Rain 6 of the next 7 days, forecast is for 4 more inches.
After 24 hours of south winds the rain finally started sometime in the middle of the night.
Man oh man, did it rain around 4:00 this morning! Cats and I were awakened and restless from it, but then we settled back in to sleep until 8:30! Now it is just a rainy day. Steady rain, gloomy, but not the windy, pelting rain from the wee hours.
Raining. A lot. More. Again.
We got over 5 inches from the last storm. Hwy 128 is closed again due to flooding. There is a lot of water everywhere. The daffodils are still not out “normal” timing over the last 75 years here is mid February so if they delay another week or so well be harvesting in September again! I schedule my bottling based on when they come up as we can pretty much guess harvest +/- 1 week.
Rain continued thru Friday with another 3" expected.
so.much.water.
Willamette still getting lots of precipitation. Cold enough for some snow in the highest elevations but lots of rain everywhere. The driveway to the winery goes over some lowlands and it flooded us out yesterday and we will probably be kept out till the weekend.
Between the day after Thanksgiving and now, we’ve been closed some 20 days due to a flooded driveway or snow/ice. It might actually be more than 20 days but I’ll guess conservatively.
I took a look at the eastern Pacific weather radar over on intellicast, to see what’s coming your way. You folks might want to go long on ark futures… ![[wow.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/7/7d450e9830889c8943b674446a21b7254cad657e.gif "wow"){kind=small}
Taking advantage of the rain today to visit some customers and taste the wines from our property from 2016. Hopefully all roads are open to get to Geyserville and the town of Sonoma. This is by far the fun part of the job.
Coppola, FEL and MacRostie are all new customers. Looking forward to see how they did with our fruit.
We are over 62in of rain for the season (close to 110% of season average). I suspect we will be north of 68in by the weekend. Unless there is some drastic change in March/April, this the year to dry farm!
Here in the Eastern Part of the Yorkville Highlands AVA, rainfall for this season as of February 8, 2017 is 63.55" Season total at this time in 2015 was 29.96"
Too much of a good thing! Looks like next week will be dry. Need to keep the hammer down on the pruning. Enjoying the customer visits. 2016 seems to be pleasing everyone.
Time to crank it up a bit. Starting Monday my pruning crew will start at 7:00 (instead of 7:30) and will be working 9 hour days. Also on Monday my 5 person ladies crew (all wives of my core guys) will start tying. As we do many acres of cane pruning there are thousands of canes to tie to the wire.
Lynne and I have one more quick road trip to visit my mom in AZ soon. We’re not far away from prep for frost season. The whole season just took a couple of notches up.
A section of Hwy 35 (Skyline) completely washed out down the mountain. That’s the Santa Cruz Mountains ridge top road. This is about halfway between Hwy 9 and Black Rd. Not near as heavily trafficked as north of Hwy 9, but it is between Fogarty’s Gist Vyd. and their estate.
http://kron4.com/2017/02/10/highway-35-in-los-gatos-shut-down-roadway-gone/
There have been a lot of slides this season. As of yesterday, a western section of Hwy 9 was completely blocked and Hwy 17 was partially blocked. Other lesser roads have been partially washed out or blocked.
When I saw where the washout was located, the first thing I thought of was how the Fogarty folks are going to get back and forth between their winery and Gist Ranch Vineyard. Certainly will be inconvenient for them, as well as for a number of other people. From the extent of the washout, that portion of Skyline won’t be re-opened for quite awhile.
I came east for a family memorial service. Snow! Freezing cold! California dreamin’.
Any of you West-Coast folks downstream from Oroville?
Back to sunny Napa Valley where somehow, within a week, spring arrived!. The daffodils are in bloom, the earliest white peach tree is just breaking bud, and the vineyard cover crop is over my knees. I have yet to prune…need to get a schedule for that.
Yesterday afternoon was 65 degrees with no wind. Perfect spring weather.
Not affected here, but Route 37 off the highway to cut over to Vallejo and Napa is still flooded. The work around is to continue on 101 up to Santa Rosa and over the mountains to Calistoga. It works, but I hate that ride.
Daffodils out now. The rest of the vintage being normal were looking at PN harvest to begin the second week of September +/- one week week either way. Im scheduling bottling for late August this year as opposed to early to mid August in the previous few years.
Im happy the next round of storms are colder (better snow in Tahoe) and they will carry less moisture so as to hopefully not have the issues with flooding and mudslides that have come with the last few Pineapple Express events.