AUGUST HARVEST

I started picking grapes and sorting through them on August 2 and finished on August 3rd. I lost a lot of grapes to the heat when I was gone for almost two weeks, but still there are enough grapes to probably get 5 gallons when I press them off their skins. They were also really dusty, and although I’ve been told by winemakers not to wash them, some just really needed a rinse. The spiders that were inside the bunches did not appreciate this at all.

There were several of these spiders, known as a false widow, Steatoda Nobilis. False or not, I wasn’t crazy to have it crawling on me. A few I helped out of the picking bucket. There was a brilliant orange one that was quite beautiful, and I had a few small ones hanging off my hat. This job is not for those who fear spiders or bugs in general. Many grapes were covered in spider webs which I did rinse off.

It took me 4 1/2 hours to de-stem all the grapes on Tuesday and put them in my stomping buckets.

This year I tried two different grape yeasts to see which one is best. So far both have worked but we shall see what the end results bring. With all the high heat we have had, the grapes fermented to down to 1.01 by this morning, just four days in. Now I am prepping for pressing the grapes off their skins and into the carboys for a second fermentation. This is the fastest they have ever fermented and I started with grapes a 1.08.5 on Tuesday. I am really please with the juice so far. The color is a beautiful ruby already. It is suppose to cool off on Monday and stay in the low 70’s which will be good for the secondary fermentation.

With all this going on, I haven’t had time for too many other adventures. On Tuesday, I also made eight pints of white fig jam with some of the figs that I harvested. There are enough left for another eight pints of jam, but I am thinking I will try drying some in the oven. My food dehydrator just didn’t do a good job of it last year, so I will try low heat in the oven and see how that goes.

My friend who reads my blog supplied me with the name of the butterfly I didn’t know. It is a Great Spangled Fritillary. This butterfly was different than the others I saw last fall and wrote about. They seem to be crossing my path a lot.

After sterilizing all the wine equipment, we started pressing the grapes. My husband gets this job as it is a lot of work. Our basket press is small so it took us about 2 hours to press all the grapes into carboys. I keep thinking about upgrading to stainless tanks, but my wine crop has been small these last 4 years between drought, heat, and fungus issues. In general, we may be looking at winemaking as a late winter through early summer crop now if this heat continues.

I’ve been busy putting up drinking cups for the butterflies and bees. I notice they are empty by morning. I can’t imagine it is been from evaporation, but I haven’t see a bee, butterfly or bird drinking from them yet.

The mornings are getting darker and it is harder to jump out of bed. I miss that part of spring/summer. This week on Wednesday is the eclipse visible from Greenland, Iceland, Spain and some other regions. We were tempted to go to northern Spain, but it is also holiday season for Europeans and quite expensive and crowded. It would be fun to be on a boat offshore in this area. We will miss this eclipse.