4/10/15 newsletter

4/09/15 9:330 pm

Good Evening:

Another week has slipped into history. This week Jon hauled two loads of wine and cider to our two distributors. While he was in the metro last night with the second load, he called me with news he had a flat tire and wanted to know if I had triple A. He solved his problem by borrowing a mobile air pump, inflated the tire, and was able to drive home. Today our repair garage found a big nail still in the tire, hence plugging the hole giving him time to drive home. It happens. In the old days my parent would have said he spun his wheels too much, but than it was in a rear tire on a front wheel drive.

Last Sunday we celebrated Easter in the evening. Iza came with a basket full of plastic eggs to hide. She is now having more fun hiding the eggs and watching for if we can find them. She is growing up so fast and yet she is only in second grade.

Last Saturday Iza got the idea to sell lemonade at the winery to earn some money. The day before she bought some lemons, a bag of sugar, and some paper cups using her own money. On Saturday morning Anna helped her make her lemonade and set up her table in the winery. The lemonade was good and she sold out plus got some money as tips. In the end she ended up with $23 total. She talked about that if she puts the money in the bank into her savings account, Jon would then match this money. Mary and I did the same when our kids were small, I still think it was a good lesson for our kids to save.

In the end Iza took a different path, Jon saw her with the neighbor kids with $5 worth of candy. He first thought the other kids persuaded her to buy their candy, in the end Iza fessed up that she drove her bicycle to the store and bought the candy for the neighbor kids. Hearing this it scared Jon and Anna that she took off to the store alone, given today's world. It was nice she wanted to share her good fortune, but she knew going alone wasn't allowed. On Sunday Jon told us they gave her a Don Millner punishment. What's that? She got to pick her own punishment with the condition that if it was too easy, they'd give her a really big punishment. From what I hear, Iza chose to do cleaning, including scrubbing toilets. Sometimes the apple doesn't fall too far from the tree.

_______________________________________ As of tonight we are now down to about 3/4 of a row of Marquette left to prune. Today we worked in the drizzle and tomorrow we are planning to finish-up. After that

we need to tear all the cut canopy from the top wires to get it ready for the spring fungal spray. One spray in the spring is standard in grapes to kill one type of spores, it needs to happen before the buds open, that the grapes are still dormant.

We had a scare in the vineyard yesterday. My son Scott was pruning with me when he suddenly screeched out. In the corner of my eye I caught that he had both hands on his long handled loppers so his hands should have been safe. It turn out that he had his little pruner in a chest pocket on his coat and he pressed it closed with one of his finger between the blades as he was pushing with the loppers to cut a big grape trunk. He cut the finger but at least didn't cut it off. It bled good, he wrapped with tape and later sealed it with super glue. He was back to work today, he should be OK.

___________________________________________________ On the Wine side today Jon unloaded the 2013 vintage of Draga, made with the Marquette grape, from the barrels and loaded the 2014 vintage to start the barrel aging for this vintage. The 2013 vintage is now ready for bottling.

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