Suddenly It’s Spring

The day before Groundhogs Day

Winter was going well. I had plenty of indoor projects. Serveral new ones were in process. The wood supply looked good, The winery was going strong. Snow finally arrived to protect plants from cold temperatures. We had the cars outfitted with snow tires and emergency supplies. Then, suddenly, it all seems to be over. The snow is gone. The grass is greening up. The squirrels are running around. So much for the “long winter’s nap”. As a TV newscaster said last week “April called and wants it’s weather back.”

Now it’s gone – February 8th

So you are wondering “How can he complain about good weather?” For one thing, I don’t trust it. The trees and grapes may start to grow new buds. A hard frost could kill them and set everything back a month. For another, I wanted to get more wine bottled, more writing done, more web pages updated and more interior construction done before all the planting, pruning, spraying and grape plant marketing begins. It’s nice to be outside, smelling new growth, hearing new birds, working with moist earth and all. But if you didn’t get the seeds ordered, the taxes paid and just took the Christmas lights down, then life gets a little crazy.

Our First Off-site Tasting

We did get some wine tastings done, and have more lined up. Tastings are fun, hectic, lucrative and frustrating. Sometimes we end up with a lot of open bottles of wine that we can’t sell and don’t drink very quickly. The best days for sales leave us running out of some varieties of vintage. The wine in carboys seems to be very sensitive to barometric pressure. Today a high pressure system has moved in. I have 4 carboys that appear to have stopped working, which is great since when they are stopped, I can bottle them and have more wine to drink and sell. But this morning 6 were stopped and yesterday every single one was working since it was a rainy, low-pressure day. You just can’t trust this weather. I just wanted to be a farmer/vintner and now I’m a gambler.

I did get

Curlew School Geology Class

a chance to teach a little geology to my daughter April’s science classes on January 21st. The snow at the top of

Boulder Pass Trees

Boulder Pass was spectacular. The whole trip was fun and I got a nice thankyou card. Now the rock show is coming up. I need to print hundreds of posters, make a display box, get books ready to sell and write the next newsletter. All these are legitimate winter activities. In this weather we could be going out on field trips again.

My brothers and sisters know that I spent a lot of time talking to them about our childhood in the past couple of weeks. I’m working on a chapter in our father’s biography about the years when we all lived together. It’s funny how you can all be in the same house at the same time and remember different things about it. Even now, new pictures and connections keep popping up about what was going on back then. Spring is just a new version of last year. It’s fitting that the theme of the movie “Groundhog’s Day” is revisited every year at this time. Some things remain the same, but we have another shot at changing them for the better. Spring brings the gift of second chances.