The pruning continues

Alex has done a fine job on the first 10 vines that are now 6 years old. They really grew a lot last year. You can see from the piles of cuttings how much had to be removed from the lot. 

I went out to continue pruning the Solaris vines that are now 4 years old. They grew quite a lot, too, this year. Most have reached the top of the support posts.  It's quite satisfying to cut them back. But every time I go out, it soon starts to rain and I stop, especially since Ghost complains. 

The last sunrise of 2021. Don't look back. 

 

Getting creative when labour is in short supply

When our vineyard is in full production, we will no longer be able to harvest or prune everything ourselves. We will need help. I found this article about Britain's labour shortages post-Brexit quite interesting. Particularly the bit about people getting creative about what constitutes labour. At first, they were panicking about not being able to pick the crops in time. Then they started to think outside the norms. 

I especially found the idea of inviting neighbours and friends to help in exchange for a bottle of wine here and there quite lovely. You work the fields with your pals, you teach kids about growing things and harvesting, and you give them what they want - not money but the product. I love this idea. It could be the beginning of the cooperative winery concept. 

Our neighbours are all quite keen to learn something new and experience it first hand. We'll have to give it some thought. 

The pruning of the vines has begun

 

The weather has become stable and we had a cold snap, so it was time to start pruning. We need to finish by mid-January. I started with the easy vines - the 2 yo Pinot Noir and the 3 yo Chardonnay. I finished those two before it started to rain again. 

Alex tackled the 6 yo Rondo and Solaris vines, which required much more severe pruning. He's doing a nice job, cutting back to a point that will become more productive for us next year. 

Ghost naturally had to help and Mini supervised from a distance. 

It will take a few days to finish the task, but I am not concerned about getting it done before January 22. 

One of my Christmas presents from Alex was a tool for tying up vines. It took a bit of practice to get it to work. Another present was a wildlife camera which I have wanted for some time. On this first night of using it, I managed to snag great photos of a fox. Foxy has been spotted in day time before. Tonight, I'm hoping to catch sight of a pine marten. Then I will move the camera to the vineyard to see if we can spot the badger and see what else lurks in the darkness. 

I gave Alex a gift of red Viking Irish wine made by David Dennison in Waterford. His first vintage is a blend of Rondo, Regent and Pinot Noir. Very encouraging. 

It was a somewhat festive Christmas despite the rampant spread of the Omicron variant of Covid. Everyone we know was either sick or a close contact of a confirmed case. Knock on wood, we've managed to escape so far. With our booster shot delivered two weeks ago, we should be okay through New Year's Day at least. 

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Winter Solstice

Polytunnel Christmas Tree

I am so excited. Tomorrow marks the day when days start getting longer again. The Winter Solstice on the 21st of December is always the great turning point for me. It's the shortest day of the year delivering only 7:23:41 of daylight. I go from wondering if I'll be able to make it through the winter to looking forward to the grand stretch in the day. 

This year, once again, with the Omicron variant of the coronavirus spreading around the world like wildfire, they are live streaming sunrise from Newgrange today, tomorrow and the day after but not allowing any visitors in. Today, the forecast is for dense fog on the east coast. No luck with the light. 

We've had grey greyness for days now and will have it tomorrow, too. Wednesday and Thursday we are to have heavy rain. Then nice on Christmas Eve and a gale on Christmas day. Alex and I are on duty Christmas Day at Ross House so we'd be inside all day anyway.

I will start pruning in the new year. I've been reading up on new thinking about pruning. It seems some say to do a partial pruning as normal but to leave more vine until March or after bud break to prune as that will delay bud break and avoid frost damage. It's a method that may mitigate the effects of climate change. I don't think we can afford that given our short season, especially given that the result was lower sugar content. 

For now, it's just confusion about everything in life. At least we got our tree up. And the one at Ross and the one on the raft in the inlet. Three trees in two days -- a record of sorts. Oh, and a little artificial one in the polytunnel because we happen to have three of them. 

So, Happy Christmas everyone! We'll see you again after. 

Rosnakilly Raft Tree

Our tree

Ross House Tree

EU Changes Rules for Wines

Well, well. The EU has finally relented and is allowing the introduction of resistant grapevine varieties in designated appellation regions. They realised that climate change and the use of pesticides and other toxins are colliding to cause devastation to the environment. To hell with the appellation. They are finally going to save the earth. But they don't seem to have left many native vines behind. At least I keep searching for them in ancient monastic sites and haven't found any. 

A number of hybrid varieties benefit from a higher resistance to common diseases such as downy and powdery mildew, meaning that the vineyards require little to no treatments such as chemical pesticides or organic-approved copper. That will enable the industry to become sustainable. It will also stop tractors from compacting the soil as they apply chemicals that poison the land and pollinators. 

Meanwhile, at the International Wineries Climate Action conference,  Miguel Torres of Familia Torres warned that ‘Climate change for viticulture is worse than phylloxera’. IWCA warns of a 'climate emergency' as it continues working towards its members being carbon neutral by 2050.

I haven't been able to find the EU announcement about the changes yet. Here is a scholarly article analysing the considerations: EU wine policy in the framework of the CAP: post-2020 challenges

Here is an article about hybrids.

And now, a challenge to the classification systems. 

Storm Warning

The eyewall of Storm Barra

Yesterday, we experienced a weather bomb. A fast developing system that hit hard and stayed around for a while. Our sailing club recorded wind gusts of more than 77 knots (143 kph or 89 mph) which is hurricane force. Lucky for us, the storm veered a bit more south than forecast, so we had a light easterly quadrant in the morning and northwesterly in the afternoon and overnight. Once again as with Lorenzo, the eye passed directly over us in Clew Bay. 

The white dot in the middle is over Clew Bay

We went to Westport in the morning and got our booster vaccinations then did our food shopping all in light E wind and showers. Then we braced for the worst as they had us in the Red Storm Warning zone for the evening. We are protected from the NW by the hill behind our house and it appears there was no damage.

By mid-afternoon, we had lashing rain and intense winds out of the NW, Our barometer bottomed out at 956 hPa. A 'weather bomb' is an unofficial term for a low-pressure system whose central pressure falls 24 millibars in 24 hours in a process known as explosive cyclogenesis. In the case of Storm Barra, the pressure dropped from around 1,006 millibars on Monday morning to 956 millibars 24 hours later, according to surface weather analysis by the NOAA's Ocean Prediction Center. So I looked at our barometer precisely at the centre of the storm. 

More than 24 hours later the wind is still blowing pretty hard at around 30 knots but gusting only into the 40s. It is bitterly cold even though it's 7.5 C but the wind chill really bites. Thankfully it's dry. We took a walk around the property to survey and saw no damage on the south-facing land. The polytunnel is fine as is the vineyard. No trees down but lots of kindling. Most of the leaves have been stripped from the vines but the vines did well after being tied up last month thank goodness. I still have lots of work to do up there. 

Met Eireann reported that Newport had 31 mm of rain yesterday but the land is not sopping wet as it was last week. The wind must have blown a lot of moisture away. They recorded gusts of 120 kph but they are further inland. Overall it was an interesting day. It started with a blanket of snow but I missed that. By the time I got up, it was melted as the temperature rapidly increased. By the end of the day, some 60,000 homes were without power. A violent gust of 156km/h was recorded off the coast of West Cork where scores of fishing vessels were anchored riding it out in Bantry Bay. 

Here are a few pictures from RTE. Here's a video from the lighthouse maintenance workers who got stuck out at Fastnet when the chopper couldn't pick them up. 

Apparently, Bantry was the worst hit with flooding. The promenade in Galway at Salthill was flooded at high tide - a high spring in tandem with the storm.  It was a pretty wild day. 

                    Met Eireann WEATHER DATA FOR 07-DEC-2021

Station                 Rain Max Min Sun     Wind         Gust Soil     Global Gmin

                        mm         oC oC hr Kts (Km/h)    Kts (Km/h)    oC J/cm^2 oC

Belmullet         16.8         7.0 1.5 0.0 20.3 (38)         55 (102)     5.9     88 0.6

Knock Airport         22.8         5.5 0.0 18.4 (34)         57 (106)     4.2         -0.1

Newport Furnace 31.0         6.9 0.8 22.5 (42)         65 (120)     4.4     81 0.0

Beautiful morning 8-12-21

Vineyard in good shape

Very few leaves remaining

Most leaves stripped by wind

Orchard is a fun playground

My assistant, Ghostie, likes to climb high

French and Spanish trawlers seeking shelter in Bantry Bay

Proverbs

 “Listen to the wind, it talks. Listen to the silence, it speaks. Listen to your heart, it knows.”

Native American Proverb 

Our weather for Tuesday

I actually prefer:

Listen to the wind, it sings. 

Listen to the silence, it speaks.

Listen to your heart, it knows. 

Listen to the earth, she groans.

                                DOB Dec 2021

"Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect."

- Chief Seattle, 1854

Weird weather

Solaris vines have mostly dropped their leaves now. 

Ghost didn't come home yesterday, so this morning I walked down to Stud Cottage and called her name all the way there and back. When I returned home, she was waiting. She doesn't use the road - she has her own route cross country. She is my constant companion. Like a puppy, she follows me everywhere. She especially likes the vineyard. Lots of good wildlife smells there. 

I am now also feeding Ginger cat daily. She was starving. I cannot let an animal starve. 

Ghost and I walked the land and checked the vineyard. Most of the Solaris leaves are down. But the Pinot Noir and Albarino are still holding on. The trees in the orchard have now dropped their leaves. But the weather has been so strange -- a few cold days then back to warm -- that lots of stuff is still blooming including the roses. The butterfly bushes are growing, the magnolia is budding, the grass needs cutting, and bulbs are already coming up. 

I was outside all morning today, cleaning up in patches of garden. I can't start pruning yet as I am afraid the sap is still flowing. Yet, the light is like twilight all day until the sun sets at 4:20. We only get 7h 46m of light today. Feel like hibernating. Even the polytunnel feels gloomy. And we have a new moon tomorrow so nights are dark, too, and tides are high. Heavy rain is due tonight and tomorrow. Sunday is supposed to be clear. The weekend forecast is for gardening with a 99% chance of wine. ;-)

If I can make it to the 21st, we will have turned the corner on the darkness and will start working our way back into the light. 

Pinot Noir and Albarino holding on

Rose blooming

Hungry blue tits

Weekend forecast

Weekend forecast: 

Gardening with a 99% chance of wine

November Wx stats

The numbers are in for November and, despite the cold snap at the end of the month, the mean temperature for November was still the warmest of the past four years and a full degree above the long-term average (LTA) for the reference period 1981-2010. Rainfall turned out to be slightly higher than the LTA and soil temps quite a bit higher than prior years. 

Basically, it's all a bit unpredictable. No tropical cyclones formed in the Atlantic basin during November. However, Tropical Storm Wanda continued from the end of October through the first seven days of November.  Based on a 30-year climatology (1991-2020), a tropical storm forms in November every one to two years.

Overall, NOAA reports that the 2021 Atlantic hurricane season featured above-normal activity. Twenty-one named storms formed, of which seven became hurricanes and four became major hurricanes - category 3 or higher. Even though it seemed quiet in the Atlantic this year, it really wasn't - but it was definitely not as wild as last year. 

MONTHLY VALUES FOR NEWPORT UP TO 01-DEC-2021

Total rainfall in millimetres for NEWPORT

Year	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec	Annual
2021	225.6	147.6	141.1	45.6	113.5	64.1	59.7	155.6	137.0	265.7	183.3	6.6	1545.4
2020	139.5	342.8	178.2	25.5	54.7	164.5	187.9	137.9	153.4	228.0	206.6	232.7	2051.7
2019	146.8	115.0	228.5	100.7	112.5	76.6	82.7	228.9	175.5	160.7	148.1	220.6	1796.6
2018	274.6	155.6	86.2	94.3	70.4	65.9	58.6	179.1	148.3	140.9	172.6	201.0	1647.5
LTA	166.7	126.5	141.2	96.8	94.7	89.7	100.9	132.5	131.5	176.0	170.4	180.2	1607.1

Mean temperature in degrees Celsius for NEWPORT

Year	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec	Annual
2021	5.0	6.7	7.9	9.0	10.4	13.3	17.5	16.4	15.2	11.9	9.3	7.0	11.2
2020	7.2	6.0	6.6	11.0	12.8	13.8	14.4	16.0	13.8	10.5	9.1	6.1	10.6
2019	6.9	8.4	7.9	10.2	11.7	13.1	16.3	15.5	13.7	10.3	7.1	7.1	10.7
2018	5.9	4.6	5.5	9.1	13.1	16.1	16.1	15.0	12.4	10.9	8.3	8.1	10.5
LTA	6.1	6.1	7.3	9.0	11.5	13.8	15.4	15.4	13.5	10.8	8.3	6.5	10.3

Mean 10cm soil temperature for NEWPORT at 0900 UTC

Year	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec	Annual
2021	3.6	5.0	6.8	8.2	10.9	14.3	17.9	16.3	15.2	11.3	8.6	n/a	10.8
2020	5.7	4.7	5.4	9.7	13.0	14.8	14.9	16.3	13.7	9.5	8.0	5.1	10.1
2019	6.1	6.1	6.8	8.9	12.2	13.8	16.7	15.7	13.5	9.4	6.2	5.6	10.1
2018	4.4	2.9	4.0	8.2	13.1	17.4	18.4	15.1	12.1	9.6	6.6	6.6	9.9
LTA	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a