Sippin’ Cider After a brief dip down to overnight lows in the teens and twenties, the weather has been mild for a couple of weeks. (Of course, that is changing rapidly as I start to write about it.) The beauty of having high temperatures near 40º is that the whole outdoors is the same temperature… (read more)
Thirty-seven years ago, down here along the river (Lake Roosevelt) we could get a frost in the first or second week of September. An extended warm season reaching into October would have been called “Indian Summer”. As I am writing this near the end of October 2023, we still have not had temperatures below 40º. … (read more)
On September 9th, the Stevens County Conservation District hosted a Soil Field Day at Vetter Demonstration Farm near Clayton. Craig Madsen, Agroecologist Coach, was the presenter for the workshop. Craig’s first question when we were gathered around a test hole in a just-tilled field was “What is the most important element for plants and animals?” … (read more)
Our vineyard went from a backyard hobby to a major enterprise in 2004 when I had some logging done to make a sunnier space for more grape plants. I had some soil testing done soon after that but didn’t worry about fertility. After almost 20 years of dithering about getting some baseline numbers and setting… (read more)
Learning the hard way by making mistakes is a tried and true (though often painful) path to knowledge. Looking back on what I have learned, it seems more like a lifestyle. It starts by taking chances. You seldom do that unless you think there is something to gain. I get a lot of ideas from… (read more)
No Spring We had thunder and lightning here all night. It is back again now. So, I have time to write something and not get soaking wet working in the vineyard. I was ready to write this family blog update almost 3 weeks ago and am just getting to it. That is the kind of… (read more)
I was minding my own business reading email when a document came in from my brother-in-law, Roger, who as I do here, also makes and sells biochar on San Juan Island. It announced that a big company, Myno Carbon, won the 2023 Giuliani Clean Energy Entrepreneur Award and was going to build a carbon removal… (read more)
Ever since the 7.8 magnitude earthquake in Turkey and Syria on February 6th we have seen a lot of pictures of collapsed concrete buildings. You might get the idea that concrete is a heavy and dangerous building material that it would be wise to avoid. That is much more easily said than done. Every year,… (read more)
The new year begins and along with it comes the usual spate of information on how to lose weight, how to do your taxes and how to clean out all the stuff that is in your house. Driving to Spokane I notice a lot more huge apartment buildings and a lot of big houses built… (read more)
Almost everyone likes sweet things, often to our detriment. Nevertheless sugars are an important source of energy for people, animals and microbes. In the wine-making business, the sugar content of grapes is key to whether a wine will be dry or sweet, also to how well it will keep. The brix scale is a standard… (read more)
